“Go for it. You know she’ll just keep calling.”
“She probably calculated your arrival time down to the minute and figures enough is enough, and she needs a report.” He taps the phone and brings it to his ear. “Hi, Zoe… Why yes, heishere.”
He grins at me while he listens, but then his whole expression changes. He looks up at me. “Did you leave your phone in the truck?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess I might have. Why?”
He shakes his head. “Yeah, hang on a second,” he tells Zoe. He goes over to the pile of clothes by the door and starts digging around in the suit jacket. A second later, he produces a couple tiny velvet bags from inside one of the pockets. He dumps them into his hand. Out fall two gold rings. He looks up at me in horror. Into the phone, he says, “Yeah. We’re on our way.”
CHAPTER 55
GEORGE
We’re makinggood time so far. Owen and I barely took two seconds to clean up a little more, get our clothes back on, and hit the road. But no matter how I map it, and even if we only stop for gas and whatever junk food we can grab, there is no route that gets us there before the wedding. Still, we have to try.
“I am so sorry,” Owen says for about the hundredth time.
“There is no way you could have known those rings were in the pocket. Even Zoe didn’t realize it until an hour ago.”
His fingers tense on the steering wheel. He runs a hand through his hair. It ends up sticking up in all directions. It is the most adorable thing I have ever seen.
“And she hasn’t told Luca and Cory yet?”
I glance down at my phone as if some new information might have come in in the last thirty seconds. “I think she’s hoping we’ll find a way to bend the space-time continuum, and she won’t have to.”
Owen chews his lip. “Is that a good idea though? I mean, obviously I’ve never met the guy, but I get the feeling Luca might be a little…uptight about this.” He glances over, checking my response. “Sorry, I know this is probably really weird for you.”
“No, it’s… actually it’s fine. I mean, I still care about him. I do want him to be happy. And besides, I have other things on my mind,” I say meaningfully.
He looks over again, this time with a huge, if slightly bashful, smile. He reaches across to lace his fingers with mine. I look down at our hands together. It seems just right. I clear my throat. “So.”
He shoots me another look. “So?”
“Not to get all neurotic on you”— the smile that plays across his face tells me that ship has long sailed—”But what does this mean?” I raise our joined hands together for emphasis.
He sighs, changes lanes to go around a tractor-trailer. “I don’t know.”
“You live really far from me,” I point out. Because I’m a genius that way.
“You live really far fromme.”
I stare out the window as Vermont’s endless forest glides by. “Is this crazy? What we’re doing? Not that we’re actually doing anything yet—I mean obviously we’ve donesomething, but… I think maybe I’ll stop trying to use words now.”
“I don’t know,” Owen sighs. So that’s it. It was nice while it lasted. A couple weeks of being pen pals and one brief glorified interlude to remember him by. He clears his throat. “Idoknow I want to keep seeing you.”
Warmth spreads all through me, and I don’t know if it’s affection or embarrassment, and I don’t give a flying fuck either. “Me too,” I tell him.
“Okay,” He nods, like it’s set, then. “Okay, then that’s what we’ll do. I don’t have anywhere in particular that I have to be for the next few days. I could maybe hang out in the city if that’s something you would want…”
“I mean… we’ll have to endure Zoe being insufferable about this. You do know that, right?”
“Eh, maybe not. If we screw up this wedding ring thing, she might not be speaking to either of us for a while.”
I laugh. “And I could come up and visit you, too. I need to start working on the new book, but I’ve gotten pretty used to writing at the cabin… I mean, if that’s somethingyouwould want.”
“Absolutely. I’m building the fires, right?”
“Oh, without question.”
