Ivy is completely oblivious to the spot of peanut butter. I lean over and pause with my hand near her mouth, waiting for some sort of green light. She looks down at my hand and I brush it away with my finger, touching her bottom lip.
I need a minute before I can do anything else.
Chapter Nineteen
DID I MOAN in public while eating a cheeseburger with peanut butter dripping off it? Yes, I did. And I’d do it again.
We’ve been doing this wrong. Cheeseburgers are meant for peanut butter.
I can’t remember the last time I ate something like this in public. In the past, men have made me so self-conscious of what I was going to order or how much I was going to eat. Jack wasn’t so bad. He’d scoff at real pasta or beef burgers, coaxing me into zoodles and turkey burgers. Other guys I went out with were much worse.
I take a brief trip down memory lane, back to the guy who called me a horse when I finished a teeny tiny steak and an even smaller portion of mashed potatoes. We were at some fine dining spot where it was hip to serve snacks masked as entrees and I’m certain everyone left hungry. Not only did he call me a horse—while the server was at the table—he dumped me ten seconds later.
Holland encouraging me to order what I really wanted was the healthy push I needed. How many salads have I scarfed down, while I drooled over real food? There’s nothing wrong with a solid salad but it never hits the spot like when you’re craving a salty, carby, burger.
My mouth waters.
We’re headed back to the lodge, with the windows down and my hair whipping around. Holland hasn’t asked to take the radio back yet so I’m currently blaring a Phoebe Bridgers song. I sing loud enough for Holland to hear.
He doesn’t grimace, or side-eye me, or sigh in annoyance. He drives and smirks when he feels me watching him. With one hand on the wheel, flannel unbuttoned and rolled up a bit, I’m thinking about those arms. How his forearm flexes when he turns the wheel. What it felt like to fall into him yesterday. How he touched my lip at lunch.
Before I can fantasize anymore about a man sitting right next to me, a Britney Spears song is on.
“I love this song,” I shout over the music.
“Everyone loves this song,” Holland replies.
I laugh when I imagine Holland singing along to a Britney Spears track. I cover my eyes for dramatics.
My shoulders do a small shimmy and I’m really going for it when the chorus hits. I’m singing into a fake microphone and there are choreographed head whips.
Jokingly, I put my fake mic in front of Holland. He stares, not a smile in sight, before looking back at the road.
Before I pull the mic back, accepting my solo-lip-syncing career, Holland playfully grabs my wrist.
He sings the chorus of “Baby One More Time” into my fake microphone. His voice is barely loud enough to be heard over the music. I gasp and can’t control a belly laugh. Holland keeps saying the lyrics until he’s also cracking up and can’t get anything else out. We’re both hystericalin this truck, with bellies full of cheeseburgers, and a solid shopping haul in the back seat.
I don’t know a ton about Holland but I know this much:
He likes burgers
Seems like he hikes regularly
He knows Britney Spears, and he’s not above scream singing in the car
