Page 81 of Baby, It's You
“Their body language seemed really into each other, though,” I say.
“Theirs, orhers?” Eddie responds.
Wes adds, “Savannah has always been obsessed with him. Hunter has never liked her back. He’s just polite to her.”
I think back to the moments I saw them together, her brushing a hair away from his face, him getting up and heading to the bathroom shortly after. Maybe I assumed he was into her, but I never saw his expression at the table. Maybe he actually stepped away because he was uncomfortable. His smile when I saw his face could’ve been professional, not genuine. I’m an idiot.
“So he doesn’t have a girlfriend?” I ask quickly.
“No,” Wes snorts, “he’s still madly in love with you.”
“Holy shit,” I say under my breath.
This changes everything. I want to run to him; I want to shout it from the rooftops that I love him. I want to profess my love in some grand gesture. My hands shake at my sides and I hug myself.
“He still loves me,” I say to myself.
“Yup.” Eddie laughs.
“I want to go see him, right now,” I tell them.
“Well, he’s out of town till tomorrow for a wedding he’s filming.”
That's when I get an idea. I don’t want to wait another second to tell him how I feel about him and a simple phone call won't suffice after everything we have been through.
“Eddie, you’re really good at tech stuff, right?” I ask.
“Uh, yes. Why?”
“I’m going to need your help.”
Chapter 58
Hunter
I’m currently driving to my hotel room after filming the McClaine's wedding at a small country club in a rural area of Tennessee, when I hear my phone start to blow up with notifications from the passenger seat.What the hell?I pick it up for a second and see notifications for comments that say stuff like “Omg!” or “This is amazing.” I toss my phone back into the seat, assuming one of the skate videos I filmed a while ago is going viral right now. Sometimes they will randomly get a lot of interest, even years later.
It’s not until I drive for twenty more minutes, my phone lighting up the whole ride, that I start to get confused. I pull off the dirt road into the parking lot of the small hotel I’ve been staying at this weekend and put my truck in park. I’m exhausted from filming the entire day, start to finish, of another wedding, but I am also happy and fulfilled by how my time was spent.
I push wild strands of my hair out of my face. It’s grown almost to my shoulders in the past year, and I have thought about cutting it off many times, but then I hear the nicknameCurlsin my head and I can’t do it. Anything to keep her in my mind.
My phone screen flashes for the millionth time, and I let out an exasperated noise as I pick it up again. I swipe open my home screen and open the YouTube app to see hundreds of notifications pouring in.I wonder which video it was, I think to myself as I open the tab to read the recent comments.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Wait, what?
“I want a love like this.”
I keep scrolling to see multiple people have written things with a similar sentiment. I click on one of the comments and it takes me to the video.
The video loads slowly on my screen; the service isn't great out here and I curse silently at the fact that I don’t recognize the title, “It’s You.” It shows it was uploaded just thirty minutes ago. I wonder if I’m hacked when the screen finally loads.
My breath is taken away as the song “Baby It’s You” by Smith starts to play and I’m instantly transported back to that moment with Olive in my truck, with her singing the lyrics on our ride to Onilley Lake. The number of times that I’ve listened to this song since losing her, relating deeply to the lyrics, makes me feel stunned in this moment.
Olive appears on the screen suddenly and my heart races seeing her. It looks like she’s standing outside somewhere, against a wall. She looks stunning, her eyes bright and lively. She looks healthy and carefree, like she has put on some needed weight following the stress of last year. I reach out and run my finger across her face, while on the screen she begins to speak.
“Hi! Some of you may recognize me from a video series Hunter did last year. Crazy to say that was an entire year ago, but it was. I own the bar now, which is great, uhm, so Whiskey Jane’s lives on!” She pauses and looks nervous; it seems like someone encourages her from behind the camera to keep going and she starts to talk again.
