I either hate him with everything inside me to the point that I start fantasizing about suffocating him with a pillow filled with all of the things about him that annoy me, or I can’t stop thinking about how good his ass looks in his jeans and how amazing he smells when he’s up close and what he must’ve done to hone all of his muscles for the past few years and how much I wouldn’t mind being the next person to bite his sharp hips.
There’s nowe can be friendsin between.
So hating him is basically my only option.
I owe my sister that much.
And myself, honestly. I don’t need anything else from my past sneaking back into my life.
“I meant there has to be a side road we can take,” he grumbles. “A detour around whatever this is.”
I poke at the GPS in the dash, moving the map, but don’t see any alternate options in the immediate vicinity. “Nothing close.”
“How long will we be stuck?”
“No telling. It’s usually no more than a few minutes in rural areas like this.”
Now he glances at his watch.
“Something big waiting tonight?” I ask him.
“I have a schedule.”
“For…?”
Silence.
Right.
I get to stay to teach him to cook—or at least spot which videos and recipes on the internet are likely to kill you and which ones might taste good—but he doesn’t trust me enough to know how long he’s on this trip.
“Doesanyonein your life know what you’re doing?” I ask.
More silence.
I’m about to reach for the radio volume when he replies.
“One person.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Best friend.”
“They couldn’t go on a trip with you?”
I’m not surprised when he doesn’t answer.
Or when his knee starts bouncing.
He notices as well immediately.
I can tell because he clamps a hand down on his own leg to stop it.
The cars inch along.
I rub my shoulder a little more.
“If you plugged in the map app on your phone instead, we’d get better traffic updates.” I tap the screen in the dash. “This is out of date, or it would be showing traffic. A phone map app would tell us how long we’ll be stuck here. Or if there’s an alternate route without traffic.”
