Page 58 of The Fast Lane
Yet, here was twenty-seven-year-old Ali, and I wasn’t sure I’d learned my lesson. Why did my heart always go back to Theo?
This day had been so weird. Had it only been this morning we’d woken with a naked man walking his dog outside our cabin?
“We’re friends,” he said carefully.
“And I don’t want to mess that up.” I turned to him, a note of pleading in my voice, remembering the painful three years in which we barely said two words to each other. “Please, let’s forget about it, pretend it didn’t happen, so we can go on as before.”
After a moment, he nodded. “It’s been a long day.”
“Impossibly long.”
“And tomorrow will be longer.”
Tomorrow, I would see Abe. “Extremely impossibly long.”
“No room for complications.”
I rose up on an elbow. “Am I a complication?”
A corner of his mouth curled. My eyes drifted to the tiny white scar by his lip. My fingers itched to touch it. Or maybe kiss it.
No, no, no, Ramos.
With a shrug, he stretched out next to me. It took all my willpower not to curl into his side and smell the comforting mix of citrus and soap that always lingered on him.
“Kinda.”
“Excuse me, I’ll have you know I’m a simple girl with simple needs.”
“You are the least simple girl I know.” A smile tugged at his mouth. “Never change.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Note to self:
Do not even think the words “Theo” and “shower” in the same sentence.
Sunday, seven days until the wedding
A small town in Colorado
Next morning, I woke up full of nervous energy. I was dressed, packed, and ready to go by seven. I watched an episode of Forensic Files, then called Mom before she called me. She and Dad had left early that morning and planned on making it mostly out of Texas that day. She drilled me on the usual—health check, med check, Mack check.
“Did you get a chance to watch the video I sent you?” she asked. “The one with my candles?”
I hadn’t even opened it. “Oh, um…”
“You will not believe all the interest I’m getting. Dad says I’m internet-famous,” she said with no small amount of pride in her voice.
“Internet-famous, that’s what I told her,” Dad yelled in the background. “I’m married to a celebrity.”
I snorted. I loved them but, just last month, I’d had to show my dad how to download an app on his phone. Again. Internet-famous to them was probably one stranger commenting on something they posted.
“I promise I’ll check it out,” I said and pressed my lips together. I had this desperate need to tell her about seeing Abe. But I knew I couldn’t. For a lot of reasons. If he refused to go, the disappointment would crush her.
When Abe left, Mom had been overcome with a kind of grief. Although she’d never said it out loud, it was evident her heart had broken a little the day he left. I’d find her hiding in the pantry, crying. Or begging off a family movie night to curl up in bed. If possible, her incessant worry over me got worse. I think part of her reasoned that she’d lost one child; she would not lose another.
“Hey, I love you,” I said softly.