Page 114 of Road Trip
“Want me to text her back, tell her thanks for the memories?” Therese asked.
“Never mind. I’ll do it when we get to the hotel. Just close the text please and put my phone back in the console.”
Therese tapped the photo of Maeve and Liam and texted it to herself before closing the text box.
Maeve heard the whoosh of the text being sent and noted the guilty look on her sister’s face. “What did you just do?”
“I texted that picture of you with Liam to myself.”
“You had no right,” Maeve started, but Therese waved away her objection.
“You would have deleted that photo. Like you want to delete Liam.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Liar. It’s a great photo of you, Maeve. You’re completely relaxed, the light is doing marvelous things for your skin, and you’re grinning like a loon. Like a smitten kitten. Meanwhile, Liam is looking at you the way Bogie looked at Bacall. Like Tom Hanks looked at Meg Ryan at the end ofYou’ve Got Mail. It’s the look of a guy who’s totally besotted.”
“You’re crazy,” Maeve said.
“There’s the lane for Hertz,” Therese said, pointing, and effectively ending the conversation.
“Oh shit.”
Maeve stood in the doorway of their room at the Airport Marriott. “No,” she said emphatically.
Therese looked over her shoulder. The room was clean, but it held only a single bed.
“Hell no,” she said, dropping her carry-on bag. “I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you. This isn’t even a queen. It’s like a double, maybe.”
“This is not the room I reserved,” Maeve said. “I booked a double queen.” She marched over to the phone on the nightstand and dialed the front desk.
“Hi. This is Ms. Dunagin in 408. My sister and I just got into our room, and there seems to be a mistake. I booked a double queen room, and even prepaid for two beds. But there’s only one bed here…” Her voice trailed off as she listened to the front desk clerk.
“I know, but we’re two adults. We haven’t slept in the same bed since we were children.”
More inaudible chatter.
“I don’t want a refund for the up-charge,” Maeve said, her voice getting louder and shriller. “I want the two beds I reserved. At this point, we’ll take twins, if that’s all you’ve got.”
More inaudible chatter.
“No. We don’t want a complimentary basket of snacks. That’s not going to cut it. We want two beds.”
“Ask them if they have a rollaway,” Therese said. “I’ll sleep on it.”
“We’d be willing to accept a rollaway,” Maeve conceded.
A minute ticked by. “Hello? Anyone there?”
Maeve slammed the receiver down. “There’s some kind of conference that’s taken over the whole hotel. Every room is booked, and they claim they don’t have rollaways.”
“Kill me now,” Therese said. “Should we try to switch hotels?”
“We can’t. I got a discounted rate because we prepaid, and it’s nonrefundable.”
“Sucks,” Therese said. “But I call dibs on the right side of the bed.”
The sisters bustled around the room, busying themselves to keep from bickering. Maeve checked and double-checked their flight times. She unpacked her outfit for the next day, set out her toiletries on the bathroom counter, leaving half the counter clear for Therese’s stuff, which she hadn’t bothered to unpack.
