Page 8 of No Interest in Love

“Time to go.”

I roll my eyes, rubbing them before checking the clock on the nightstand, forgetting that the power is gone. I flop my hand around, running my fingers over the lacquered wood of the nightstand before finally landing on my phone.

“2:45? Oh, hell no.”

Without attempting to crawl back in bed, I shove bits of the comforter under my head before making myself comfortable on the floor. She’s gonna have to drag my ass out of here.

She pushes at my upper thigh with her foot. “A huge storm is coming in. Forget finding a flight out of LAX that’son time.”

“The storm won’t last five days, will it?” I grumble into the scratchy hotel sheets. “Practice some patience, already.”

Something flops against my face, and I inhale the scent of my deodorant. “Get dressed. I’m driving you to Vegas because they have sunny skies and a flight available. I’ve already exchanged the tickets. If we hit the road now, we’ll get there in time.”

“You on something?” I ask. “Because why didn’t you share?”

Another something hits me in the face.

“I’m serious. Get up.”

“ ‘Bad decisions wake up after 2A.M.,’ ” I quote from anotherHow I Met Your Mother genius episode. “So I’m going back to sleep.”

The bed creaks and I hear soft, padded footsteps stumbling around the room. Before she opens her mouth to tell me yet another reason to get up, I yawn and cut her off. “How about this?” I say, shoving my clothing away and turning to my other side. “I sleep, and we stay put till the rain goes away. It’s California. It’s not like it’ll stay long. Unless it’s a sharknado.”

“Jace, can you please be serious for once in your lifetime?”

“Not until you relax for once inyourlifetime.”

She growls under her breath, and after a solid ten seconds of no rebuttal I think I’ve finally won a Shay/Jace argument, but then a fuzzy recorded voice rings through the dark room.

“Hi, Ms. Kwak? This is Carletta Ocean,” the voice says with flair. I lift my head up. “My coproducer onBehind the Scenessaid you were planning on flying into Birmingham this week. I was hoping to set up a dinner with Jason on Wednesday evening. I like to get one-on-one time with the front-runner leading man before his screen test. Perhaps see how we’d fit together…work on our chemistry, so to speak. You can contact my assistant, Danielle, at this number to set something up. Can’t wait to meet him.” Carletta makes a wet kiss noise, then the message clicks off.

I slowly roll over, squinting through the darkness to try to catch Shay’s face in the light of her phone. She has one eyebrow cocked so high it disappears into the shadows and an expectant grin on her face.

I shake my head. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. Let’s get you on that flight, yeah?”

My hands fumble for the clothes she tossed at me. “All right. I’m definitely up.”

3:25A.M.

The rain pounds against the windshield, and Shay hits the wipers up another notch. I double-check my seat belt.

“The rest of this trip is on the company dime, right? Because I just spent my last four bucks on this.” I raise my coffee cup, then adjust my seat so I can kick my feet up on the dash. The second I put them there, Shay bats at them with the hand holding her very potent onion bagel.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” she says around her food. I keep my feet on the dash, despite Shay’s abuse. If I’m being honest, I like teasing the hell out of her. Because even when she’s swatting at me, there’s a hint of a smile that creases the corner of her lips. And when I glance over at her eyeing my shoes, there it is, pulling her mouth upward ever so slightly. Enough to make her look like she actually has fun in her very scheduled life.

I drain the last bit of my coffee, but the caffeine’s doing shit to keep my eyes open. I lean back against the seat and zone out until it kicks in.

SHAY,SCENETWO:Setting:also freshman year. She walked into my film studies class, and I choked out a laugh, scaring my buddy Alec out of the snooze he’d fallen into. She took a seat in the front row and pulled out her laptop and jabbed a pen into her ponytail. Like a douche, I leaned down and said, “You gonna take off that flip-flop and beat me with it, Elmo Girl?”

She whipped around with a death glare, which got even more evil when she recognized me. Then she slipped her flip-flop off slowly from her dainty foot…and whacked me over the head with it.

That was the first time I saw that suppressed grin.

Shay growls something under her breath, pulling me from my in-and-out sleep. The rain hasn’t let up, and when I stretch out my limbs, I check the time.

“Shit, it’s only been a half hour?” This will be the longest drive of my life.

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