Page 10 of Love at First Sighting

“Do your bosses know what year it is, Agent Carter?”

He responds with a noncommittal grunt. “Bold question, Ariel.”

“And you wear a fedora. Is it ironically or unironically?”

“It’s not a fedora. It’s a trilby hat. It’s different.

Fedoras typically have wider and flatter brims, and trilby hats are smaller, with a downward tilt in the front.

” Carter recites this like a Wikipedia description, because I’m sure I’m not the first to ask.

With a sprinkle of added flare, he tilts the hat downward slightly with a smirk and a wink. Oh no, I might be in trouble.

“Right. Okay.”

“Look, I don’t make the rules. But it’s not a fedora.”

“Copy that, Agent Carter.”

As his car hits every single bump on the way down the hill, he flips on the AC.

His AC might work , but it isn’t doing the strongest job and there’s an odd smell coming from the vents.

It smells like aging, and I hope my retinol serum is doing its strongest job.

I ponder whether this is a company car or something he saved all his pennies for.

If the latter, he might not have many pennies.

I reach into my pocket and drop a penny it into his cupholder without him noticing. I am a philanthropist .

After a few minutes of silence (aside from the scary sounds Agent Carter’s car makes), he clears his throat.

“Do you want to listen to music?”

“Does that thing even play music?”

“Sure it does—”

“From this century?”

“For a girl who kept me up all night, you are being kinda mean.”

“Is that the first time a girl’s kept you up late?” I realize after I’ve said it how it comes across. Maybe, subconsciously, I meant it.

Carter’s tongue darts out and runs along the inside of his lower lip, before he bites down on it. “No, it is not.”

He flips a switch on the dashboard, and music filters through the speakers.

He gets normal radio stations—at least, I think.

I haven’t listened to the actual radio in years.

I sort of thought it went out of business.

We ride in near silence until we approach the canyon roads and fear ratchets up my spine.

I learn several things about Agent Carter in our time in the car together: He drives carefully and uses his blinker excessively, there are short catches of his breath whenever someone cuts him off, and his eyes never leave the road except at stoplights.

Then, sometimes, he looks over at me.

When he does, it takes everything in me to not look back.

I expected it to be easy to come back to the scene of the crime, but as we weave through the darkened mountains, I can’t help but think how different things would be if I’d picked any other place to take my pictures.

I wouldn’t be declared the “breakdown of the week” on the internet.

I wouldn’t be verging on getting kicked out of a place I just moved into.

I wouldn’t be in a clown car with my very hot Man in Black.

“How deep in the mountains were you?”

“Deep,” I mutter. “We’re going to have to hike a little bit.”

Carter’s brows raise. “Hike…in your Stagecoach sandals?”

“They haven’t let me down so far.” Carter rounds a bend past the closest outlook spot. I point. “Park over here. I can take you up the path.”

He pulls the car to the side of the road. I open the car door, a little too hard, and ding the guardrail.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, both Betty and I can handle rough women,” Carter remarks.

All right, then , I lust to myself.

The mountains are quiet, aside from a distant rush of cars and the lap of ocean waves.

The air is colder here, breezes nipping at my bare legs.

He rounds the car and meets me on the other side.

Before we begin our ascent, I pause. I want to show him where it happened, and I’m hoping he’ll have answers and we can prove I did see something.

Maybe then people will care. But I’m terrified.

There’s a thumping ache in my chest and an urge to cry, because all I want is for everything to go back to reality.

Back to a reality where I posted about shampoo and makeup and smoothies, where I’d be doing an Instagram Live with Bex to apologize for my meltdown.

Back to a reality where no one cares at all…

Do I even want that?

“El,” Carter says, resting a hand on my arm. His touch is tender and the tone of his voice softens—zero swagger, zero intimidation. “Are you okay?”

I don’t pull away and try to run from him this time. He isn’t judging me for being scared, because at one point, that’d been him, too. What he went through is so much worse. Who am I to complain?

Silly little rich girl doesn’t get sponsored toothpaste anymore? No one is going to care.

“I know how scary it was.”

“And you’re fine,” I sigh.

“To be fair, there’s a lot of years of therapy to thank for that.” He slips his hat off and sets it on top of his car.

“That’s…emotionally healthy of you.”

Carter’s eyes dart away. “My uncle who took me in—he, uh…he was tired of me waking up with nightmares.”

There’s sadness in his voice, but the kind he’s lived with and coped with for long enough that it barely hurts. Or at least he’s convinced himself it doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I say back.

“Me, too. You don’t have to feel bad for being afraid—”

“It was something stupid. I mean, I’m fine. Nothing really happened. It could have been way worse. I don’t know why it keeps lingering with me. I just want to forget about it.” My eyes water and I will not cry in front of Carter, but the weight of the past few days is so immense.

“It wasn’t stupid. What happened to you was real .” Carter props an elbow on the roof of the car and holds my gaze. “It might not be as bad as it could have been, but we don’t get to choose what leaves scars on us. We don’t always decide what leaves a mark.”

I swallow the tears building in my throat and glance up at him. His eyes are heavy with compassion. I follow where his hand rests on the car’s roof, up his dark sleeves and over his broad shoulders.

“What are you thinking about?” His voice is a whisper, a secret for the two of us, even if no one’s around.

As much as I fight it, a single tear drips out of the corner of my eye. I wipe it away as quickly as I can. “Just the irony that the first person to believe me is the person who got sent to shut me up.”

“I didn’t get sent,” he says with a grin.

“What?”

“I chose this assignment. When I saw your video, I went and fought for this one.”

I swallow as Carter drops his arm and tosses his hat onto the front seat. “I bet you regret choosing this job.”

With a low laugh, he nods. “Oh, I totally do.”

I deflate.

“I would have picked someone who didn’t have me running all over LA, outsmarting me. Someone way less cunning than you.”

I smile, too. Cunning is the last word anyone uses to describe me. I get beautiful , I get social media savvy , I get photogenic . No one cares what’s going on in my brain, and that’s been okay for so long. I forgot how nice it might feel for someone to notice I’m more than a pretty face.

“Hey, I did stop posting about the UFO.”

“Good girl. Now come on,” he drawls. “Show me what those Stagecoach sandals can do.”