Page 117 of Dream On, Liar

“Not your face.”

I leaned against the railing. “Then what?”

“You.”

I laughed softly. “That is possibly the least useful answer you've ever given me.”

“You're smiling.”

“I smile.”

“Not like that.”

My smile faltered. I looked away, pretending to be interested in the lights below. “I've had a good couple of weeks.”

“Mm.” She made the sound of someone who had just been handed evidence and was waiting for me to incriminate myself.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing.” She shrugged. “Where are you, by the way?”

“My hotel room?”

“And you’ve got your own private balcony?”

I sighed. “Not by choice. The hotel messed up my booking, and I had to go all ‘You wouldn’t want me telling my team about your fuck up and ask the hotel to pay a fine for a mandatory rule, etc.’ on the receptionist after they told me their new system had made a mistake. So they gave me a different—the only—room they had, than what the team had picked for me, considering I had to share the room until they checked out.”

“Proud of you.”

“You would be,” I agreed. “I did learn all my skills from you.”

“Well, not all of us have a trust to help when hotels try mistreating you.”

“You had me, ergo, you had mine. Plus, it’s not like I use my trust. It’s basically like an emergency savings account I need for the day I decide that I’ve had enough and go live somewhere in the mountains.”

She sighed, shaking her head like I didn’t get it. “I didn’t want it. I had already paid my money on it.”

“I think that’s why maybe so many college choose to go backpacking. If a hostel tries to scam them out of their way to a cheap room for the price they pay, they don’t care because often it’s not a lot.”

Samyra rolled her eyes. “I respect those who can share a room with a dozen strangers—”

“More like twenty,” I offered, sharing from the time I had gone backpacking and stayed in a hostel.

Samyra’s eyes widened. “Yeah, even more respect for those. But if I was going to spend my money travelling across France, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it that way.”

“Fair enough.”

“On that. Where in the world did you sleep last night then?” She paused. “Or yet, a better question, Who did you stay with?”

I pressed my lips together, and Samyra blinked.

“No.”

When I didn’t reply, her eyes got so big, I couldn’t help but laugh.

“You did not.”

Pressing me lips together, I just gave her a nod. “Oh yeah. I did.”