Page 49 of Holiday Home 4

“You’ll see,” he said, which caused her to puff a cheek out. He didn’t speed up how quickly he finished his plate, even if he aligned more with Avril’s impatience than he let on. He was curious how she’d respond to the ploy he was about to enact, even if he couldn’t let her in on precisely what he was after.

After finishing his dinner, then intentionally delaying things by helping Anna clear the plates and get everything cleaned up in the kitchen, he found Avril waiting for him near the mounted whiteboard, twirling the lone marker between her fingers. Eyebrow arching, as if she expected he’d ultimately underwhelm her with whatever ploy he was working, she tossed it to him. After catching it, popping off the top, and using his body to shield Avril’s sight, which earned him a snort, he started with the points he owed to Victoria’s ideal destination.

Fiji’s thirty-five became forty-seven—twelve points for the small collection of pictures he’d received over the week. But then his eyes focused on the other destinations, which now seriously lagged behind Victoria’s preferred location. He had points to burn, a lot of them. And for his plan to bear fruit, he needed to make a splash tonight; there were only two more weekends of this.

So, Bora, Bora jumped from twenty-five to forty, and then Maldives rocketed up from twenty to forty. Hot on the heels of the place Victoria wanted to visit, both. But more importantly, and the main key to all this, it reduced his remaining points to spend from a hundred and thirty down to eighty-three.

Let’s hope this pays off in the way I’m hoping,Liam thought, wishing he had a little more confidence in how things would work out.

After he finally put down the marker, Avril shooed him out of the way, then examined his decisions. As a consolation prize to any possible fallout that might come from all this, he accepted a confused head tilt from the beautiful redhead. Eyebrows knitting together, she looked at his changes for a while.

“So, what’s going on here?” she eventually asked, side-eyeing him.

“I’ve decided I’ll spend all my points before it’s over,” he said. “And I figured you’d appreciate it if I kept things tight ‘til the end.”

“Yeah, I do, but why just twelve for Fiji, not ten or fifteen?” Avril said. “It’d have left you with a nice eighty or eighty-five.”

“My ways are mysterious and unknowable,” Liam said, dodging giving any real reason why. It was the best he could come up with.

Fortunately, his pronouncement caused Avril to snort and look away from the whiteboard. In this one instance, it worked out for him to be underestimated. Because if she knew the real reason behind that specific number, he was confident he would have gotten far, far more than a bemused expression.

He spent a little more time with Avril and Anna but eventually needed to get back on the road. Once again, he hated that his dorm—his whole school—was so far from their apartment. Alas, it was a problem he’d need to contend with for at least a little longer. So, after bidding both women goodbye, he collected his ice cream, which he then stuck in his trunk, not wanting his gifts transitioning into puddles along the drive, and made for Perrymont.

About an hour and a half later, not long before he escaped the highway, he pulled over and grabbed some much-neededgas for his car. Puffing crystallized air, he shivered in the cold while filling his tank. Checking his phone, he found only a single message—the one that Avril sent out to the whole group, an image of the whiteboard attached—at the end of each Sunday. Only a single message. Nothing yet from Victoria.

He fidgeted in the cold and his uncertainty until the pump clicked, ending the flow of gasoline into his car. Throughout the rest of the drive home, he never felt his phone buzz. Once back in his dorm, he chatted with Grant for a little while and offered him free rein to try the ice cream he deposited into their freezer.

Still nothing. At around nine-thirty, he finally got a text, though it was from Tess. Like was increasingly common every night, they spent a while texting back and forth. Tess taught an early Monday class, so she didn’t usually stay up too late on Sundays, so he bid her goodnight about an hour later.

And… still nothing. Liam checked his phone like a prepubescent who was waiting for any sign of life from their secret crush, and he only realized what he was doing at nearly eleven.

Ugh,he thought in self-derision.

Leaving his phone on his nightstand, he forced himself to leave some of his stress behind—the rest he conquered with a long, hot shower. Cooling down emotionally and physically afterward, he got ready for bed, then came back to a little bit of back-and-forth texting with Anna and Avril.

Tess, Anna, Avril—he ought to be counting his blessings to spend his evenings regularly chatting with them all. Even still, he couldn’t help but reintroduce some of the anxiousness he’d lost in the shower while lying in bed. How ridiculous was that? Maybe Victoria didn’t check her phone that late on Sundays. Perhaps she also had an early class on Mondays. They didn’t text frequently enough for him to know her schedule.

At eleven-twenty, his phone shook. Anticipating a reply from Anna about the sleep app she’d recently started trying out, he nearly fumbled the phone out of his hands when he saw a V at the start of the name above the message, not an A.

I see you’ve made some unorthodox additions to the board,the text read.

And there Liam was, adrenaline spiking over such a dry response. Maybe it was good that Avril wasn’t keyed into his scheme. If she could see him now, growing frantic the moment he finally got Victoria’s response, she’d have broken into hysterics.

Chill out, he told himself, forcing a blanket of calm onto his nervous excitement. This likely spared him from rapidly firing out some uninspired response. Rereading her message, keeping his cool, he decided what course he’d take.

Avril sent out that update a while ago. It’s kind of late now, isn’t it?

I only made it back home a little while ago. I was on a date.

Intentional or not, ridiculous for him to feel this way or not, her response was a dagger to his heart. He was certain he made some sort of pained expression too. But after his initial reaction, as well as responding to Anna’s newest text, he tried again to let go of his tension.

How did it go?he eventually asked.

When not on a date, Victoria turned out to be a pretty punctual texter, so he didn’t need to wait long for her reply.

It went alright. I don’t think there’ll be a second one, though.

Liam blinked, and now the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. Rather than anxiety, he felt relief. Rather than grief, he almost felt overjoyed. Ridiculous. He was simply ridiculous.

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