When I step into the shower, the bathroom is still hot with steam and the scent of Adam’s body wash is still permeating the air. It smells like midnight—like loud music, hazy vision, and laser lights. Showering in here with him all around me feels kind of strange and . . . intimate. Brady’s body wash never flooded the room like Adam’s does.
I wash up quickly and dress in red leggings, a long black top, and my black sandals. Then I put on a little makeup—not too much—before sliding my glasses on. I’m pulling my wet hair up into a messy bun when I walk from the bathroom and spot Adam and Shawn sitting at one of the bench-seat tables. Shawn is sipping a coffee, scrolling through his phone, and Adam is scribbling in a pocket-sized notebook that I’ve seen him jotting in a few times throughout the trip. When he hears me, his eyes lift and he smiles. “That was not quick.”
“That was so quick!” I argue.
“I don’t know,” Shawn teases. “Adam is kind of an authority on quick.”
Adam doesn’t miss a beat. “Did your mom tell you that?”
“Oooh!” I say, sitting down next to Adam and smiling widely at Shawn, who laughs and shakes his head at us as he goes back to scrolling through his phone.
I grab our French textbook from the table and slide it in front of me, asking Adam if he remembers what page we stopped on, but then his hand is commandeering the book and pulling it back his way. “Not here,” he says.
“Huh?”
“We’re going out.”
O . . . kay. “Where to?”
Adam stands up, looking down at me. “Not sure yet.” He starts walking toward the door to the bus, and I glance at Shawn, who is texting with one hand and sipping his coffee with the other. His short black hair is a mess, and it looks like he slept in the same clothes he wore last night and hasn’t bothered changing into clean ones yet.
“You coming?” I ask him.
He looks from me to Adam and shakes his head. “Nope.” When his eyes fall back to me, he gives me a wink that Adam doesn’t see, and I know it was meant for Peach. With a quirky grin on his face, he tells me to have fun, and then he goes back to doing whatever it is he’s doing.
I follow Adam off the bus and to his car. “So seriously, where are we going?”
He shrugs. “I seriously don’t know.”
I climb into the passenger seat a second before the engine roars to life. Adam’s arm stretches behind my headrest as he backs out of the spot, and then we’re pulling onto the main drag through town. “How are we supposed to get where we’re going if you have no idea where you want to go?”
He chuckles and randomly turns right. “We’ll manage. Stop worrying.”
“Well, what are we trying to find?”
“Some place to have breakfast. Some place . . . Frenchy.”
I have to laugh at that. “Frenchy?”
Adam grins at me, the strong breeze blowing strands of hair across his face. “Yeah. I need some inspiration if we’re going to knock that many chapters out.”
I spot a bistro up the street to our left and point it out. “What about that place?” It’s a small brick building with a green-and-white striped awning and two tiny tables set up out front.
Adam’s gaze travels the direction of my finger, and then he shakes his head. “That looks Italian.” He turns left.
“French places probably aren’t even open this early.”
“Then we’re going to be driving a long time.” He turns up the radio just loud enough so we can hear it, not bothering to plug his phone in, and starts scanning through the stations.
Since it doesn’t look or sound like he’s joking, I open our textbook and start quizzing him as we drive. By the time he pulls into a parking lot and coasts into an open spot, we’re nearly finished with the first chapter.
I look up and immediately start laughing. “IHOP?”
Adam leans back in the seat. “Do they or do they not have French toast?”
I laugh and shake my head. “They have the best French toast ever.”
“Then it’s settled.” He shuts the car off, and we both get out.
Inside, he orders two different kinds of French toast and a crepe for good measure. I stick to my standard strawberry pancakes.
“Do you know where we could have gone instead?” I ask. When he waits for my answer, I tease, “McDonald’s. We could’ve gotten French fries.”
“Don’t be ridiculous . . . Everyone knows McDonald’s doesn’t start serving fries ’til ten thirty.” He smirks at me, and I laugh.
“You’re kinda crazy,” I tell him with a smile.
“Says the girl who came along on a three-day road trip with ten guys she’d never even met before.”
It isn’t exactly true, but the truth is even crazier. “Touché.”
And thus begins our French lesson. I open the textbook and do a little review before saying, “Okay. We need to practice some of the written stuff . . . aaand we forgot to bring a notebook.”
“No, we didn’t.” Adam wiggles the miniature notebook that I saw him writing in this morning out of his back pocket.
“That is your notebook?”
He nods and sips a coffee our server brought earlier. It’s something French vanilla, and I highly suspect—no, I know that he ordered it just because it had “French” in the name.
“You use that for class?” I ask.