He laughs out loud. “Hell yeah I’d choose something better. I’ll take a fifty-dollar steak over a day-old burger any day, or a beer over a Mountain Dew.”
I shake my head, but can’t wipe the faint grin off my face.
“What do you normally eat, anyway?” he asks. “Salads and tofu?”
“Bleh,” I say with a wrinkled face. “No way in hell would I ever eat tofu and salads are just weight-loss fads.” I pause and grin over at him. “Honestly?”
“Well, yeah—spit it out,” he says.
He’s looking at me as though I’m something funny and cute that needs to be studied.
“I like SpaghettiOs with meatballs and sushi.”
“What, like all mixed together?” Now he looks quietly disgusted.
It takes me a few seconds to catch on.
“Oh, no,” I say, shaking my head back and forth, “that would be gross, too, by the way.”
He smiles, looking relieved.
“I’m not big on steak,” I go on, “but I’d eat one if offered to me, I guess.”
“Oh, so you’re asking me to ask you on a date?” His grin just got wider.
My eyes bulge and my mouth falls open. “No!” I say, practically blushing. “I was just saying that—”
Andrew laughs and takes another swig.
“I know, I know,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never consider asking you on a date.”
My eyes and mouth get even bigger and my face flushes hot.
He laughs even louder.
“Damn, girl,” he says, still with laughter in his voice, “you don’t catch on too quick, do you?”
I frown.
He frowns, too, but he’s still sort of smiling at the same time.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says, looking a bit more serious, “if we happen to get lucky enough to find a steakhouse at one of our rest stops that can cook a steak in the fifteen minutes we have before the bus leaves us behind, then I’ll buy you one and let you decide while we eat our steaks together on the bus if it’s a date, or not.”
“Well, I can tell you now that it won’t be a date.”
He smiles crookedly.
“Then it won’t be,” he says. “I can live with that.”
I think he’s done with the topic, but then suddenly he adds, “But then what would it be, if not a date?”
“What do you mean?” I say. “It would be a friendship thing, I guess. Y’know, two people who happen to be sharing a meal together.”
“Oh,” he says with a sparkle in his eyes, “so now we’re friends?”
That catches me off-guard. He’s good. I give it a moment’s thought, pursing my lips in contemplation.
“Sure,” I say. “I guess we are sort of friends at least until Wyoming.”
He reaches over and offers his hand to me. Reluctantly, I shake it. His grip is gentle, but firm and his smile is genuine and kind.
“Friends until Wyoming it is then,” he says, shaking my hand once and letting go.
I’m not sure what just happened, but I don’t feel like I’ve done anything I’m going to regret later. I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a traveling ‘friend’. I can think of a hundred other kinds of people who Andrew could be and it could be worse. But he seems harmless and I admit he’s interesting to talk to. He’s not an old lady looking to tell me stories of when she was my age, or an older delusional man who still thinks he’s as hot as he was when he was seventeen and that somehow he thinks I might be able to see him for what he used to look like. No, Andrew is right there in the goldilocks zone. Sure, it’d be better for many different reasons if he was a girl, but at least he’s close to my age and he’s not at all ugly. Oh no, Andrew Parrish is far from being anywhere near the Ugly Tree.
Truthfully, he lives right next door to the Sexy Tree and I think that’s the only thing that bothers me about this whole situation.
You know damn well that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in your life, who you just lost, how much you hate the world, or how inappropriate it is to have an attraction to someone before that mending phase has reached the acceptable zone. You’re still human and the moment you see someone attractive, you can’t help but make note of it. It’s human nature.
Acting on it is a whole other story and that’s where I draw the line.
That’s not gonna happen, no matter what.
But yeah, the fact that he’s hot bothers me because it only means that I will have to try that much harder to make sure that nothing I say or do will give him the wrong impression. Hot guys know they’re hot. They just do, even the ones who don’t go around flaunting it. And it’s also human nature for hot guys to automatically assume that an innocent smile, or a conversation that goes on for three minutes without awkward silence, are signs of an attraction.
So, this ‘friendship’ is going to take a lot of work on my part. I want to be nice, but not too nice. I want to smile when necessary, but I have to be careful and measure the level of the smile. I want to laugh if something he says is funny, but I don’t want him to think it’s an I’m-so-fucking-into-you kind of laugh.
Yeah, this is definitely going to take work. Maybe an old lady would’ve been better, after all …
Andrew and I wait in the terminal for nearly an hour before the next bus pulls into the station. And as expected, it doesn’t look like we’re going to have two seats to ourselves this time. The line waiting to board already looks like there might not be enough seats to hold everyone. Dilemma. Crap. Andrew and I are suddenly temporary friends, but I can’t bring myself to ask him to sit with me. That might count as one of those things that gives the wrong impression. So, as the line inches forward and he follows close behind, I’m hoping he’ll take it upon himself to sit next to me. I’d rather it be him than someone else who I haven’t even spoken to.
I make my way toward the center of the bus and into two empty seats, passing up the one on the outside and taking the one by the window.
He sits next to me and I’m secretly relieved.
“Since you’re a girl,” he says, putting his bag on the floor between his feet, “I’ll let you keep the window seat.”
He smiles.
After the bus is full and I can already feel the extra body heat rising up all around us from so many people crammed inside the space, I hear the door squeal shut and the bus lurches in motion.
The drive doesn’t seem so long
