Page 6 of The Holiday Disaster

“What the heck are you doing!” I twisted out of his reach and smacked his hand away. He stood there, the smirk still pasted on his annoyingly handsome face.

“Chill out. I’m just checking out your so-called tan.” He raised his hands up, palms facing me in a surrender gesture. I pulled my coat tighter around myself and hugged my belly for good measure in case he tried to pull another stunt like that again.

“Well, don’t. How tan I am is none of your business,” I snapped at him, but all that earned me was another chuckle.

“You look like a kitten when you’re all worked up like that,” he said. I turned back to the front of the line, ignoring his remarks lest I gave in to the urge of punching him in the face to wipe that smirk off.

The line moved forward but still not as fast as I would have liked. I impatiently tapped my foot as I pulled up my family’s chat thread to message them about the situation. Replies came in not even a few seconds later.

Mom: Are you okay??

Dad: ?

Elliott: Need me to call them and see what’s going on?

Dad: ^

I chuckled at Dad’s habit of using symbols instead of words in his texts. As he put it, his big thumbs made typing on the small-ass screen almost impossible. We had all learned his texting lingo, and I knew he liked using the caret symbol to mean that he agreed with the previous text.

Me: It’s fine. In line now with Kingsley to find out. They said they’ll cover our room and meals.

Elliott: Kingsley Sharp?

I replied in affirmative and waited for a reply, but there was none. That was weird since they had all been responding almost instantaneously before. I checked my signal and confirmed that I still had two bars. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that the reply came.

Mom: That’s great!! He’ll take care of you. Call us when you find out more. Love you!!

Dad: 3

Now that was weird. Not the number three since Dad always used that instead of the heart emoji like a normal person, but it wasn’t like Mom to be so calm about this. She would usually blow up my phone until she had asked all of her million and one questions, even if I didn’t have answers to any of them.

Kingsley had always had a good relationship with my parents. But for her to leave her little baby—a.k.a. me—in the hands of someone else and be done with it, that wasn’t like her at all.

My brain was too tired to think anymore. So instead, I scrolled social media to distract me, mainly from the curiosity of why the annoying man behind me had gone silent and wasn’t provoking me anymore. And I especially need distracting from the fact that I kinda missed his teasing.

SIX

ETHAN

It was another forty-five minutes before we were in the back seat of the taxi and on our way to the hotel. Kingsley had insisted on staying at the same hotel as me. I was relieved when he had the flight attendant put our names as traveling together in their system, but I would never voice that thought out loud.

Our taxi driver was a slim man in his twenties who had introduced himself as Austin before going silent as he focused on the road. I looked around as Austin drove the taxi out of the airport. The snow had stopped falling but small piles of it could still be seen covering the ground. I asked Austin how long it would take to get to the hotel that the airline had called to confirm regarding vacancies, and he replied that it would take longer than expected with the road conditions, so probably about an hour.

All I could do was lean back into the seat and pray that nothing happened during our ride to our destination. I peeked to my right and found Kingsley texting on his phone. He didn’t seem keen on making conversation, which I was thankful for. I wasn’t in the mood to fight him right now.

In the past, it always felt like his words were meant as a jab at me. He would comment about how my clothes were too tight or my hairstyle didn’t suit my babyface or question why I hung out with Valerie so much instead of other boys. And through those comments, I could sense that he truly disliked me. I learned to stay out of his way the best I could since if he couldn’t see me to find fault, his comments wouldn’t stab at my heart anymore.

I faced the window to watch the scenery pass outside. There wasn’t much of anything around these parts besides the snow covered mountains and roads. The sun was quickly setting, and I could only think of how dangerous it would be to drive in the snow at night. The roads were already slippery, and we didn’t need the low visibility of the night added in.

Thirty minutes into the drive, light sprinkles of snow started up again. “Looks like it’s going to storm again tonight,” Austin said to no one in particular. He’d stayed quiet through most of the drive, occasionally muttering something under his breath, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist otherwise.

The thought of it storming when the road conditions were already so poor had my brain conjuring up a million things that could go wrong on this drive. My first instinct was to turn to Kingsley, and I found myself looking for some sort of comfort from him. Which was stupid since if anything, all he would do is get me worked up even more, and not in the good way.

His head was leaning against the window as he let out soft snores. The snoring should have been a turn off, but much to my annoyance, it made him even more endearing.

I forced my eyes off him and back out the window. It had gotten darker, and the flurries had turned into a denser snowfall. My fists tightened into white knuckle grips as our car swayed against the harsh winds.

We continued pushing closer to our destination, the outside wind droning louder in my ears that only worked to raise my anxiety. The car drove a few more minutes when a pop loud enough to be heard through the blowing winds rocked our vehicle.

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