Page 21 of Meet Hate Love
The smell of coconut filled my nose before I groggily opened my eyes. Not only had I fallen asleep for the duration of the flight, but I’d fallen asleep on her—after she’d fallen asleep on me.
I fished my phone from my jeans pocket, held it up, smiled, and snapped a picture. It was incredibly unflattering. Her dark hair stuck up in all directions, mouth half-open. She looked like a corpse, and I had every intention of posting it to my Wanderlust Media InstaPic account later.When traveling with someone you hate, make light of the situation by making them hate you even more.
Satisfied with my plan, I dropped the phone to my lap and poked her. “Rise and shine, Sleeping Blackmailer.”
Grumbling, she slowly sat up. That was when I noticed the wet patch on my shoulder.
“You drooled on me.” I grabbed the sleeve of her T-shirt and attempted to wipe off the cold slobber.
She tolerated it for all of five seconds before she slapped away my hand. “Drool is a normal part of travel, Vance.”
A normal part of travel, my ass. I took my phone and pressed Go Live.
“What are you doing?” she asked, exasperation clear in her tone.
“Collecting evidence.”
“Evidence?”
“I think a section of why I don’t exactly like you would be a nice add-on at the end of my advice column… Droolerella.”
“You were the kid who got shoved into lockers in high school, weren’t you?” She mumbled, “Droolerella” while she buckled her seatbelt, then she glanced at the cold, wet spot on my shirt. “You realize the fact that you left me there, asleep, on your shoulder, is concerning?” Only she would take something like sleep-slobbering on a person and try to make itnother fault.
I cut off the recording. “I shoved you off five times.” I hadn’t. I’d moved her once, and her face smacked the window. The next time her head had rolled onto my shoulder, I’d just left it. Her hair smelled good… “It was like I was a magnet for you.”
“A black hole of misery, maybe. Sucking me in against my will.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re dramatic in a terrible way?”
“There’s good dramatic?”
“No, but the way you are is the worst.”
“Good.” Sighing, she put up her tray, grabbed her purse from beneath her seat, and rummaged through it, eventually pulling out her phone.
She swiped over the screen, then jabbed her fingers on it. “Ways to enjoy traveling with someone you hate,” she said, grinning. “Make the best of a bad situation and find utter joy in annoying the hell out of them.”
Then she pointed the camera at me. “So angry…” The electronic sound of a shutter clicking sounded. “Ah, what a terrible picture of you.”
“You really want to start down this path, Blake?”
She frowned before cramming her phone into her purse. “If you post unflattering pictures of me, I’ll report them.”
“You’re one of those people.”
“No. You are because you’d post something on purpose just to make me angry.”
She wasn’t wrong.
We disembarkedand went through customs without incident. That seemed to have taken Blake by surprise. Evidently, when she’d flown out of Colombia once, she’d ended up detained because they found suspicious residue on her laptop.
I watched the luggage rotate around on the carousel. “Did you ever figure out what set off the sensor?”
“My hand lotion. Apparently, it had glycerin in it, which left glycerin all over my keyboard.” Blake grabbed a neon-pink, hard-shell suitcase with lime-green polka-dots from the conveyer belt. “You’ve had nothing like that happen?”
“No.”
A sick smile pulled at her lips. “I guarantee you, by the end of this trip, you’ll have been detained at least once.” She popped up the handle of her suitcase. “I’ll go grab a cab.”
