She finally stops and turns toward me. “I got a call from one of the top hotels in Boston. They’re offering me an interview for a management position. Before I took the job down here, I had applied to like a hundred hotels in the area, desperate to find something so I wouldn’t have to relocate.”
“Ah,” I say, feeling my heart drop to the pit of my stomach. “Basically, what you’re saying is, we’ve been fooling around, having fun. You were hoping it was something more. I never said it was anything more for me, and you just got a job interview you can’t pass up. Any smart person would be stupid to deny it. Am I right?”
“How many times a day do I have to tell you that you’re so smart, Austin.”
“Don’t go patronizin’ me,” I tell her.
“Then don’t pretend like you have me all figured out,” she snaps back.
“Don’t I, though?” I ask her.
“No, you don’t know a damn thing.”
“I know a few things, just to be fair,” I mutter.
An Uber car pulls up to the spot where we’re arguing and she doesn’t say another word before climbing inside. I follow her, though. This isn’t over. “What are you doing?”
“Chasing you,” I tell her. The second the words come out of my mouth, I hear Pop’s words in my ear.
“I’m not the girl who needs to be chased, and your truck is over there,” she tells me, pointing across the street.
“Yeah, well I don’t think I know what the hell I’m doing, or who the hell you even are at this point, so it can stay there a bit longer.”
The Uber driver seems unaffected by our argument, but this sucks. We haven’t argued about a damn thing since things heated up with us, and now out of nowhere, it’s like she hates me. I loved that she was open and honest about everything, but now I’m seeing a totally different side of her, and I’m questioning if she’s just that damn good at hiding shit, and whether I really know who she is.
We’re about a mile away from the hotel where she works, and I can’t think of a thing to say. “I’m sorry I made you chase me,” she says.
“You didn’t make me do nothin’,” I tell her.
“I don’t belong down here,” she tells me.
“Well, do you belong up there?”
“I don’t know. That’s the truth.”
“Do you need some time to get your thoughts together?” I ask her. If she needs space, I’ll give her space. The last thing I want to do is act like a crazy boyfriend, especially seeing as I’m not her boyfriend thanks to my lack of labeling capabilities and my apparent inability to understand our relationship.
“Actually, will you walk me home?” she asks. The way she asks isn’t in true Scarlett fashion. She’s all quiet and meek. She must be lost in her head somewhere if she’s acting like this. I don’t know this side of her at all.
“Of course I will.” Even if it’s to say goodbye, this girl has me so wrapped around her finger, I’d probably be dumb enough to go jogging through the woods with a pair of heels on too.
The car pulls up in front of the dirt parking lot that leads to the hotel because Ubers aren’t allowed up to the front of the property unless someone has a lot of baggage. It doesn’t make sense to me, but Ellis doesn’t make much sense to me as a person either, so I won’t waste too many brain cells trying to figure it out.
We hop out of the car and silently walk down the dirt path. I want to take Scarlett’s hand, but I don’t know what’s going through her head. All the sudden, it feels like we’re back at square one. I step around to her other side where her broken wrist is and lift it up. I trace my fingertips over hers as if I were only looking for swelling. “What are you doing?” she asks.
“Being a creep,” I tell her.
“If you want to hold my hand, I’ll hold your hand,” she says.
“Do you want to holdmyhand?”
“I never stopped wanting to hold your hand, Austin.”
She walks around the other side of me and takes my hand, holding it tightly. While I want to think this is a good sign of things to come, it also feels like it could be the beginning of the end. What could I have done differently? Nothing. Seriously, nothing except ask her earlier if she wanted to be my damn girlfriend. Aside from that, I honestly don’t know what I did wrong. Am I that big of an idiot? I was enjoying the moment, not thinking about stupid shit like titles. I just wanted to be with her, laughing and enjoying whatever it was that was happening.
We walk up the front steps of the plantation and I open the main door for Scarlett to walk through.
“Hi, Miss Scarlett,” the young front desk girl calls out as we walk by. Scarlett has been training her for the past couple days so she can handle some of the busy shifts and relieve Scarlett from having to take them all on.
