Page 6 of Finding London

“Oh,” is my only response.

“I am in a hurry though and in need of a truck washin’, so if you wouldn’t mind getting started, that would be awesome.”

My mouth drops open, but I quickly close it while rolling my eyes toward Loïc, God of Assholes—drop-dead gorgeous ones but assholes nonetheless.

“Right,” I snap, turning to grab the hose.

Ugh, what a jerk.

Unadulterated fury powers me through cleaning the truck. In actuality, most of the crap comes right off with a simple spray of the hose, but the truck itself is inconsequential at this point. What is driving my rage is Loïc sitting pretty inside the cab of his truck, his fingers tapping away at his phone. He seems completely oblivious of me. Although I’m pissed, I’m still using every opportunity I can to get his attention.

Isn’t watching a half-naked chick leaning over a wet truck some sort of fantasy for guys?

Yet, every time I glance his way to see if he’s checking out my ass, I find that he’s not. He’s staring at his damn phone.

Maybe he’s gay. He has to be.

But I didn’t get that vibe from him in the least.

He’s just some Army jerk.Why do I care?

I finish spraying his truck down and stand outside his closed window. He doesn’t look up until I tap against the glass. When the window is open, a rush of urgency comes over me. I’m suddenly inundated with this longing to say something to keep him here, to make him want me.

Part of me knows that, when he drives away, I will never see him again. For reasons that escape me, that thought terrifies me. I don’t know anything about Loïc besides that he drives a big truck, he might have lived in the South at some point in his life, and he’s in some sort of military service.

But it’s not about what I know of him. It’s what I see in him. Behind his insane good looks issomething. I’m not sure what it is, but I want to find out. I need to find out. And the fact that he doesn’t seem to be interested is causing me to panic.

His right eyebrow rises. “All done?”

“Yeah, it’s five dollars,” I answer with a sigh.

There is so much I want to say to him, but none of it seems appropriate or, to be honest, sane. I shouldn’t feel this range of emotions toward a stranger, and I’m starting to wonder if the heat is getting to my head.

He hands me a twenty. “Keep the change”—his deep blues send an electrifying current through me—“for the puppies. And, London?”

My eyes expectantly shoot up to his.

“Thank you,” he says before pushing his gearshift into drive and pulling out of the parking lot.

London

“Why didn’t he want me? I’m amazing.”

—London Wright

I turn my attention from theHow I Met Your Motherrerun that I’ve been watching to face my best friend, who is sitting at the other end of the couch. She is being awfully chatty at the moment and has been talking my ear off, ruining the better half of this show with her obsessive babbling. Granted, I’ve watched this particular episode at least three times, but that’s not the point.

She must notice my less than amused look. “Listen up, girlfriend. You need to stop this little pouting session that you have going on. It’s getting annoying. As they always say,When it rains, it pours.” Paige plops a corner of her frosted Pop-Tart into her mouth.

“What exactly do you mean by that? What’s raining?” I ask, my eyebrow quirking up in question.

Paige looks at me like I have two heads, her face scrunched up in confusion. “How am I supposed to know? That’s just what they say.” She shrugs.

I chuckle. “Well, Paigey Poo, the entire point of using an expression like that is to have it make sense to the situation and, by extension, help in some way. Your sayings never fit what is going on, so there’s really no point in saying them at all.”

“I say them because I like to. It makes me sound”—she pauses, thinking of the exact word she wants to say—“smart.”

I can’t hold in my laughter, and an obnoxious roar of giggles comes from my mouth. “No, it doesn’t.” I wipe the few stray tears leaking from the corners of my eyes. “It actually has the opposite effect. You do know this, right?”

---