Page 21

Eden

J oe picks us up and drives us to the hotel in Spokane. In the car, he and Rhys spar about college football—Rhys is a Ducks fans and Joe is a Cougs fan—and I sternly tell myself that Nothing Happened in the big box store.

We arrive at the hotel. Joe and Rhys work out the details about returning Rhys’s BMW, and then Joe pulls out, leaving Rhys and me at the sliding glass doors to the lobby.

We approach the desk, summoned forward by a clerk probably in his forties, dressed in a gray button-down and tie, with his hair in a man bun. “Two rooms for Hott,” Rhys tells him.

There’s a long pause while the clerk taps on his keyboard. And then taps again. And taps some more.

“We have one room for Hott,” he says.

“I booked two,” Rhys says.

“I’m so sorry,” the clerk says. “We have just the one. Let me—” More tapping. “Unfortunately, we’re all booked up?—”

Rhys turns to me. I can’t read his expression. “Do you want to go somewhere else?”

My feet hurt. My brain hurts. I just want to land somewhere. And it’s not like we haven’t done this before. We shared a room last night.

“Please tell me it at least has two beds?” I ask the clerk.

“Two queens,” he confirms. “And I’ll give you a twenty-percent discount for the error.”

I look back at Rhys, who raises his eyebrows at me.

“I feel like if we didn’t kill each other last night, we’ll be okay?” I say.

Of course, last night was before . Before the piggyback and the Bad Decision Panties on the store floor. Killing each other might be the least of our issues.

Still. If Rhys had any interest in acting on the chemistry that flared between us earlier, wouldn’t he have done it? He wasn’t jilted yesterday.

He has his phone out. He’s poking at the screen, and when I look over, I can see that he’s messing around with other reservation systems.

“There’s a big blues festival going on,” the clerk says, wincing apologetically. “And some kind of rock-collecting convention. Oh, right, and the UFO people. I’m so sorry. Big week in Spokane.”

Rhys takes a few more tentative stabs at his phone, then sighs heavily. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything else nearby. Unless you want to try to get a rental car and?—”

“No. This is fine. We’ll be fine.”

Famous last words.

“We’ll take it,” he tells the clerk.

We don’t talk in the elevator on the way up. When we reach the room, Rhys calls dibs on first shower. “For the good of the collective,” he says. “I can’t believe Joe didn’t throw me out of the car.”

I don’t tell him I love the way he smells or ask him if we can save water by showering together, though I do wonder what he’d say if I did.

Instead I offer to go throw in a load of laundry while he showers, saving myself from the (delicious) agony of picturing water sliding over golden skin.

When I come back to the room he’s dressed in his new clothes—an Oxford and a pair of gray jeans that he somehow manages to make look expensive. I try not to gawk.

The clothes don’t make the man, I think. The man makes the clothes.

He also smells delicious, like soap and shampoo and Old Spice. I thought I liked him dirty, but apparently I like him clean, too, and despite my best efforts, my body reacts to the scent, that tugging, twisting sensation deep in my lower belly.

I try to focus on something else, but it’s basically just that or my screaming feet.

“Are you limping?” he asks. “You are .”

“I’m fine.” I try not to limp as I head for the shower.

It’s a great showerhead, because Rhys chose the poshest possible airport-adjacent hotel and it’s a nice one.

I stand under the water for a long time, until I have to stop because my feet are straight-up killing me on the hard tile floor.

I change into a decently cute skirt and a striped T-shirt and step out into the room.

No Rhys.

For a brief, ridiculous moment, I’m afraid.

Afraid he got tired of chasing Paul, afraid he got tired of me , afraid he decided to go back to Rush Creek to clean up my mess or back to New York to be rid of me entirely.

Then I hear my therapist’s voice in my head: Part of your brain will probably always be afraid people will leave, but you don’t have to let it rule the way you live and make decisions.

I take a deep breath and use my big, smart forebrain to rationally assess: Fifty bucks says he went to get food.

Right then, the door beeps and chunks and Rhys appears, holding a plastic bag in one hand and a big paper bag in the other.

“I switched the laundry,” he says.

I’d forgotten about that. “Thank you.”

“Left you a note,” he says, gesturing, and I see it then, on the table: Getting food, switching laundry. —R .

It’s short and impersonal, and my face gets warm anyway, because it’s a small thing that matters, which is Rhys’s specialty.

I catch the scent of something absolutely delicious. “Is that Indian food?”

“Yup. Hope that’s okay. I know you were supposed to have samosas as one of your appetizers at the wedding, and I remember you being super excited about them. Wasn’t sure what else you’d like, so I got a bunch of stuff we can split and try.”

I wish he would stop being so nice. It’s going to kill me.

“What’s in the plastic bag?”

He reaches in and pulls out a bottle of Advil and?—

“Are those frog slippers?”

“Not just any frog slippers,” he says. The corner of his mouth turns up, a grin he can’t quite fight. “Heatable frog slippers.”

I think of him again in that conference room, dark-eyed, stern, scornful, icy.

And then I look at him with the frog slippers in his hands and that almost-grin, and I know it’s basically hopeless. It’s only a matter of time until I give in and do something I’ll regret, probably devouring his mouth like an ice-cream cone on a summer’s day.

He tugs the slippers apart, breaking the plastic tag, which he tosses into the hotel trash. Then he opens the microwave and slides the slippers in, hitting buttons until the motor hums.

This guy, who doesn’t believe in happily-ever-afters, brought me heatable frog slippers .

“Thank you.”

It’s ridiculously inadequate to the moment, so I try again. “That’s probably—no, that’s definitely—the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“Seriously?” He looks horrified, and yeah, when I think about it, that’s a sign I’ve been hanging out with the wrong people. The wrong men, at least.

But apparently my judgment regarding “right” and “wrong” men is pretty suspect.

“I think my bar’s been too low,” I say. “I’m raising it right now.”

“Don’t set it at frog slippers ,” he says. “It should be a fucking high jump. You deserve a goddamned pole vault.”

His voice is rough.

“Rhys,” I say helplessly.

He freezes, and our eyes meet. For a long time. Longer than people are supposed to stare at each other, until all the molecules in the room hold still.

No, not all of them. The molecules in my own body—those go crazy, rioting everywhere, but especially at the pulse point in my throat and the tips of my nipples and in my molten core.

Then the microwave beeps, and he looks away, clearing his throat. He opens the door, pulls out the frog slippers, and hands them over. Then he starts pulling things out of the paper takeout bag like it’s a task that requires a hundred percent of his attention.