Honestly, he didn’t look like a mama’s boy; he looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t have any trouble in the social department at all. Attractive, confident, physically fit. But none of that mattered.
I wasn’t looking. Even if he was interested.
End of story.
I let out a breath.
I’d come on this trip to get away.
The trouble was, geography didn’t matter when you needed to get away from yourself.
Leo’s face popped into my head, uninvited, his expression twisted with shock as chunks of lobster meat dripped from his hair. “Jesus Christ, Luna, what the hell? Have you gone insane?”
Yeah, no, okay, I really needed to find something else to think about.
Anything.
Babs shifted in her seat, her tracksuit rustling beside me.
I had twelve days. With Babs, Just Noah, his mother, and an entire busload of folks excited to check bucket-list items off of some list that the WonderWorld marketing department had made up.
Twelve days.
I knew better than to think distance alone would fix anything, but time? That was another thing.
Maybe I’d make up my own list.
Because Ashley had been right. Again.
One step at a time.
One mile at a time.
And as far as I could tell, we’d only gone about twenty.
Only about a thousand more to go.
WHY WE CLIMB MOUNTAINS
“Luna? Wake up, dear. We’re almost at the first stop.”
Dear?
Someone was shaking my arm. “I didn’t want to wake you, but the view is just so beautiful. You don’t want to miss this.”
I opened my eyes, blinking and staring into my seatmate’s surprisingly bright green eyes.
Babs. The tour. And the bus.
The massive vehicle was moving incredibly slowly, winding around… Hoo boy. That was one hell of a hairpin turn. Was this tube of metal even built to handle this kind of terrain?
I held my breath, watching the edge of the road creep closer and closer until it disappeared from view entirely, as if we were hanging off the side of the mountain.
Babs, completely unfazed, was holding up her iPad, squinting at the screen as she tried to snap a picture. She fumbled around the screen, accidentally flipping to selfie mode, then to some weird filter that turned everything sepia. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, jabbing and poking. Finally, the shutter clicked, and she let out a satisfied hah!
When something brushed my arm, I jerked—just slightly. Then I turned and saw Just Noah.
He was holding out his hand, palm open.
