An uneasy knot forms in my stomach. This is going to suck. There’s no easy way to break it to her that Kennedy is here. She’d be upset under normal circumstances, but now it’s even worse. She had to sleep in an old cabin last night. She’s been lost all alone and stuck without me.
I can’t sit here and watch for her car from the fourth floor of the hotel. I need to be down there to see her the second she arrives.
I grab a hotel key card from the coffee table next to Dakota. “Where you going?” she asks.
“Downstairs to wait for Ella.”
She gives me a look. “Good luck.”
Out in the lobby, I see the free popcorn machine my parents were raving about. There’s also a nacho stand and a candy bar. Ella will love this. She’s a huge fan of nachos. But even though I want this to solve my problem, I know that saying, “Babe, my ex is here but guess what? There’s nachos!” won’t solve this problem.
I go outside and wait for her. I don’t care how long it takes. I need to be here the moment she arrives so I can hug her tightly and tell her how much I love her and then prepare her to hear the news about Kennedy.
I take a deep breath and try to picture it all in my mind. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe she’ll laugh and say I did the right thing, not leaving Kennedy stranded without a car. We’ll make some snarky jokes about my ex and then it will all be fine. The hurricane should be over in another 2 days and then we can go back home. This will all be over soon, and hopefully our houses are okay back at home, and then we’ll go back to normal life. I’ll help Ella move into her dorm and I’ll focus on my T-shirt business and things will be fine.
I stand here for half an hour, repeating these thoughts in my mind. I’m feeling pretty good about it all when a voice interrupts my thoughts.
“Hey there,” Kennedy says.
I jump. My legs feel sore, probably from standing tense in this same spot for so long. I take my eyes off the road to look at her. “What are you doing here?”
She runs her fingers down my arm. “Just thought I’d see what you’re up to.”
I shrug her hand off me. “Don’t. Go back to the hotel room.”
“It’s boring up there,” she says, rolling her eyes to the sky. She reaches for my arm again. “I’d way rather be here with you. You’re my hero, you know. You saved me.”
I take a step backward to put some distance between us. “I’m not a hero. I just took pity on you. Seriously, you need to go.”
She pouts her lower lip. “Why are you being so mean to me?”
“I’m not being mean to you,” I snap. “I’m asking you to freaking leave so my girlfriend doesn’t get pissed when she arrives and sees you standing here trying to put your slut hands all over me.”’
Okay,thatwas mean. Kennedy recoils. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll leave.”
Pigs must be flying right now, because she actually does leave. She turns on her heel and stalks off and I watch her go back inside the hotel before I turn back around to watch for Ella’s car. Good. Maybe she finally realized that the world doesn’t revolve around her, no matter how much she acts like it does.
I wait another fifteen minutes, wondering what Ella’s definition ofsoonmeans. I try calling her, but it goes to voicemail. I send out another text, and then call again, but she still doesn’t answer.
Blackwell isn’t that far away and my traffic app says the roads from there to here are perfectly clear.
I wonder what’s taking her so long?
