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That is inordinately decent of him, which makes me even madder at him. How dare he be a nice guy to someone else while brushing me off like errant lint on his jacket?
“Okay,” Anna says. “You all go off and hit the mall. I’ll write up the offer for you to sign when you get back. How’s five o’clock at my office?”
“Can you make it seven?” Jamie asks. “We have a lot of driving ahead of us.”
“Absolutely,” Anna says. “I’ll have Chris come into town for supper and we’ll meet you afterwards.”
Sammy, Jamie, and I make our way out of the closet while Anna scurries around turning off lights. I hurry out of the house so I can claim the back seat again, but Sammy isn’t having it. “You have to sit up front,” she says. “Dad says adults get first dibs on the front seat.”
Overhearing this, Jamie says, “It’s okay, Sammy. Melissa can sit in the back.”
Hewantsme to sit in the back? Well, that changes everything. “I’d be happy to sit up front. Thanks, Sammy.”
She beams while securing herself in the seat behind her dad. Meanwhile, I claim shotgun. As soon as Jamie gets in, I chastise myself for being so impetuous as to position myself so close to him for the next hour or so. What was I thinking?
“What game should we play?” Sammy wants to know. She and her dad must pass the time on road trips by playing games.
“How about Slug Bug?” Jamie suggests.
“How about I Spy?” I ask.
“I love I Spy,” Sammy says. “You start, Melissa.”
As Jamie pulls down the driveway onto the road, I look around outside before my gaze lands on Jamie. “I spy a chicken.”
Jamie bristles as Sammy says, “You can’t tell us what you see. You have to give us hints.” She clearly doesn’t understand that I was talking about her dad, which is probably for the best.
I try again. “I spy something black.”
“The road?” Sammy guesses. When I shake my head, she tries, “The writing on the traffic sign?” I shake my head again.
Jamie interjects, “The dashboard?”
“Nope,” I tell him. I don’t know how long this will go on before he figures out I’m talking about his mood.
Luckily, Sammy gets distracted and stops playing the game. “Melissa, did you figure out where you buried that time capsule with your friend?”
“I didn’t even look,” I tell her. “Maybe next time.” Although, I highly doubt there will be another time as I don’t envision hanging out at Sammy’s house. Not if her dad is around, anyway.
“Will you help me build a time capsule?” she asks me. “I want to do one for my first week in Elk Lake. Then when I’m, like, sixteen, I can look back and see how far I’ve come.”
“I’d love that,” I tell her. “We should make sure to take some pictures to add to it.”
Sammy asks Jamie, “Dad, will you take some pictures of me and Melissa for my time capsule?”
“Don’t you want me in them?” He sounds hurt.
“Yeah, sure. You’ll be in some of them. But Melissa is my first real friend here, and I want to document that.”
“Okay,” he says. He sounds downright glum about it.
The rest of the ride to the mall is filled with Sammy asking questions about Wisconsin life and me answering them. Even though Jamie says little, the energy radiating from him feels decidedly annoyed.
Once we get to the mall and park, I tell him, “Why don’t you hang out in the food court, and we’ll meet you there after making a couple of stops?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you hurt your knee and probably aren’t up for a lot of walking.”
