Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 694(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 463(@300wpm)
Finally, she looked my way. “Yeah, that’s true.” She sighed. “Okay. We find a restaurant. I buy you lunch. One of us talks to Jayden. I talk to Kyle. And if by some miracle all of that works out, we find a hotel.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Except for one miscalculation. If she thought I was letting her pay for lunch after the day she’d had, she was out of her mind.
28
TORI
“Here’s one that’s $179 a night.” Lucas swiped at his phone screen while I drove. After lunch, I needed something to keep me from thinking too much about the wedding tomorrow. Dealing with the traffic and construction around Atlanta was the perfect distraction—for better or worse.
We could do better on the price. “Look for one along the highway. It doesn’t have to be super nice, it’s only for one night.”
There’d been no point in driving back to Macon today. We could do that before the wedding tomorrow. There were more things to do around here anyway—not that we’d come to sightsee.
“Here’s one. It’s a hundred and eleven plus tax. Wow, that’s a lot of tax.”
“Is it on the highway?” I asked, tapping the steering wheel.
“Yes, pretty close.”
“Okay, sounds good. My credit card’s in my purse. Can you reach it?”
“Hold on, I’m not there yet.” He spoke out loud as he scrolled. “Non-smoking… two beds… or did you want two rooms?”
“One room is fine.”
“Okay, two queen-size beds. Check-in is any time after four. And—there. Got it,” he said, giving a satisfied nod.
“Wait, you didn’t get my card.”
“I just reserved it with mine. It was already in my phone.”
“I’m paying for the room,” I said as firmly as I could.
“I understand.”
“I’m serious. You’re only here because you were kind enough to come help. So you’re not paying.”
“I told you, I understand. When we check in, we can ask them to—oh crap, they just emailed the receipt.”
It was kind of odd how much I wanted to strangle him, even though he was helping me. “I’ll pay you back.”
“Sure, but you don’t have to, I mean—”
“Lucas, remember that extremely uncomfortable conversation we had last night? One of the main points, if not the actual thesis, was that you don’t need to protect me.”
“Extremely uncomfortable?”
“You disagree?”
“Yeah, I think you’re downplaying it.” He let out a quiet, rueful laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. The muscles of my face felt stiff when they broke into a small smile.
Last night’s discussion had been awful, but finding out my mother was marrying Doug had eclipsed it. “What’s a stronger word than extremely, then?”
He didn’t lift his gaze from his screen. “You’re the future English teacher.”
Oh yeah. “Umm… astoundingly uncomfortable. Phenomenally uncomfortable. Overwhelmingly uncomfortable.”
“Yeah, all of the above. And you could get a summer job as a walking, talking thesaurus.”
Thank god he was still looking at his phone, because my jaw dropped when he mentioned the safeword Kyle had given me. Hopefully, that was just a coincidence.
“We’ve got an hour or two before we can check in,” he said. “I know a really good bookstore, if you’re interested.”
“No thanks. I know what we can do.”
“Care to share with me?”
“You’ll see.”
“Guess I will.” He put his phone into his pocket.
Forty minutes later, I parked in front of what was quite possibly my favorite spot in the entire state.
Lucas squinted through the windshield. “A thrift store?”
I turned off the engine. “Not just any thrift store. An upscale boutique that always has the best finds.” Okay, boutique was kind of stretching the truth a bit, but it was still a nice place. “Remember that green dress I wore on our date?”
“Vividly,” he said, in a tone I couldn’t quite identify.
“I got that here.”
Lucas examined the storefront with renewed interest.
“My mom and I stopped here whenever we could make it to Atlanta. Doug would never be caught dead in a thrift store, so it’s something that was just for us.”
“Ah,” Lucas said. “I get it. We’re here because this place is sentimental to you and your mother.”
My eyes rolled so hard they almost made a complete rotation. “No, we’re here because we need something to wear to the wedding tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Lucas glanced down at the flannel button-down shirt he wore over a white t-shirt and his black jeans. Then he looked over at the oversized sweatshirt and the jeans I’d thrown on this morning. “Good point. Okay, let’s go shopping.”
“It’s called thrifting.” I climbed out of the car with a grin on my face. If I could just focus on the store itself and not the reason why we needed the clothes, this might even be fun. “And I’m excellent at it.”
Lucas moved to my side. “Then let’s go thrifting.”
We started in the men’s section. It didn’t take long to locate a pair of black trousers that fit Lucas remarkably well—though he let out a low whistle, surprised by the reasonable price in spite of the quality. I found him a crisp white button-down and a black tie in another aisle.