Page 84 of Forgotten

“Yeah, it has,” he said. “I was looking for you when they all went to get drinks. We were doing a big celebration thing, but I didn’t want to drink since I was driving. I thought for sure you’d be part of it.”

“I just wasn’t feeling well at the moment,” I said, which was true. “Didn’t feel like more alcohol.”

“Ahh,” he said. “Still, you should have been there. It was a lot of fun. Luke is a blast when he’s the center of a party.”

“I saw,” I said, grinning. “I’m not sure any of those moves count as actual dancing, but they certainly were enthusiastic.”

He laughed, and I relaxed a little.

“I figured you didn’t eat enough today,” he said. “I didn’t see you stop to eat at all, actually.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That probably was part of it. If I drank any more, I’d have gotten really sick, so it was better that I didn’t.”

“Makes sense,” he said.

We stayed quiet for a little while as we kept driving. I heard him start to speak again a little while later, but I had begun to doze, and when he saw my eyes closed, he drifted off, not wanting to wake me up. Instead, he pushed the AC vents up so I wouldn’t get cold and turned the music down low.

I slept for what only felt like a minute, but when I woke up, I noticed we were on the highway. I looked at the clock and an hour had passed, and we were still on the road.

“Hey, where are we?”

“Almost there,” he said.

“Almost where?”

“Odessa,” he said.

“Odessa? Why are we going to Odessa?”

“Because it’s the closest place with a nice hotel,” he said. “And you deserve to be somewhere quiet with me tonight and not have to deal with a bunch of drunk Galloways.”

I smiled. “Did you think of that before or just now tonight?”

“Tonight,” he said. “But before we got in the car.”

“You are wonderful,” I said. “You know that?”

“I’m all right,” he joked. “Here we go.”

The hotel he pulled into was the nicest one in Odessa, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. It was a chain, and when we pulled in, I could have recited from memory what the breakfast menu was going to be in the morning. And by breakfast menu, it mostly meant food that no one had to cook and a waffle iron so the guests could cook for themselves.

Jesse got out and went inside to check in, getting our key card and then coming back out. He parked along the side of the hotel, and we went in, riding the elevator to the top floor. It turned out he had sprung for a suite, and I smiled as I opened the door to find it was laid out much like the one he had been in at the Bethel in Oklahoma. Just much, much smaller.

He ducked into the bathroom, and I could hear him changing and decided I couldn’t wait anymore. I knew he thought something was wrong, and I wanted that off his mind. He deserved to know, probably as soon as I knew, but that moment had passed earlier today.

Now was as good as I could do.

“All right,” he said, coming out of the bathroom. “I brought a bottle of whiskey, but if you want food first, we can order pizza. There’s a place just down the street, so I can even go pick it up and it’ll be faster than having it delivered.”

“Pizza is fine, but I don’t want to drink,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Is something wrong? I mean, it’s fine if you don’t want to drink, but you’re just acting a little… weird.”

“Come here,” I said.

He crossed the room, closing the space between us, and I took his hand.

“I can’t drink,” I said. “I have a reason.”

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