Page 47 of Troublemaker: The Big Picture Edition

I’m going in.

CHAPTER 17

ALEX

After explaining to Ryder that I’ll meet everyone at the Blue Bayou restaurant in an hour and realizing that he might not even notice I’m gone, I sidle on up to the most annoyed, judge-y hot glasses woman in the happiest place on earth.

“You need to take, like, eleven chill pills, Hermione,” the taller guy tells her. “We can go to Fantasyland after dinner. When the kids are gone.”

“The kids are never going to be gone from Disneyland, Franklin.” She shakes her head. “Maybe I should just meet you guys somewhere in like an hour.”

“I was just heading over to Fantasyland myself,” I say, stopping to stand right behind her.

When she turns around and sees me, at first there’s a flash of joy and relief. But now I know what conflicted longing looks like. I recognize it in her expression, plain as day.

And it just makes me want to grab her and kiss her even more.

“Hi,” she says and then clears her throat because she barely has a voice all of a sudden. “What are you doing here?”

“Heading over to Fantasyland, like I said.” I hold my hand out to the guy she called Franklin. “Hi. I’m Alex.”

Franklin takes my hand in both of his. “Please tell me you’re Alex the Hot Dad from Vomit Night.”

Emilia covers her face with her Disneyland schedule and mutters every word that’s not allowed in a Disney movie, and I think I hear her say “Fuck you, Ferris.”

“That is exactly who I am.”

“I’m Brody from Vomit Night,” the other guy says, offering his hand.

“Nice to meet you guys.”

Franklin tries to move the printout from Emilia’s face, but she slaps his hand away. “Well, Brody and I were just going to do Indiana Jones, so…we’ll meet you at Café Orleans in like an hour, yeah baby cakes?” He doesn’t wait for her to agree before pulling Brody away.

“Bye, Sexy Daddy,” Brody calls out with a wave.

I carefully slide the printout from between Emilia’s fingers and take a look at it while giving her a chance to gather her wits. Just as I imagined, her list is color and time coded but with the added benefit of Disney stickers. Her schedule appears to be arranged according to theme, rather than efficiency. Interesting. And totally fucking wrong, but I’m not going to tell her so.

Peter Pan’s Flight is at the top of her list, and I’m on board with that.

“Shall we?” I gesture toward Main Street.

She pushes her loose hair behind both ears, nodding.

“You here with Ryder?”

“Yeah, I left him with a nice couple back in Frontierland. It’s cool. We’ll meet up at the tram later. You having a good time here so far?”

She wrinkles her nose and says without looking at me, “I’m starting to.” She nudges my arm with her elbow. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Aboutme? The Hot Dad from Vomit Night?”

“That’s what Franklin calls you, not me.”

“How’ve you been?” It’s embarrassing how much I want to hear her say that she lost her phone three days ago.

“Okay. Catching up on grading and lesson plans. Doing this volunteer thing after school.”

“Yeah?”