Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, he yelled out again. "It's one in the damn morning! Can't a guy get five minutes of peace on this island?"
Heat crawled up my neck. "Sorry!" I whisper-yelled. "I didn't realize—"
"Yeah, well, realize it now!" he snapped. "Some of us paid good money for our rooms!"
I frowned.As opposed to what? Bad money?
But I would never say it, because honestly, the guy had a point. I opened my mouth to apologize yet again when the cloud slid away, bringing the yeller bright into view.
Oh, crap.
The face – and more especially the beard – was all too familiar. Unless I was horribly mistaken, I was staring at the same bearded bicyclist who'd yelled at me and Ryder on the road.
But did he recognizeme?
I sure as heck hoped not.
That hope held for barely a two seconds until he thundered, "It'syou!"He said it like the last time I'd seen him, he'd caught me pooping into his pillow.
Oh, please.As if I could manage such a feat. Irritation got the best of me, and I hollered back, "Yeah? Well, it'syou, too."
And besides, it wasn'tjustme – not tonight and not the other day either. After all, I hadn't been yelling to myself or standing alone in the path of his bike.
Both times, I'd had an accomplice.
Or so I thought – until I looked one story higher and discovered in a flash that Ryder's balcony was Ryder-free.
My jaw hit the floor.Seriously?
Some accomplicehewas.
For some stupid reason, I thought of Delaney. Growing up, she'd been a magnet for all kinds of chaos. And yet, way too often,I'dbeen the one left holding the bag.
There was that time she'd thrown a snowball at a car and leftmeto deal with the angry driver. And then, there was the night she'd set off that truck alarm "just to see if it worked," leavingmeto explain to the irate neighbor that just because I'd been walking nearby, that didn't mean I was the culprit.
And then, there was the time she had opened the gate at that petting zoo because "the goats looked bored," only to vanish when a pair of them bounded free and started eating the zoo's prize-winning begonias.
I never ratted her out. And to her credit, she was good at saying she was sorry. But after a while, I started giving her chaos a wide berth, because whether she was sorry or not, I hated that kind of trouble.
And yet, Delaney or no Delaney, here I was, yelling at a stranger three stories up.
And he was yelling back. "And what's with you and roads?"
I threw up my hands. "What?"
"First, you're standing on thebikeroad, and now you're standing onthisroad. Is that your thing or what?"
My thing? Seriously?"Hey!" I hollered back. "It's thesameroad!"
This was true.
Sort of.
Main Street fed directly into the lazy loop that encircled the island. Sure, the name changed from Main Street to M-185, but it's not like there was a giant off-ramp with flashing yellow lights.
And besides, Main Street was, well…astreet. It wasn't called MainRoad, was it?
And now, here on this little stretch of it, I watched in stupid fascination as the guy leaned further over the railing, making his oversized beard sway like an angry mop.
