Page 11

“All right. Hop in,” I say, popping open the bed of the truck and swinging in my plaid suitcase with some muscle (okay, fine, a lot of muscle, but I want to make a point after my little slip). A flurry of snow puffs into the air as the suitcase lands with a thud, and a fairly loud scrape follows as I push the whole thing deeper inside the truck bed. The handle falls off again.

I toss my black one in after it.

All the while, he eyes the situation warily. I believe this is the first moment he’s seriously reconsidering his decision.

I look at his suitcase. It’s pretty much identical to my black one. Shinier, sure, with no duct tape patch and with some foreign fancy logo of a word I can’t say out loud with confidence, but otherwise identical. I wave a hand at the truck bed, motioning for him to move along.

He doesn’t move.

“It can’t fit between your knees,” I say, answering the silent question in his gaze toward the cab.

“I know,” he says after a moment. But he’s still not quite moving yet. He gives a single glance back at the airport terminal, as though halfway planning to chase after an Uber after all.

Which, I suppose, wouldn’t be the worst way to end this interaction.

Do I get a point if I’m rejected after the fact? I think that’s only fair. After all, I did ask him a ridiculous question trying to earn a rejection. Delayed rejections are still rejections.

Is there an FAQ section covering this at the end of the book?

While I’m mulling over the ethics of giving myself a rejection point if he were to back out now, I comment, partly because I can’t help pointing out the irony of how similar our bags are, “If it helps to know, it looks like your suitcase can be replaced with an identical one for twenty dollars at TJ Maxx.”

This, apparently, was not the right thing to say.

A little dimple forms between his brows, and his green eyes shift to frowning at me. But he doesn’t respond, and a moment later, all thoughts of fleeting taxis are forgotten and our (practically) identical suitcases are side by side on a coat of snow.

He struggles to get the passenger’s door open before finally giving in. “Let me guess. The handle’s tricky?”

“More like nonworking. You’re going to have to just . . . scoot in. Here.”

If the whole suitcase conversation was a moment, the phrase “scoot in” is the start of another one. His body goes rigid as he walks slowly around to the driver’s side of the truck, looking suspiciously at the dented bumper along the way, and stops beside me. I might as well have told him to dive into a black cave full of the unknown.

Man. This guy is uptight.

And then it occurs to me that maybe I can continue making the most of the moment. This guy is clearly going to have trouble with me offering him chip dip, let alone asking him anything truly ridiculous. The rejections should come flying in like rainwater through an open kitchen window. I could have five by the time I drop him off.

I could be halfway to victory.

Starting now.

“You know,” I say, taking a deep breath. You got this, Chloe. “Before we get in, I think this would be a fitting time to do . . . a snow da-song.”

I’m just going to say this up front. Coming up with ideas in a flash that are, and I cannot emphasize this enough, completely and utterly contrary to anything you would say under normal circumstances is challenging. I didn’t even know what was going to pop out of my mouth. So it makes sense, in this case, that both James and I look equal parts surprised by my comment.

His eyes narrow. “You want to do a . . . snow . . . da-song.”

“A snow song. Dance.” I flail. “It’s a song and dance. I used to do these as a kid when the first snow happened, and I think it would be fun to do it now. Just to, you know, celebrate. Snow.”

All facts.

Granted, I was eight the last time I did a song and dance to celebrate snow. But here we are.

I can see it in his eyes. Rejection, here we come.

But after yet another painfully long series of pauses, during which he looks so uncomfortable that I halfway anticipate him wordlessly grabbing his suitcase off the truck bed and stalking away into the snowstorm, he lifts his face to the sky.

Squeezes his eyes.

Takes a breath.