Well, no argument there.
He whistles, and the other men jump back into the van. He gets into the front seat while the driver guns the engine. The van door slams shut.
Oh, fuck me.
“Hold on, you can’t leave us out here. It’s the middle of nowhere!” I shout as I run to the van and start banging on the side.
The tires squeal, and I jump out of the way just in time to watch the van tear back onto the highway, kicking up gravel in its wake. A cloud of dust engulfs me, and I cough and wipe my eyes. When the cloud clears, the van is driving fast down the highway, getting smaller by the second.
Now we’re alone. Me, Julia, her impractical wedge sandals, and . . . yep. I hold up my phone and walk around. Zero bars on my cell. It takes all my self-control to keep from throwing the damn phone to the ground and jumping up and down on it.
“This,” I say, stalking to the side of the road, my teeth gritted, “could have been handled better.”
“My, how observant you are,” Julia deadpans. She groans and picks up her left foot. “Great, I think I’m getting a blister.”
“I’m going to have their asses in a sling,” I mutter, starting to walk toward town. At least, I hope to God this is toward town. “Litigation wise, that is.”
“Yeah, I think they could maybe charge us with assault. Not that I’m a lawyer or anything,” Julia says, slinging her purse up to her shoulder and hiking alongside me. She coughs as a cloud of dust washes over us, and she spits a piece of hair out of her mouth.
Even watching that is starting to turn me on.
I’m losing my mind.
“What now?” she asks, and we halt to let a tumbleweed pass. A goddamn tumbleweed. I swear, if this turns into some animated cartoon with comically placed buffalo skulls and vultures circling overhead . . . .
“Now we walk,” I say. Julia nods.
“Sounds about right.”
We tromp along, side by side. She puts her arm through mine as we trudge along, and I don’t say anything. As bullshit as this whole day has been, her arm in mine feels sort of nice.
14
Julia
Two miles later, my shoes are dangling in my hand, the back of my heel is rubbed raw, the rocks are hurting my feet, and I’m probably married to Nate Wexler.
Of all these things, I’m not sure which is the most uncomfortable.
“We didn’t even sign a pre-nup,” I tell him. He flinches, and I’m surprised his hand doesn’t instantly fly to his wallet. “Relax. I’ve got enough money. I don’t need to hit you up for anything.”
“Let’s focus on not dying in the desert, and afterwards I’ll walk you through all the delights of divorce litigation,” he tells me. His temples are slick with sweat, and he stumbles a little bit on a rock.
Uh oh. If he goes down, there’s no way I’ll be able to drag him. I mean, it’d be hilarious, but impossible.
Or maybe I could just stretch him out on the side of the road and give in to the passion one last time before our inevitable deserty death.
Man. Getting stranded makes you morbid and inappropriately horny.
“We might not really be married,” I say.
“We might not. But as Sherlock Holmes said, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Nate sighs.
I smile. “I should’ve pegged you for a Holmesian. Logic, aloofness, doing whatever your friends need even though you pretend like you don’t have human emotions.” I sigh playfully. “I’m surprised you don’t have a deerstalker hat. Now that would’ve been a fun role play. Sherlock Holmes was probably dynamite in bed.”
“Oh, I guarantee it,” he says, gazing right into my eyes. His gaze is hypnotic, electric, even at the most inopportune times. I think he means to be funny, but it doesn’t feel like that.
“Well, Benedict Cumberbatch is my favorite Holmes, so I’m right with you there.” I laugh, a little breathless. Though maybe the breathless part is because we’re hiking in a damn desert without water.
We’re silent for a bit, and all I can think of is, holy shit. I might be married to this guy. Mom will flip out. She’ll say it’s too fast for me to be married to someone else. Then she’ll make a Velveeta and macaroni dish, sit Nate down on the couch, and show him all the family pictures I managed to upload to iPhoto for her. She’ll tell him every single detail of every single member of our family. Hope Nate likes seeing my grandpa’s Illinois neighborhood back in the Great Depression, and the luau our Hoboken branch of the family threw in the 70s. Grass skirts, coconut bras, the works.
All kidding aside, this is pretty fucking serious.
“That was kind of a stupid move back there,” Nate says. At first I think he’s talking about himself, but then I notice he’s fixed me with a particularly irritated gaze. So I pull us to a quick stop.