“About an hour. Are you sure you don’t want to drive?”
I hold the keys out to her with a slight tilt to my lips, and she sticks her tongue out at me as she opens the door.
I open my door and hop in, then buckle my seatbelt and start the engine. “Don’t complain about my driving.”
“Then don’t drive like a jackass,” she sasses back.
I smirk at her. “No promises.”
“Then no promises that I won’t bitch the entire way,” she states matter-of-factly, like saying the sky is blue.
I chuckle under my breath as I put the car in reverse and pull out of our parking spot.
Why does bickering with this girl make me so damn happy now when, before, I wanted to wring her neck?
We get on the freeway and make our way out of Bozeman with ease. Once we’re on an empty stretch of highway, I put the car in cruise control and lean back to get more comfortable.
“How’s the drama on your group chat?” I ask when I see she’s been typing away again.
“Surprisingly good,” she replies without looking up from her device.
“Surprisingly?”
She puts her phone down on her lap and turns to me. “Yeah. Sounds like the drama has calmed down.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“We’ll see. There’s still a lot going on.”
“Are you one of those girls who feeds on drama and looks for it, even when there is none?” I say it more jokingly but realize quickly that’s not how she takes it by the way she sits up in her seat and turns to face me.
“Are you calling me a drama queen?”
“Nuh-uh, girl. No need to get all pissy on me.” I snap my fingers and roll my neck, acting like a true drama queen.
She laughs so hard that she slaps her hands on her lap. “Did you really just do that?”
I grin, looking back to the road, acting normal again. “I could tell your fight button just got pushed, so I knew I needed to bring you back down a notch.”
“My fight button?”
“Yeah, that little button deep inside you that seemed to be stuck down every time you looked at me before.”
She laughs again. “I can’t believe you’re calling it my fight button. Where does anyone even come up with something like that?”
I look between her and the road. “You tell me! I swear if I even breathed, you wanted to rip my head off.”
“And you didn’t feel the same way about me?”
I tilt my head back and forth, like I’m weighing my options. “Depended on the day.”
I look at her out of the side of my eye and love the way she’s smiling right now. It’s not an expression I saw on her much before, and I’ll admit, she’s fucking beautiful when she smiles.
We leave the conversation at that, both of us not really wanting to talk about how much we hated each other because today has been nothing like that at all. Instead, she reaches over and turns up the radio, and we drive in comfortable silence, singing along to the songs guiding our way.
Zoe
We get checked in to our rooms, which, of course, are located right next to each other.
