Page 42 of Road Trip to Forever
“Why do you have romance books hiding in your closet?” Lola asks.
I glance at the ceiling and scrub a palm over my face. She was never supposed to find that box, a secret I would have liked to keep until my dying days.
“It’s a long story.”
Lola blinks. Her eyebrows furrow together, wrinkles forming across her forehead. Her lips droop deeper and deeper, settling into a frown.
“How long?” she presses, a demand I can’t ignore behind the question.
“Twenty-four years long.”
“I’m not following.”
“The first time you read to me, I noticed you paid more attention to certain parts of the story than others. It was subtle, but I could tell. You started to read faster and turned the pages quicker when something excited you. You wrote down lines you liked in your journal, and two weeks later, you pulled those same lines out to read again. As much as you like to write the parts down, you don’t like to mark up your books. You never have.”
“No,” she says slowly. “I don’t. And I never will.”
“I know. It’s easier to focus if you don’t because your attention stays on the story, not doodles on the sides of the pages.”
The admission flows out of me. Now that I’ve started, now that she’s discovered the only secret I’ve ever intentionally kept from her out of fear of how she’d react, I want to tell her everything.
She’s not running or throwing a paperback at my head like I thought she would. Lola is staring at me with rapt attention, hanging on to my every word.
“So what is all ofthis?” she asks.
“I buy the books you read to me.” My voice cracks, and I swallow down the lump rising in my throat. “After we finish a chapter, I tab my copy just in case you want to reread your favorite parts one day down the road. I annotate based on how you react to the quotes and certain scenes. It helps me remember what makes you happy. What makes you smile when we get to the grand gesture and something is incredibly romantic. What makes you blush when something is sexy.”
I nearly trip on the word. I imagine Lola using one hand to flip the page, the other to dip under her shorts, eyes closing in ecstasy. It’s sinister, wickedly good.
“I’ve always considered reading ourthing, so I’ve kept a collection of your favorite books, just for you,” I say, finishing with a big breath.
“And… and if I never asked you for a book? If I never found this box? Then what?” Lola asks, her tone turning soft.
“It wouldn’t matter,” I say with assurance. “I’m going to keep doing it. I like it too.”
Her gaze breaks from my face to the book in her hands.
She opens the pages carefully, like she’s handling a precious jewel. She studies the lines I’ve highlighted with yellow and green and blue, bright bursts of colors against a white backdrop. Circles and squares and underlines, certain words garnering more attention than others.
The annotations and tabs weren’t intentional. I meant to pick out a few paragraphs that made her laugh, but it turned into something more. A borderline obsessive hobby that has me staying up way too late on school nights, a rainbow of markers and pens on my nightstand along with sticky notes and a ruler so I get the lines straight.
Annotating made me realizewhyLola loves love stories so much.
There’s a dream infused in the prose, a tangle of belief and a suspension of reality. A guarantee you’ll find a happily ever after, even when things seem dark. Evil doesn’t exist, and joy is a sure thing. Women are treated well, men are emotional, and you want to kick your feet in the air with howsickly sweetthe story is.
Cheesy? Yeah. Predictable? Always. But they’re also fun as hell.
Why wouldn’t I want to be a part of that?
Romance books hold her attention more than anything else in the world. They put a smile on her face and make her eyes light up. She could talk about them for hours and never get bored.
And me?
I’m the stupid, stupid man who would do anything to make her happy.
Lola brushes away a tear with the back of her hand. She sniffs and looks up, hope etched into her lip-splitting beam.
“This is all for me?” she asks. “You’ve created a library for me?”
