Page 29 of In For a Penny
“I have…so many questions.” I stare up at him. “Were you seriously walking around for the past”—I look at my phone to check the time—“fivehours with a granola bar in your back pocket?”
He laughs at my expression of disgust. “Yes?” he answers hesitantly.
“And you expect me to eat this squashed bar that has been essentially right by your ass all morning?”
He guffaws. “I mean, in all fairness, the bar was meant for me, not you. I should’ve anticipated your hangriness, as I usually do at school. I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’ll make sure to pack a royal picnic for next time,” he says sarcastically, snatching the bar from my hands.
I smile, incredibly grateful that things haven’t changed and he still feels comfortable enough to tease me about my snacking habits despite everything he knows about my history with food.
He’s incredible.
“Come on, Crazypants. Let me take a picture of you in front of the ‘pile o’ rocks,’ as you call them.” He takes my phone from my hand and opens the camera app.
“Yeah, I don’t do pictures of myself, sorry,” I say.
“Not even forThe Gram?” he asks mockingly. “I thought it was our generation’s duty to record and share absolutely everything that we do and every thought we have on social media.”
“Ah,” I say, lifting a finger in the air. “But I am an old soul, and I’m full of insecurities, so no. I never post pictures of myself.” I try to snatch my phone from his hands, but he puts it behind his back.
“Hey now, come on. Seriously, this is a big deal. Stonehenge is a historic place, and you should have a memory of what you did today. We went to a cathedral that’s overseven hundred and fiftyyears old, for fuck’s sake. Stonehenge dates back to as early asthree thousand BC. How often do you see shit like that?”
I take a deep breath, dreaming of fries.
“Stand in front of those ‘pile o’ rocks’ right now, and let me take a picture of you at leastactingexcited about this.” He grabs me by the elbow and pushes me near the edge of the monument boundary line.
I sigh, getting into position. “Remember,” Josh says, “I want to see excitement. One…two…three!”
I jump at the exact same time he finishes counting, with my arms in the air, channeling my inner cheerleader, overdelivering on my promise.
“Perfect,” he says, smiling down at the phone screen. “You’re perfect.”
The feeling in the pit of my stomach is back—the gut-punch, the flip—and my previous good mood seems to have evaporated into thin air. I suddenly feel exposed and self-conscious.
I ignore his comment and say, “Alright, I’m done. Take me to the food.” It comes out harsher than intended, so I try to numb the sting of my bitterness by ruffling his hair with my fingers. My plan backfires as the physical contact between the two of us causes a jolt of electricity that seems to course through my entire body, and I’m back to that feeling in the pit of my stomach, that flip.
I groan internally.
What is wrong with me???
He’s a smart man, that Josh. He said he would feed me, and feed me he did.
I’m glad he made me wait until we got back to Salisbury instead of listening to me and feeding me with an overpriced sandwich from the Stonehenge cafe. We went back down to the town square with different food stalls, food trucks, and vendors. It was my salvation. It was more so his salvation, to be honest, since I was about two minutes away from killing someone—him in particular.
We started with bacon cheeseburgers, followed by garlic fries, and finished lunch up nicely with some cider donuts with a caramel dipping sauce. It was heavenly.
Barring the general unease felt on occasion throughout our outing, today has been pretty cool.
We’re on our way back to the train station when we walk past a liquor store, and I get an idea.
“Hold on,” I say. “Gimme a sec.”
I duck into the liquor store and search for a bottle of champagne. I find the cheapest prosecco in the place—seven pounds!—and walk it out to show it proudly to Josh.
“Wow! Look at you, Miss Moneybags!” he jokes, eyeing the bottle in my hands.
“You can’t take a trip on a train with friends and not get drunk. It’s, like, a rule,” I say.
“Is that what New Yorkers do on the Amtrak or Metro-North? Get wasted while they travel? How do you not lose your luggage?”
