Page 20 of Fly with Me

“Are you still close with him?”

She nodded, but then her mouth pulled downward as Olive almost tripped over her dragging feet. “Do you want to sit down?”

“If I sit down, I won’t get back up. I’d really like a bed. And a shower. And room service. And a leg transplant. I’ll settle for the first three.” Olive’s steps got progressively slower. She collected enough courage to ask a small question. “Do you have any interest in coming back to my room and having a burger with me?”

“I’d absolutely love to have a burger with you.” Stella’s smile should be illegal. Olive would do incredibly filthy things to make this woman smile. “That’s a great idea.”

Olive, however, was quickly regretting the invitation as she shunted some blood away from her decimated legs and back up to her brain. She had invited a gorgeous woman back to a room she hadn’t even seen yet.

If her body hadn’t been in excruciating pain, she’d be paying more attention to the lifting sensation she felt every time Stella’s smooth hands brushed against her hip. Olive had always been a storm cloud, and now sunshine beamed beside her with every stride. Sexy, good-smelling, unattainable sunshine.

As the door swung open, Olive’s jaw dropped. “Whoa. I mean, they said it was an upgrade, but shit.”

Stella shook her head, eyes wide. “It’s amazing.”

The suite was unreal. A bed that looked even bigger than a king sat in the center of an enormous room with views overlooking the pool. There was a sitting area with a couch separated from the main room by classy French doors. The décor was luxurious with calming coastal blues and teals.

“My brother made the hotel reservation. He was a really successful director at an engineering firm. He said I wasn’t getting out of running the race with him this year and staying here was going to be my incentive. I’ve only ever stayed at the super budget hotels.”

“That’s why it was so important to you to get here.” Stella’s voice was slightly softer than her usual way of speaking. “Because of your brother.”

“I promised him.” Olive took a step forward. The few seconds of awestruck stillness seemed to have given her muscles free rein for lactic-acid gremlins to have a party. She needed food. She really, really needed a shower.

Staggering into the room, Olive dumped her stuff on the ground near the bed—the bed that was calling her name very, very loudly. Her half-open backpack spilled onto the floor, and she should have anticipated that Stella’s reaction to that would not have been positive. What she didn’t expect was that Stella would attack the spilled contents with the ferocity of a territorial honey badger. It was like mess provoked a reflexive pounce.

Olive waved her hands, sweeping the stuff back up into her bag. Her taut hamstrings screamed in agony as she leaned over. Still, Olive would prefer Stella not see that her packing strategy consisted of throw shit in one bag, throw shit that doesn’t fit in the other. Stella was probably one of those people with a Pinterest board dedicated to packing strategies, a loyalty card from the Container Store, and a commercial grade label maker. She might even have one of those fancy Cricut things.

Olive took Stella’s hand, and pulled her over to the couch. “Sit.” She grabbed the hotel binder. “Order food. I’m going to take a shower because I probably smell like a dead sewer rat. Order whatever you want. I really, truly owe you.”

Stella looked up through her lashes at Olive and blinked twice before nodding and flipping through the menu. Olive’s heart flipped in her chest, a curl of heat twisting in her stomach.

The bed began calling her name for a very different reason.

Stella’s gaze lifted. “What do you want?”

An ice-cold shower.

She cleared her throat. “A burger and fries. Basically, as greasy as it gets. I’m going to die if I don’t have one ASAP.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” Stella crossed her legs, white jeans tight around her hips, flowy goldenrod top billowing gracefully.

Was Stella flirting?

Olive couldn’t decide if Stella was flirting or the power of wishful thinking was overpowering reason. Whatever it was, Olive’s general grossness was not going to work for whatever happened next.

A well-adjusted human might ask the other person how they felt.

But Olive was not a well-adjusted human. She shut her mouth and hobbled to the bathroom.

Maybe Stella would casually mention how much she liked pussy during the next conversation, and then rip Olive’s clothes off, push her down onto the bed, and—

Cold shower.

Olive remembered she’d forgotten—because it was that kind of day—her toiletries out in the main room. Hers was not the type of hair that worked with hotel products unless she wanted her head to spend the next twenty-four hours resembling an ill-trimmed juniper bush or, if she brushed it, one of those troll dolls from the nineties. Olive grabbed her backpack rather than dig through it in the room and expose the aforementioned whatever-shit-fits organizational method.

Stella quirked an eyebrow at her but didn’t comment from where she sat on the bed, cradling the hotel phone to her ear.

God, she looked like a vacation advertisement or a travel influencer profile photo on Instagram.