Page 47 of You Met Me There

He gives me another quick kiss on the lips, then he slaps my butt and skips past me up the steps to the bait shop.

Chapter 25

Natalie

“I’m never running with you again. You know that, right?” I say, licking my creamy cookies ice cream bar. It’s milky and melty—exactly what I needed.

“Bummer. Really? I was really hoping you’d like to do this daily.” When I look up at him, he’s smirking. My stomach dips.

I roll my eyes. “How are we going to get back to our car? I can’t do all that running again. That distance in the heat? Nope, not happening.”

My eyes roam as we talk and lick our ice creams. We’re sitting at a very old picnic table beside the bait shop, and an elderly couple sits at the other one sharing a small cup of Dippin' Dots. I’ve been watching them pass the cup back and forth. They’re so precious.

“I could call an Uber or something,” Luke says.

The elderly man scoops the last spoonful from his cup and feeds it to his wife.

I shake my head, turning my attention to Luke. “I don’t think they have that here.”

“Maple Lake doesn’t have Uber?” He looks up from his vanilla Drumstick. Ice cream drips down my fingers, and I dab a napkin on it, handing one to Luke too. A puddle of vanilla has accumulated on the table in front of him.

“No.” I lick my melting bar, chuckling. “I don’t think so. We’re not at the beach; we’re in the woods. Where people go fishing and buy live worms next to ice cream in a shack on the side of the road. They don’t need Uber here. Everyone has their own car, or they just stay home.”

His face is pensive as he looks out at the vacant road. “Maybe we can call Cam or Jules to come get us? Or your parents?”

“Yeah, I’ll call my dad when we’re done eating,” I sigh. “He knows where this is.”

When my ice cream is gone, I pull my cell from the pocket of my pink biker shorts. The screen is smeared with sweat. I make a face of disgust. Luke notices and, without a word, takes it from my hand, wipes it with a napkin, and hands it back.

I smile at him. That wasn’t even his sweat. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he says, already looking away like it was nothing at all. To him it wasn’t, but to me it was sweet.

I dial my dad, who picks up almost right away. After I tell him where we are and what our situation looks like, Dad says he’s on his way to get us. My parents have a little car they pull behind their RV so, thankfully, he doesn’t have to roll up with their entire home on wheels.

“How long will it be?” Luke asks when I hang up.

“Probably twenty minutes.”

“Any ideas on what we should do until then?”

I grabbed a few pamphlets from a rack in the bait shop, so I slide them across the wooden table. “We can look at these. I was thinking they’d give us some good ideas about where to take the photos for the cabin.”

There are always free flyers and mini magazines available in shops around town to guide tourists through the many opportunities Maple Lake has to offer. Luke picks one up, opening a trifold brochure.

He scans it. “Oh, this is cool. There’s skydiving close by.”

I peek over at the brochure in his hand, giving him a smile and scoffing under my breath. “Both of us would never go skydiving.”

He lifts his head. “You don’t think I would?”

“No.” I shake my head as I look through my own pamphlet, but then I wonder, would he? I glance up at him. “Would you?”

Luke shrugs, the muscles in his shoulders shifting. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t you be scared of jumping out of a plane? Falling thousands of feet with nothing to hold onto?”

“Yeah, of course I would be scared. But everything worth doing is a little scary.” He flips a page, engrossed in the photos of Maple Lake tourism. “Can’t let that keep you from having fun, right?”