Page 52 of Room Serviced
Max rolled his eyes and grinned, and felt like a total idiot. “When’s the last time you were there?”
“That’s beside the point, because I’m right.”
“Sloane,” Max said, flicking his blinker on. “I live here—I know where the picnic area is.”
He could hear her sigh, all the way from Los Angeles.
“I don’t think you do,” she said. “Because Devil’s Hills definitely doesn’t have?—”
“I’ll show you when we eat burritos there,” he said. “And maybe, for good measure, we can get a Newt Gobbler sighting in while we’re at it.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Sloane muttered, but Max could hear the smile in her voice, and he laughed.
Chapter Sixteen
Sloane grabbed the box of condoms out of her nightstand, pulled a few out, and then stood there and frowned at them. Her carry-on-sized suitcase lay at her feet, full of the things she’d need for Thanksgiving at her parents’ house: jeans, a reasonably nice top, earplugs so she could sleep, the headphones she’d accidentally stolen from her brother the last time she visited and was finally returning. Socks and a sweater and shit.
On the bed was the overnight bag she’d packed for visiting Max. No point in lugging her whole suitcase into his apartment when she wasn’t going to need most of what was in there. A separate bag was much more efficient, obviously. Except now she was overthinking every single item she put into it.
Including the condoms, though on literally any other trip she’d have included them without a second thought, because you never knew.
Outside her open bedroom door, Jess walked past. Three seconds later, she walked backward into view.
“You good?” she asked. Sloane realized she was holding up several condoms and staring at them. “Are those gonna predict your future or something?”
“If someone offered to let you crash at their place,” Sloane said, and looked over at Jess without putting the condoms down, “does that imply sex or no?”
“I think, usually, crash implies a couch. Or similar,” Jess said. “But this is the laundry-demon summoner from your hometown?”
“Max,” Sloane supplied, even though Jess damn well knew his name. They’d briefly met a few days ago, while Sloane and Max were FaceTiming.
“Yeah, you’re gonna fuck,” Jess said. “He’s from California, and everything all of you from here say is two levels too casual.”
“All my statements are the correct level of casual.”
“When you asked if I wanted to be roommates, you opened with, ‘We should hang more.’”
Jess was from somewhere outside Philadelphia, but Sloane had never held that against her and wasn’t going to start now. “Sorry for not sending an engraved invitation?”
“And there’s no such thing as formal flip-flops,” Jess went on, a debate they had every couple of months. Sloane opened her mouth to argue, but Jess kept talking. “Yes, he’s down for sex. You can tell because he said ‘crash’ and not ‘crash or whatever.’”
For once, Sloane decided not to argue. “You’re probably right,” she said, and tossed the condoms into the bag.
“No, I’m definitely right,” Jess said, still in the doorway as Sloane tossed some pajamas into the bag. Maybe she’d wear them. Maybe not. “I mean, if you told him to get on his knees and start barking, he’d do it.”
“You talked to him for ten seconds,” Sloane said.
“It was an informative ten seconds.”
“Barking is very specific,” Sloane said as Jess disappeared from her doorway.
“I have a sixth sense for men who are down bad,” Jess called from somewhere down their hallway. Sloane snorted, because Jess’s heart was in the right place, but she was obviously wrong.
“He’s not?—”
“Yes, he is!” Jess shouted.
The drive could have been worse. Traffic wasn’t particularly awful, and being November, it wasn’t too hot or windy, and she learned a lot about platypuses from a podcast. They were smaller than she’d thought. Still, with traffic and bathroom breaks and stopping to eat lunch and oh-my-god-I-have-to-stand-up-or-I’ll-die breaks, it took almost nine hours before Sloane was parallel parking on the street outside Max’s building and her GPS was informing her that she’d arrived at her destination.
