What if I love you too?
ARLO
What if?
They kiss. A single security guard awkwardly claps.
POPPY
This is probably a mistake.
ARLO
Let’s make it anyway.
October 14, 2019
Vera S.
Can it really be this simple? Maybe.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Caleb and his family were the first to go. His girls were restless and they had a long drive home. Hollis and Ruby found a spot at the bar, where they watched in silence as the tram went up and down the cliffside.
So that left me and Eli, who was wringing his napkin until his knuckles turned white.
“What’d that napkin ever do to you?” I asked.
He gave a dry chuckle. “I just realized that I have to go back down the mountain. I was so concerned about getting up here that I just... forgot I had to go back down.”
“How did you get up here, anyway? You could have waited for us to get here so we could all go up together.”
“I wanted to be here for you,” he reminded me. “That didn’t involve you coaching me through a panic attack.”
“You made it up here, though,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I had to close my eyes and stand in the dead center of the car while I recited the Hippocratic Oath under my breath over and over again.”
“The Hippocratic Oath?”
“It was the only thing I could think of that didn’t involve singing. But maybe that would have been better. The family riding up with me probably thought I was a serial killer.”
“Do you want to get it over with?” I asked. “Going back down?”
His fist closed around the napkin once more and he nodded.
We went by the bar to say goodbye to Ruby and Hollis.
As I hugged my grandmother, I bent down and whispered, “Michael Douglas?”
The only answer I got was her eating the olive out of Hollis’s martini.
There wasn’t a line to go back down, so Eli and I had the tram car to ourselves.
He immediately stepped into the center, facing the mountainside, and gripped a handrail.
I stood directly in front of him and let my hands cover his.
