Page 59 of The Perfect Rom-Com

“Yeah . . . Yeah,” I repeat, but the words are slow. Forced from my mouth. I want him to stay, I realize. I want to linger in this moment. The bus is quiet but for the hum of the tires rolling on into the empty interstate ahead.

He seems to feel the same way, because he doesn’t move.

Stays.

Looking into my eyes.

I swallow. Force a little laugh. “I didn’t say anything out loud, did I?”

And at this a tiny smile twists up one side of his lips. He inches closer, ratcheting up my heart rate. “Why? Any secrets you trying to keep?”

I say nothing but just look at him, temporarily seized by an inability to think. To be clever. To do anything beyond look at him with a confusing and overwhelming amount of emotion in this moment. He was in my dream. And while the picture of him is fading, the feelings remain. Intense feelings. For him.

After a few more seconds he blinks and pulls back. Grins and—meaning to or not, I don’t know—drifts his fingers over my hair as he moves to standing. “Don’t worry, Bryony. You didn’t say anything. At least, nothing I didn’t know already.”

And suddenly he’s gone, pulling himself back up to the top bunk, his bare feet the last thing to slip out of view.

“Sweet dreams,” he whispers in the darkness. “Kick me if you need more saving.”

I wind myself tightly into my blanket and roll over, the haze of this bizarre night lingering all around as thick as the Deep South’s humidity blowing through the vents. And sleep.

Chapter 10

“What are you doing?” Jack says.

“Nothing.”

The bus is one giant top of a flashlight, sun streaming in from both sides in the 8:00 a.m. light. The whole bus is awake, has been awake since six thirty, actually. I bleakly remember hearing an alarm go off in Amelia’s room somewhere around five. Penny is out somewhere, tasked with coming back with gluten-free, sugar-free, fat-free organic pastries homemade in the Himalayas and brought by donkey here to Seaside, Florida. Garrett is off racing around town in panic mode because apparently they are still more than fifty copies short, and the first event of the day starts in two hours. The bus driver, Trina, whom I’ve become quite fond of after a happy little discussion in regard to her short-haired terrier, is nowhere to be seen. If I had to guess, she dropped herself into the PetSmart store I spy across the parking lot. Amelia threw herself into the only tiny bathroom in the place with two armloads of hair appliances an hour ago, and we haven’t seen her since.

Which is fine.

I have to go to the bathroom desperately and I’m in my pajama pants, but I’m fine.

Fine.

I flip my phone over while my knees knock against each other, bouncing beneath the side table. I’m twisted up like a pretzel in the booth seat, trying to relieve myself from the reminder that I desperately need to relieve myself by flying through tabs on my browser.

Jack and I have both been dodgy this morning. Our eyes glued to anything but each other as we woke up inches from each other, sat in the booth inches from each other. As Jack slipped me a coffee wordlessly, inches from each other. As we both pulled out our phones and computers quietly, inches from each other.

He looks guilty, to be honest.

As he should, I suppose.

I have no clue what he was on about last night, but whatever it was was about me. And he isn’t telling me. He’s actually keeping a secret from me. Possibly to protect me? Although from what, I can’t imagine.

And as for me, well, I had almost forgotten the dream, but then I saw his face. And those bookish biceps beneath his gray T-shirt as he slipped off the top bunk that weren’t so entirely unappealing. And those green eyes cutting to mine as our gazes met.

And then that dreamlike feeling came back in a whoosh. A strong gust of wind that whipped through my bones and flipped me upside down.

A powerful, tantalizing whoosh.

I have come to a realization: This is all because we are stuck on this bus together. People who are stranded on deserted islands are bound to end up together; it’s just what happens. And Amelia’s bus is my proverbial island. If it wasn’t him, it would be fifty-three-year-old stressed-out Garrett.

I just can’t take something like that seriously. I can’t take anything about my life too seriously right now. I’m stressed. And I am annoyed, yes, that Parker told me last week that he potentially won’t be coming home for a visit until Thanksgiving at the earliest. Long-distance relationships are never easy in the short term, and here we are halfway through year two with no end in sight.

So I am making a decision and the decision is simple: When in an extenuating circumstance such as this one, with temptations out of the norm, I just need to be particularly vigilant to stay the course. Stick to the reality of the situation: As of right now I have a boyfriend, and I have absolutely no intention of ruining anything I have going with my agent.

Sure, somehow in there the waters have become a little murky, and I suppose I’ve done that to myself with all the dinners, the bowling, and the phone calls, but that’s just because I have a giant hole in my life under the label of “boyfriend filler,” and without Parker around I have let convenience win and had Jack fill it. I can’t help it. He is always around.