Page 35 of The Fast Lane
His gaze moved between my eyes and dropped to my mouth. I swallowed, my breath becoming shallow. If he leaned down and I rose on my tippy-toes, we’d meet in the middle.
Stop it, Ramos. Love Sabbatical, remember.
With a shake of his head, he dropped his hands and stepped back. “You want the bathroom first?”
“You go ahead.” Disappointment reared its head. I plopped in his seat.
He hesitated, then plunked the laptop off the table and stuffed it into his messenger bag.
“Oookay. That wasn’t suspicious.”
“What?”
“What kind of project are you working on?”
He licked his bottom lip and, not gonna lie, I watched. I was impossible. “Something for work.”
“At the paper? Like the same sport article about all the sports you were talking about earlier?”
He shrugged, a definite non-answer if there ever was one.
“Can I read it?”
With a sigh, he set his hands on his hips. “What are the chances you’ll forget about this project?”
I pretended to think about it for a millisecond. “Zero. The chances are zero.”
“That’s what I thought.” He skirted around me and headed for the bathroom without another word.
“You still do that?” Theo asked from his bed where he’d been reading for the last fifteen minutes.
I held up my current journal. Leatherbound with scrollwork stamped into it, it had been a gift from Mom on my last birthday. Mom had given me my first journal on my eighth birthday and every birthday since.
“It’s habit now.” Every night before bed, I wrote something. Some days, there wasn’t much to say. One entire entry last week read, “I’m here.”
Today’s entry was much, much longer.
He laid his book on his lap. “What do you write about?”
“Everything and nothing.” I made an exaggerated period, closed the journal, and set it on the nightstand.
“I remember you doing it as a kid.”
“Oh, yeah, do you also remember the time you boys found my journals and decided to read them?” I asked in a most salty voice and stretched out on the bed.
I’d been ten years old and mortified. Back then, my deepest, darkest thoughts ran more toward how much I hated them all because they were so mean. Except Theo. He wasn’t mean to me.
He grinned sheepishly. “It was Abe’s idea.”
“Shocking.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I thought you had really nice handwriting.”
I threw a pillow at his head. “Go to sleep.”
With a laugh, he snapped off the lamp. “I did like reading your list of the reasons boys are the worst. ‘Boys are smelly. Boys think farts are funny. Boys think girls can’t do the same things boys can do.’”
“I still stand by that.” I turned over so I was facing him. The cabin was pitch-black, but I could barely make out the faint lines of his body under the covers. “I can’t believe you remember that.”