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Why not?
Because it had never happened to me before, and it was terrifying. I didn’t want to consider that Sadie could be exactly what I’d always been looking for, so I pushed that thought away and walked even faster, pulling her along with me.
“Denver, you’re leading us the wrong way. Unless you’d like to take a tour of this lovely parking garage. We could play the license plate game. Look, there’s Delaware. You don’t see that one every day.”
“Unless you live in Delaware.”
“You are so contrary tonight. What has gotten into you?”
She’d gotten into me. She’d gotten past defenses I didn’t even know I had and taken over. But I could worry about that later and just enjoy tonight with her. We had a job to do, and overthinking was exhausting.
I stopped taking the lead, and let Sadie turn us in the opposite direction. With a little looking around, she found the right exit, leading us to the front of the museum. We weren’t the only early ones. Colton stood by the door of the science museum with two women who looked like they wanted to be anywhere other than in their current conversation. Fantastic. What had he done now?
“Are you guys here with GoWithFriends?” Sadie asked. She positioned herself between Colton and the two women, taking charge of the introductions like a boss. Apparently, when the alternative was letting Colton control the conversation, she lost all her fear.
I did as much damage control as possible, asking Colton about interesting things I already knew about him and drawing him away into new introductions as soon as the rest of the group trickled in.
“Do you have anyone for him?” I whispered to Sadie in passing. She’d been busy doing her analysis thing, and I knew we’d only have a small window of time to steer him towards the right people when we walked in and split up into groups of eight to ten.
“Unfortunately, yes.” She tugged me closer so we wouldn’t be overheard. “The redhead behind me in the Pokémon T-shirt. She has a beta fish named Jeffrey and she knows way too much about Harry Styles. She has historical charts of his jacket-wearing. Like how often he wears a particular one and which designer made it. Make sure Colton’s with her when we go in. That’s all I’ve got. I want to get my hands on whatever algorithm let these two in and...”
“Give it a stern talking to?”
Sadie gave me a look of long-suffering. “No, I want to fix it. Rework the input to get a better output.” She gestured to Colton, who had wandered off to pick up loose change from the gravel bed a few yards away. He had to ask a guy to move his foot to reach a dime. “He should not be the output.”
I began to sweat. Yes, BFFs were meant to help out in awkward situations, but when a dude’s priorities were loose change over meeting single women, I was at a loss.
“Ah, Sadie. Everyone needs love.” It was a pep talk more for me.
“I’m not disputing that. But GoWithFriends only works when the groups feel united. Like a magical force has brought them together.”
She wasn’t wrong. But we could discuss that with Marcel later. I went to retrieve Colton and managed to bring him over to meet the redhead with the beta fish. Her name was Ainsley. We quickly found out Colton didn’t like pets unless they were native to where you lived, and he thought Harry Styles was overrated and dressed funny. So, things were going really well.
They spent long enough arguing about it that the rest of the group oh-so-conveniently left the four of us outside and went in together. I’d never been purposely left out of anything. In fact, I usually went out of my way to make sure everyone around me felt included, so this was new and painful.
Everyone else had already paid and split up, so once inside, our group for the maze consisted of me, Sadie, Colton, Ainsley, and four tween girls who had been dropped off by their parents. The way they looked at us made me feel like I had a bullseye on my forehead, and I wasn’t sure why.
“Do you come here often?” I asked them, trying to break the ice.
They just stared.
Yeah, that came out wrong. But at least I made Sadie laugh. She turned away to cover it up, turning it into a fake cough that fooled no one.
Chapter 29 – Sadie
There were no magical forces gelling our little group together, unless you counted the looks Denver and I were throwing each other. We’d perfected nonverbal communication, and what he was saying to me right now was that this was a terrible turn of events. Chances were good we wouldn’t see the rest of the group at all. If they made after-museum plans, we’d probably miss them.
He had Colton whispering unhappily to him, and I had Ainsley glued to my side, occasionally muttering things in defense of Harry Styles. I nodded in quiet support. I had been the one to suggest her as a possible love interest for Colton, so I had only myself to blame for this mess. The four tween girls kept to themselves, pretending the rest of us didn’t exist.
After paying for the maze add-on to our entrance fee, a tour director led us up to the second floor and stopped us in front of one of the entrances to the maze. All I could see in either direction were gray cubicle walls fitted together two high like a fuzzy fortress behind him. The tour director let us take it all in for a few seconds before he launched into his explanation of how this would work.
“Here at the science center, we love to repurpose materials. You’ll notice that our maze is created out of recycled cubicle walls. They were pulled out of an office building not far from here. The maze walls are eight feet tall, so there will be no way of seeing ahead. There are four entrance points and you, my friends, are starting at number two. The goal is to reach the exit on the other side, where you’ll find our other elevators and our stairwell. From there, you can go up a level and explore our regular exhibits. You can redo the maze from a different entrance point. Or you can go back down to the first floor where we have our café and gift shop.
“Completing the maze should take you approximately thirty minutes. There will be clues along the way to help you know which way to turn. There will also be places where you might have to crawl, duck under, climb over, or unlock things. But, please, please, only do so as directed by the signs. There is no running, rough-housing, or damaging our exhibits. We will remove you without a refund if you break these rules.” He stopped to gaze at the tweens.
They stared blankly back. I saw a lot of rule-breaking in our group’s future, but hopefully they would go on ahead of us and it would be the science center’s problem. I did not come here to babysit. I glanced at Ainsley and Colton. Okay, that was mostly true.
The guide handed us each a black pager. “There are emergency exits and cameras throughout. If you need help, push the button on the pager and we’ll come get you.” He pushed open a door I hadn’t realized was there. Our entrance. “Good luck.”
