Page 40 of Mixed Signals
He hands me a piece of paper.
“What’s this?”
“It says that you won’t holdQuest For Escapeliable in the event of an injury.”
“Shouldn’t I have filled this out before we started?”
Gus perks up in the corner. “Can I add my name to one of those paragraphs?”
“Enough.” Layla snatches the paper out of my hand, loops her arm through mine, and starts tugging us towards the door that leads to the hallway. “We’ll take a look, Billy. But no promises.”
“But—”
“My date and I are leaving.”
Gus gets a sly smile on his face. Well. As much of his face as I can see. “Date, huh?”
Layla flicks him on our exit. “You shut your mouth.”
“Sure thing, Laylabug.”
“I’m startingto think I’m the problem.”
Layla and I are propped up against the back of my Jeep in the parking lot of the grocery store, a tub of ice cream balanced on the bumper between us, a bag of frozen corn over half of my face. Heat rises off the asphalt, a shimmer close to the ground where everything goes hazy. I tilt my head to the side so I can get a good look at her out of the eye not currently covered by produce.
“How do you figure?”
She pokes listlessly at the top of the ice cream with her spoon. “You’ve barely gotten out of these last two dates alive.” She doesn’t look at me. “Maybe you’re not the one that’s bad at dating.”
“I’d hardly call our last date bad when we got to leave with this.”
I hold up the picture that Eric made us take before we leftQuest For Escape.Apparently it’s part of the entrance fee to get a souvenir photo taken at the end of your hour. Now that I have a little distance, the photo is objectively hilarious. Layla is glaring at Gus, Gus is staring at the floor, I’m doing my best to smile with my eye swollen shut, and Clint is laughing so hard he’s bent at the waist. Montgomery only got half of himself in the frame. Billy is lurking in the back corner, only his eyes visible through the facepaint.
I think I might put it on my desk. Right next to Fernando.
Layla doesn’t respond. I nudge her shoulder with mine. “I don’t think we’re the problem here. I think it’s … everything else.”
“Are you saying we’re cosmically destined to be bad at dating forever?”
“No.” I nod my head towards the grocery store where I can see at least five people by the windows who are pretending to be browsing but really they’re just watching us in the parking lot. Cindy Croswell has been examining oranges for close to seventeen minutes. Bridget forgot to turn the flash off her phone when she aimed it at us ten minutes ago. “I’m saying this town has too much time on their hands.”
Layla follows my line of sight. “Ah.”
“Everyone knows us here,” I explain. “We can’t get any privacy.”
Layla arches her eyebrow, spoon in her mouth. I stare a little too long at the way her bottom lip drags against the cheap plastic—her tongue at the corner of her lips. “And what are you going to do with privacy, huh?”
I adjust the bag of corn on my face. “Try not to get killed.”
She snorts and kicks her legs back and forth, her toes barely skimming the pavement. She’s quiet, another two spoonfuls of ice cream while I wait. “You want to leave town for our next date?”
I’m amazed she still wants to go on any dates at all with me at this point. My face must communicate something similar because her gaze softens. She digs her spoon into the ice cream carton and holds it up between us for me to take a bite. A reassurance in the form of caramel chocolate swirl.
“I think it’s in our best interest.”
I curl my fingers around her wrist and hold her hand steady as I take my bite, my thumb against the silky skin on the inside of her wrist. I can feel the steady beat of her pulse beneath my thumb, delicate and light.
I drop my hand. Layla keeps the spoon there between us, suspended, as her stare lingers on my mouth.
