Page 61 of Love in Tandem
Sophia grabbed them from the porch rail and held them out. “I didn’t want to lose them.”
He put them on, blinking a few more times. “I don’t remember falling asleep on the couch.”
“You didn’t. You fell asleep at the bottom of the staircase. But I didn’t want to just leave you there, so I started tapping your forehead nonstop the way my brother used to do to me when he would pin me down and annoy me like crazy. Well, I guess it annoyed you too. You woke up long enough to growl at me, then climb onto the couch because I told you that was the only way I was going to stop.”
Joshua stared at her for a solid minute, just blinking. “I think I need a shower,” he finally said.
“Oh, there’s no doubt about that.” He gave her a look. “What? I force-fed you french fries and tapped your forehead for at least five minutes last night. Surely that means we’ve reached a level of friendship where we can be honest and open about one another’s hygiene.”
He gave her another one of those looks. The kind that made her think he still wasn’t fully awake. Which is why she hadn’t hit him with any questions about the competition money yet.
“How about I whip up some omelets?” That seemed a safer topic than hygiene or finances.
For the first time since she’d arrived yesterday, he cracked one of his smiles. A smile that reminded her once again how cute he was, before he nodded and disappeared inside.
Sophia reached down and scratched behind D’Artagnan’s ears. “Why do I have a much better feeling about my friendship with Joshua than I do about that money?”
Day five hadn’t gone as either of them had hoped. Another surge of thunderstorms had kept Charlotte and Zach stranded at Mary Lou’s until noon. Not wanting to wear out their welcome, they’d declined her offer of lunch. They were going to need to pedal into town and stock up on more food anyway.
But as soon as they made it back on the trail, the bike chain fell off. Which turned out to be a recurring problem every mile for the next five miles. By the time Zach figured out the problem and fixed it for good, another tsunami of rain hit.
One bright spot in the day was when a woman drove past and noticed them huddled together beneath a covering of trees at a rest area, waiting out the storm. She pulled up next to them, hopped out of her car, and handed them an umbrella with a Southern-twanged “You poor babies,” then immediately drove off again.
Charlotte couldn’t help but notice the kindness of strangers on this trip. First Mary Lou, then the umbrella lady. And later, after the storms finally cleared off and the sun broke through, a man in a pickup had slowed down next to them to make sure everything was okay. Charlotte had accidentally dropped her water bottle and they’d pulled over so she could walk back to retrieve it.
“Just checking,” he’d said with a friendly wave before speeding off again.
Charlotte wasn’t going to lie. In that moment she’d been awful tempted to ask the nice stranger if they could toss their bike in the back of his truck and hitch a ride the rest of the way to Kosciusko. Or maybe even the end of the Trace.
But they’d made it that far without cheating. They couldn’t blow their chances now. Not with so much money on the line.
Which is why they’d made do stopping last night at a campsite for bikers called Witch Dance. Twenty miles was better than nothing.
Now it was day six, and thankfully the skies remained crystal clear, allowing them to cover the seventy-mile distance to a small camping area outside of Kosciusko without major incident.
So if they’d done the math right at lunch, they had four days left to finish 216 miles, which meant a little over fifty miles a day. Just like when they’d started. But for the first time, the finish line was starting to feel in sight. And Charlotte couldn’t wait any longer to power up her phone, so she could tell Sophia all about it.
Lifting her phone, Charlotte searched for a signal. “I might need to try further up this path. I’m not getting a very strong signal. Zach, did you hear me?”
“Yep. I’m gonna go take care of business.” He pecked her cheek, then brushed past, apparently in search of a bathroom. Or in his case, a decent-sized bush. That seemed to be his preference even when there were perfectly good restrooms available. Guys were so weird.
Except he’d been acting especially weird lately. Ever since the night of the storm. And not the same weird he’d been acting like before the storm. That weird had been passive and nice. This weird was more like his usual demeanor, only . . . weird.
She couldn’t put her finger on it. He acted like they were a couple, without being a couple. But they were a couple, right? A real couple? They’d yelled at each other. They’d kissed. Surely that meant they were a real couple now. A real couple who would last more than ten days.
Charlotte rubbed her sweaty forehead. Maybe she was the one being weird. Especially since she was the one who made the rule about only being a couple for the sake of the challenge. All the more reason she needed to talk to Sophia. Not because Sophia would shed any light on Charlotte’s situation, but hearing Sophia’s goofy life philosophies always made Charlotte feel better.
After moaning and groaning her way up the path—cardio might be her new thing, but that didn’t erase the fact that her body ached from head to toe—she found a clearing at the top of the trail surrounded by conifer trees. Charlotte walked to the open shelter covering a group of picnic tables and lifted her phone. Slightly better signal. Two bars. Maybe even enough to do a video call.
She tapped her screen and waited. Sophia’s face appeared, then froze. “Sophia? Can you hear me?”
Poor connection her phone informed her right before it dropped the call. “Yeah, I can see that.”
She needed to be higher. She looked around for a better option. The tables and benches were bolted to a concrete slab beneath a wooden shelter. Her eyes landed on a round metal trash can. If she could turn it over and climb up on it, then maybe . . .
But it was filled to the rim with trash. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of having to pick up the spoiled garbage afterward. The trash can was close to one of the outer support beams. She might be able to hold onto the beam and balance on the outer rim or something. It was worth a shot.
A minute later, clutching the support beam with one arm, both feet balanced on the edges of the trash can, she lifted her cell phone like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.
