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“Don’t be nervous. I’ll be watching out for you.”
“Sure, but don’t expect the same,” I joked. “I’ll be too busy focused on not dying to watch out for anyone but me out there.”
“You’ll be great, Parker. Trust me?—”
“Whoo! Whoo!” A voice suddenly shouted from somewhere behind us, and I watched as a younger guy drove toward us on a snowmobile, an excited smile on his half-masked face. He didn’t stop until his vehicle was aligned with Nicholas’, one that we’d rented while we were in town, picking it up along with my strange feeling new threads.
A few seconds later and I saw there were two other snowmobiles right behind him, their riders wearing more appropriate gear so that I couldn’t quite see their ages or faces. The mystery of it all spiked my nervousness even more, a brief tinge of jealousy pooling in my stomach.
What if these guys were hot?
And what if that was another reason that Nicholas wanted to keep things practical between us, because deep down he already had someone pegged as his next-boyfriend-to-be. I knew it wasn’t a rational thought, but I couldn’t stop it from floating to the forefront of my brain, my anxiety only growing as the snowmobiles circled around us.
When they finally came to a standstill, the remaining mystery riders took off their masks. One of them was an older gentleman, who looked like he didn’t suffer fools for any amount of time. The other looked a lot like him but a younger version, like he was his son or nephew, a borderline carbon copy with similar features.
The first rider who’d come up to us took his mask fully off now, too, offering up another wild smile. “Nicholas! Ready to ride?”
“Ready as I always am, Tyler,” Nicholas replied, already chuckling. “Are you sure you have enough time off for this? No offense, but I feel like I haven’t seen you actually at the station in forever.”
“That’s because you haven’t been looking for me.” Tyler chuckled, too. “We all know how much you’ve been angling for that promotion for George. He’s the only guy you even talk to!”
“Don’t drag me into this.” The older guy playfully rolled his eyes before bringing his attention to me. “Hey there! You must be Parker, right?”
“Yep. That’s me.” I nodded with a smile. “And you must be, judging from context clues… George?”
“Nailed it.” George offered me a thumbs-up before he nodded toward the rider beside him. “And this is my nephew, Francis. He volunteers at the station when he’s in town and he just so happened to be in town.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Francis,” I said, trying my best not to say it through gritted teeth. I couldn’t pretend like Francis wasn’t objectively handsome, a fact that was eating away at me to no end. I looked over at Nicholas, then, wondering if he was having the same thoughts or if he was checking Francis out at that very moment…
But he didn’t seem particularly interested in him, his attention taken up by George and Tyler as they seemed to be mapping out a path for the snowmobiles.
Huh.
Maybe I didn’t need to be jealous, after all…
Or maybe I needed to be extremely jealous. Maybe the only reason Nicholas seemed so uninterested in Francis was because they’d hooked up before, maybe Francis only came back in town because he heard Nicholas was sheltering me and he was willing to do anything to get him back in his bed?—
Oh.
Oh no.
Was I losing my mind in real-time? Was this what was waiting on the other side of the butterflies? This kind of fluttering insecurity that I couldn’t seem to ground no matter how hard I tried?
Practical. Practical. Practical.
I tried to repeat the phrase to myself like a mantra, needing to remind the butterflies that Nicholas wasn’t ours, that he was never going to be ours, and it didn’t matter if he’d had something with Francis or not. We were on a specific time frame, just meant to enjoy each other’s company until it was time for me to head back to Wild Woods HQ.
Whatever we had, no matter how real things felt, they weren’t.
Because being real just wasn’t practical?—
Just then, I jumped with surprise, the sound of the other snowmobiles revving up and heading down a different side of the mountain suddenly buzzing through my frame.
“You’re coming with me,” Nicholas said as he grabbed for my hand, gingerly pulling me toward his waiting snowmobile. I sat behind him on the vehicle, waiting until he was situated in the driver’s seat. I then wrapped my arms around his waist as he revved up the engine, eager to join the rest of the group.
“You ready?” he asked, the question slightly muffled by the mask he’d put on.
“Born ready,” I replied, even as my hands shook with nerves. I buried my face against his back as the snowmobile took off down the mountain, the feeling inside me reminiscent of when planes first lift off the ground. Much like with planes, I wasn’t so much concerned with being in the air…
