Interested, I ask, “Okay, what are friendly type of things?”
“I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, but—oh, we could go sightseeing.”
“Why does that sound not the least bit interesting to me?”
“It’s totally a friend thing to do. You’ve been here before, clearly, so why don’t we do that after I’m done with my last meeting? You could show me around. I can take pictures in all the obvious places. It could be fun and we could get to know each other.”
“It doesn’t sound fun to me.”
“JP!” she shouts, surprising me. “Stop being difficult, and for the love of God, just go sightseeing with me. Good God.”
Chuckling, I nod. “Okay, no need to get all riled up. We can go sightseeing, but I’ll tell you this—I’ll be a bastard the whole time.”
“It wouldn’t be an evening out with you if you weren’t.” She dabs her mouth with her napkin. “My last meeting is at two today. After I get back, I’ll change, and then we can hit the town. How does that sound?”
“Like a nightmare.” I tilt my coffee cup toward her. “Can’t wait.” Then I stand from my chair and, with coffee cup and protein bar in hand, I head toward my room, only to stop midway. “Kelsey?”
“Yes?” she asks, fork poised near her mouth.
“Just so you know, you can act like we’re friends all you want, but know this... I can still taste your sweet cunt on my tongue.”
And then, with a smile on my face, I turn away from her and head into my bedroom. This is exactly what I needed, some more alone time with her.Now, let’s see if I can keep my sarcasm toned down when that happens.
* * *
“This place is so cute,”Kelsey says as she walks next to me, taking in everything around us.
“It’s hemorrhaging tourists,” I say.
“Which is exactly what we wanted, right?”
“What you wanted. This is not my idea of fun in San Francisco.” I dodge a couple who are sharing a soft pretzel.
“Ooo, they have a carousel. Let’s ride it.”
“You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going to ride a carousel.”
She gives me a playful grin and then pulls on my arm. “It’ll be fun.”
“Kelsey, I’m serious, I’m not riding that thing.”
She gets us in line and I attempt to leave, but she loops her arm through mine and surprisingly holds me in place.
“Loosen up. This is what friends do—silly things like this. You can take a boomerang of me on a horse.”
“What the hell is a boomerang?”
“On Instagram,” she says, as if I’m an idiot.
“That clarifies nothing.”
“It’s what we did in front of theFull Househouses.”
Yes, we were those people. We searched them out, the Painted Ladies to be exact, and we stood in front of them while taking weird back-and-forth pictures. From there, we stopped by the actual house fromFull House, where I took a dozen pictures of Kelsey posing. She forced me to take a picture with her, which she texted to me, saying how adorable we look as friends.
Fucking... great.
After that, we came down to the pier, where we are, as you know, currently in line for the carousel.
