Page 44 of Room Serviced
“Oh, sorry—did you mean the swimsuit model you must’ve snuck off with while I was doing my hair?”
He just laughed. “I promise not to put any swimsuit footage of you in the video. I don’t think I even got any.”
They started walking again. Sloane pushed the idea of Max and someone else out of her mind, since it obviously hadn’t happened. If it had, he probably would’ve told her. No reason not to.
“Though if you wanted to send me some swimsuit footage, I promise to keep it safe,” he said. “It’s a long drive from here to Sacramento.”
“Yeah, which is why you’re not supposed to look at your phone,” Sloane pointed out.
“There are rest stops.”
“I’m not sending you a video so you can get arrested for indecent exposure somewhere south of Stockton.”
“I’ve got a jacket. I’d cover up.” He was grinning at her again, bright and lovely and just a little bit lecherous, and Sloane felt like it wrapped around her torso and squeezed. She kind of wanted to do it: Send him a picture and then tell him to call her while he got off to it. In a rest-stop parking area. In the middle of the Central Valley, nervously watching the headlights on I-5.
“I think if a cop can tell you’re masturbating, you still get in trouble,” she guessed, though it wasn’t like she’d ever looked up the law before. It probably said lewd acts, right? The kind of thing that was wide open to interpretation?
“Puritans,” Max said, and Sloane laughed.
They didn’t find any haunted areas they’d missed, but it was nearly an hour before they finally wandered to the parking garage. It was barely two in the afternoon, but Max still insisted on walking Sloane to her car, as if she didn’t live in LA and walk from her car to her apartment at midnight all the time.
“Drive safe,” she said, standing next to her Jetta. “How long’s the drive?”
Max folded his arms over his chest and sighed like he was thinking. It bunched up all the muscles in his upper body—shoulders and biceps and chest. All things Sloane kinda wanted to sink her teeth into.
“Probably ten or eleven hours,” he said. “With traffic and everything. Not too bad.”
It sounded bad to Sloane. She made the eight-to-ten-hour drive to Last Chance once, maybe twice per year, and thought it was miserable.
“Sorry—I should’ve gotten you out of here earlier,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.” Afternoon traffic was going to double her travel time home, and she was already not looking forward to it.
“This was better than driving,” Max said, shrugging. He unfolded his arms and put his hands in his pockets, shifting his stance like he couldn’t quite hold still.
“We’ll see what you say when it’s midnight and you’re not even to Stockton yet.”
“I’m pretty confident I won’t change my mind.”
Sloane laughed a short, breathy laugh, because she wasn’t sure what else to do. “We’ll see,” she said, and then, “thanks for inviting me. This was fun.”
“You mean betting you?” Max asked, one eyebrow raised. “Thanks for coming. It was a lot more fun with you around.”
Then they looked at each other, and Sloane knew she should get into her car because they both had long drives ahead, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to open the door.
“You don’t usually fuck your assistant?” was the next thing that came out of her mouth, and Max snorted.
“I don’t usually have an assistant. And the last couple times it was my cousin Jeremiah.”
“Is he cute?”
“Did you hear where I said cousin?”
“There are plenty of cultures where it’s totally acceptable?—”
“Jesus Christ, get out of here,” Max said, but he was still grinning at her. “And don’t complain to me if you’re in traffic for five hours because you talked about cousin-fucking instead of getting in your car.”
He could stay the night at her place. If he left early in the morning, he’d get out before traffic and probably be in Sacramento by noon, which made total sense from a purely logistical standpoint. But he’d spend the night, and then what? It would be the same thing all over again. Besides, it sounded like he did this drive all the time. He knew what he was doing.
“Sorry for being an interesting conversationalist,” she said, instead of How about one more night? “Drive safe.”
