Road Trip

Chapter 12

She's 8 years younger than you! I admonished myself in the shower. The water helped a lot, it always helped wake me up, but it couldn't help my mind make sense of everything. She obviously had feelings for me, of some sort. I know I had thought a lot of inappropriate things about her during the trip, and she seemed to be going out of her way to help those along with the parading about in that towel. Did her age really matter?

I had never noticed any of Georgia's friends when we were growing up, but then I had been taking care of her, working, and going to school at the same time. Dating was something I never really had time for till after I had graduated, and at that point things had cratered. But Blake was 22, certainly old enough to make her own decisions, and maybe this was a good decision. But did I want to risk the good things going on here on the road trip? If I tried to get into a relationship with her, wouldn't that set me up with a worse breakup than the others?

Damnit I just didn't know.

I shut off the water and gingerly stepped out of the shower. Luckily, my damaged goods were feeling better after the trauma of the morning, so maybe I was overreacting to everything. I toweled off and decided to return her surprise by heading out to the room in just a towel around my waist, and a smirk on my face.

She had her camera pointed at me as soon as I stepped out.

Well, shit, that wasn't quite the surprise I had been hoping for.

"Nice look! Now turn around so we can see the rest," she said while giggling.

"We?" I asked, suddenly terrified.

"Yeah, I'm facetiming my mom. You have amazing timing."

"Hi Ethan!" Came the faint voice of her mother from the phone. "I'm so glad Blake ran into you!"

Kill me. Now. Oh god please, what did I do to deserve this embarrassment?

"Hi Janet, yeah it was purely a fortunate coincidence. But I'll return her safe and sound," I said, praying my voice didn't betray my nerves too much.

"Well don't rush back, you two have fun. She's been talking about you for a year and a half so I wouldn't want her to miss out," Janet said.

Blake turned beet red and suddenly my outlook on the day turned much brighter. "Don't worry Janet, we're on a road trip to have fun so I'll make sure she enjoys it."

"Bye mom, we are going to head out for lunch now, I'll talk to you later!" Blake said quickly and hung up.

"You've been talking about me for a year and a half, huh?" I said with a smile.

"Oh, shut up! I told you about the books, what's the difference?" she complained, tears in the corners of her eyes.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I was just teasing you." I said kneeling in front of her and wrapping my arms around her. "Honestly, I'm glad you have such fond memories of me, and I hope I can make this trip as fun as possible for you," I could feel her tears on my shoulder, as she hugged me back, and felt like an ass for hurting her. She had been so good on this trip and I didn't want her to feel bad.

"Its all right, I'm just over sensitive, I can't believe I hurt you this morning when I was trying to be all sexy and then I teased you with the towel so I just knew you would do the same thing and so I face timed my mom because I wanted to get you again, but she said that and oh my god I'm so embarrassed." Came a torrent of words that never seemed to end.

"Well, that was a lot." I said with a smile. "Are you doing better now?"

"Yeah, but we better get going to eat. I really am hungry and you kneeling like that in just a towel isn't making this conversation easier."

I was suddenly very aware that all of this was taking place with me in nothing but a towel around my waist, and I started blushing again. "Let me get some clothes on, sorry!" I dug through the suitcases till I found some clean jeans and a sweatshirt. I remembered the cold when we got out of the car at the hotel the night before. Albuquerque was a lot higher in elevation, so it wasn't going to be warm.

When we were both ready, we headed out to find the Vietnamese restaurant that Blake had found online. Since we had arrived in the evening, we hadn't been able to take in the surroundings. But in the daylight, we could see the stunning views of the mountains. I took a bit to just look around and enjoy the view. Blake had been correct about the restaurant; it was nice and close to the hotel. We got a big bowl of pho, as well as some spring rolls and noodle dishes to share while she pulled out the pamphlets that she had grabbed from the hotel lobby.

Spreading them out on the table, she looked them over. "See anything that looks fun?" I asked as I munched on one of the spring rolls.

She held one up and showed me. "Wanna go?" she asked, her voice almost pleading. It was for a local snow tubing park, something I had never done before.

"Absolutely." I smiled back at her. Her return smile was gorgeous, and so worth it.

"Can we go right now?" She asked, almost bouncing up and down in her chair.

"We'll go right after we eat," I promised her.

"Yay!" she exclaimed and started digging in with gusto. "This food really is amazing, thanks for suggesting it!"

"And thank you for doing all the searching and finding it."

"We okay after this morning?" she asked a little nervously.

"Yeah, we're all good. We'll look back on that someday and just laugh at the comedy of errors." I said lightly. It was true too, the whole thing had been a complete mess of silliness, but with no harm done. It was easy to not get worked up over.

"Good! Then let's go tubing!" she yelled excitedly, bouncing in her chair like a kid.