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Chapter Nineteen
Simon
The next day, we arrive in Seattle to a steady downpour. No surprise there, but what does surprise me is the easy way Alice and I have conversed on the trip. There’s no weirdness, like I thought there would be after what I told her yesterday. I can still recall the way her face dropped as I moved away from her. I know she wanted me to kiss her, to continue touching her, and damn, did I want to. But someone has to be the one thinking clearly and rationally in this situation. And since that’s my forte—clear and rational thinking at home and at work—I chose to end the display.
I can still feel her soft skin underneath my fingertips, and I stretch out my hand and then clench it into a fist, trying to erase the memory.
“Everything okay?” Alice asks, glancing over at me as we sit in the backseat of a cab.
She has been watching the scenery flash by, and I didn’t think she was paying attention to me.
“Yeah, I’m great. Where are we staying again?” I try to divert the topic away from me. I’m not okay. My plan isn’t working out the way I thought it would, and it doesn’t help that I’m on a weekend getaway with the object of my lust right now.
“The Paramount, I believe,” she says as she leans down to grab a folder from her large purse.
The purse is yellow with a bow on either end, and it matches the bright blue dress she’s wearing, which has lemons plastered across it. She kind of reminds me of the books Vicky used to read to Ivy about the schoolteacher who took her students on crazy field trips. On Alice, it’s perfect, and I think it would be even more perfect on the floor.
No. Stop.
I shake my head.
“Yep, right here. We have a suite at The Paramount, and it says it’s within walking distance of lots of sights. But with this weather, I don’t know how much we want to be walking around,” Alice says, scrunching her nose as she peers out the window again. She looks back at me, smiling. “I don’t mind getting a little wet though.”
She looks back down at the folder in her lap, completely oblivious to what she just said and the thoughts it conjured in my mind. She’s really not helping me think clearly and rationally. Not at all.
“What do you want to do in Seattle?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I was younger when I came here. Did they include a list of the sights we could see?” I scoot over to see the papers more clearly and get a whiff of Alice’s hair. It smells like honeysuckle, and I have the urge to plant my nose directly in it and take a deep breath. That would be weird though, wouldn’t it?
“This is the list they gave us.”
She hands me the crisp paper. I let my fingers brush over hers for a second as I take it, and I don’t miss the goose bumps that trail up her arm at the contact. I peruse it, seeing the normal Seattle attractions on it. The Space Needle, several museums, Pike Place Market, and some parks.
“We are supposed to film a personal video for the show to use, so maybe we should do that now?” she says, holding up the camera that was given to us by the show for personal filming.
“Uh, yeah. What are we supposed to say?”
“I have no idea. I was going to turn it on and hope my brain came up with something on the fly,” she says with a small laugh as her lips stretch into a grin. It’s infectious, causing me to grin back at her before I know what I’m doing.
I know I’m sending very mixed messages to her, and I hate it. But I’m confused as hell right now myself. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be feeling.
“Sounds like a solid plan. Let’s do it.”
Alice moves closer to me. This time, our thighs are touching as she turns the camera on and positions the screen, so we can see ourselves.
“Let’s get a good angle here,” she says, adjusting. “No one wants to see up our noses. Okay, annnnd … we are live.” She points a finger at me.
I shake my head.
She mouths, Go. Speak.
I mouth, You said you were going to start talking, and she shakes her head.
“We made it to Seattle,” I say, staring into the tiny lens of the camera, feeling like an idiot. “It’s raining but warm, and we should be at the hotel soon. We had a pretty smooth flight and plan to visit some of the outside attractions once the weather clears.”
Alice is beaming next to me the entire time. There’s a beat of silence once I stop talking, and I nudge her side. You can see her squirm on the screen, and it makes me smile wider.
“Yep, what he said,” she says and quickly hits the button to stop recording. Then, she looks at me with wide eyes. “I totally froze.”
