Page 39 of Fun at Parties
“What’s he up to now?” I wish he didn’t feel guilty. But I’ve always admired how much he cares about Blake, even though they’re so different. Even now, there’s pride in his voice as he tells me about his brother’s job and thecomputer he built himself and the costume he made for the video game convention he’s going to in the fall.
It makes my stomach feel funny, all light and bubbly, like it might shimmy free and float right out of my body.
A big sign comes up on the right. “ ‘Welcome to Utah,’ ” I read, relieved to have a distraction from the feeling in my gut, which is freaking me out a little.
After we stop for gas and granola bars outside Cedar City, Nate takes the wheel. There’s no detective work to do, since Livvie told us when and where to show up for the party, and we booked the Airbnb last night.
“Tell me about the camp,” I ask as we merge back onto the highway.
Nate hesitates. “There’s not much to tell.”
“I have to know everything if I’m going to help you get Logan onboard. You haven’t even told me where it is. On the Westside? In the Valley?”
He shakes his head. “Not in the car. I have pictures and…it’ll be better to show you when we get to Denver.”
I have a million questions, but I hold my tongue. Does he really think Logan is going to be a good business partner? Is it going to be a swim camp only with no frills, or more like First Cove, with a zip line and big open fields for sports and a stage for drama and dance? Most important, when did he become assertive enough to do this? I’m glad he did, but I wish I hadn’t missed out on seeing it happen.
The thing is, he’s notactingthat assertive about it. We’ve been traveling together for five days, including almost twenty hours one-on-one in the car, and he hasn’t given me more than crumbs of information about hisplans. And I haven’t forgotten how ready he was to give up in Vegas yesterday. I’m not sure he fully believes he deserves to succeed.
He does, though. Nate works hard, and he loves his job. He’d be great at running a camp because he’s a thoughtful, observant person. He’s also loyal and funny in a non-showy way and—
Oh, no. That bubbly feeling in my stomach? I think it’s affection. And I can’t deny I’m attracted to him after what happened in his hotel room. Affection plus attraction is a bad combination with everything else I’m dealing with right now.
I can’t contemplate what it means if he feels it too.
To keep my mind occupied with safer subjects, I look up the sights we could be seeing if we weren’t rushing to Denver. Zion National Park, where I’d ride horses through the ponderosa pines and hike the Narrows (with proper footwear and anti-chafing gel), wading through the river with the canyon rising up on either side of me. The Fremont petroglyphs and dinosaur footprints at Parowan Gap, history etched into stone. Bryce Canyon’s hoodoos, the oddly shaped rock formations that look like columns whittled by a drunk alien. Stargazing in some of the darkest spots in the country.
Who knows what kind of inspiration I’m missing out on by bypassing all these places. “What if” is an unproductive line of thinking, one I wouldn’t normally indulge. I’d rather focus on what I have instead of what I don’t, but I have moments of weakness just like anyone else.
How about the ole silver lining? That usually works. Mom programmed it into me, starting when I wasfourteen, and she made me read my gratitude journal entries out loud to her every Sunday.
Well, the silver lining here is that I have plenty of time to piece together my “day in the life” video. Shots of the Strip in the dark this morning, me grabbing coffee before I met up with Nate, rest stop snacks and views of the horizon from the passenger seat.
I’ve been trying to be sneaky, not letting him see what I’m doing, because I know he’ll roll his eyes. I only ask for help once, when we stop at an overlook to stretch our legs and he films my silhouette from the back, facing the sweeping red scenery and the distant mountains. A strong woman in leggings contemplating the earth’s beauty and my own contentment with life, or something. My stomach churns at how phony it feels, how very Jolee, but I push it aside.
Anyway, I shouldn’t care what Nate thinks. It’s not like anything real is happening between us. The moment in his hotel room was a blip, a consequence of how stressed I’ve been, and how badly I need an outlet for it. And any affection I feel for him is strictly platonic. It has to be.
Dangerous, unidentifiable emotions snake through me, all of them in shades of red. My brain can’t cope, so it turns off. I drift into a fitful sleep an hour after we get on I-70, the road that will take us east to Denver. Multiple times I wake with a jolt completely unprompted.
“Are you okay?” he asks, after the millionth time I snap upright.
“I can’t get comfortable.”
But this is different from the other times I woke up.This time, the car is decelerating. I blink away the grogginess and realize we’re exiting the interstate. “Do we need gas again?”
He shifts his hands on the steering wheel. A fidgety, uncertain energy radiates off him. “I thought we could go to Arches. Well, near it. We can’t go into the park, but there are a couple arches we can see nearby. If we don’t hang around too long, we should be able to get to the party on time.”
“You want to see Arches?” It comes out more accusatory than I intended.
“Yes.” His voice wavers.
Bullshit. He hasn’t expressed any interest in this kind of stuff, and we don’t have unlimited time. He knowsI’dlike to see Arches. I challenge him with a look.
“I saw you looking at pictures of national parks on your phone,” he confesses. “When we stopped for a bathroom break a while back, I looked it up to see if we could make it work.”
See? Thoughtful. He’s thoughtful, and he has a beautiful face, and I want to climb over the console and kiss him, but I can’t.
“No,” I insist, ignoring the cannon shooting tiny confetti hearts inside my chest. “We’d be cutting it too close. Get back on the freeway.”
