AllFreeNovel
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In a few more moments, my phone speaks to me. “Turn left in point two miles.”
I gape.
“Follow the nice navigation lady, Brittny.”
Lifting my hands beside the wheel, I make my fingers into L’s and discover a horrid truth. “I’m in the right lane, Ollie.”
“Get over.”
Whipping my attention behind us, I suck in a deep breath, throw my blinker on, and merge a little too quickly. The person now behind me honks, and I shrivel.
“Reasons we don’t have traffic in Faerie,” Ollie mutters. “Oh. Turn here.”
I do. “How do people travel in Faerie? How do you know how to use a phone?”
“Willoughby got me one so I could respond to messages and comments. You know that I have one. We’ve messaged. I just don’t keep it with me all the time.” He looks up off my phone. “I didn’t catch that first thing you said.”
“Travel. How do peo—”
“Right. Flying, running, swimming. Or trods.”
“What’s a trod?”
He hums. “A faerie passage or path between space and time.”
“Like Dr. Who?”
He snorts. “Like A Wrinkle in Time. By Madeleine L’Engle. Trods are the places where the world folds together between human and fae land.”
“Wasn’t that a movie?” Before Ollie can open his mouth and call me a disgrace, I gasp. “With Oprah.”
“Ma’am. The book was stellar. The movie just…what am I even supposed to do with you?”
“Love me forever and ever like the soulmate code demands?” I flutter my lashes and take the next turn the nice navigation lady prompts. “Also, look up the cast of that movie to make sure I’m remembering correctly and it did have Oprah.”
Shaking his head, he does. “You are remembering correctly. Also, even the internet agrees that this movie should not have existed.”
“I thought it was pretty.”
“Appearance without substance is ugly.”
The nice navigation lady claims that my destination is on the right—in a crude, over-crowded strip mall—so I pull in and creep among the cars while surveying the sun-bleached paint and tinted storefront windows. “…what is substance without appearance? This looks like the kind of place people go to and get murdered.” I slip cautiously into a cramped spot and shut the engine off. “But, of course, I am assuming you’re taking me somewhere nice and that the appearance of a criminal investigation set is deceiving.”
“Don’t be dramatic.” Ollie sets the cake box on the center console and pops open the passenger door. “It’s a good thing if this looks like the kind of place where the chicken feet might be fresh.”
My stomach plummets, and I stare out his open door, squeaking, “What?”
He pokes his head in and grins. “I said might. It’s a joke. Also, ‘fresh’ can mean refrigerated, not frozen. So. It is possible.”
“I’m staying here.”
“Come on, sunshine.”
I shake my head.
His eyes twinkle, and his smile provides full dimple action.
As everyone who reads my fanfiction knows, I am incredibly weak to dimples. So I force myself out of the car and into the store and up to a package of chicken feet. Which, unsurprisingly, looks exactly like chicken feet.
