Page 86 of The Perfect Rom-Com

I’m out of breath as I rap on the door of the bus.

It’s humming quietly. The lights on low as it rests in the congested parking lot.

I can see Trina sitting up in the driver’s seat. She jumps in surprise, drops her feet off the dash, and slips her phone back on the dashboard. Pulls the handle. The door opens.

“Honey?” she says in surprise. “You all right?”

“No,” is all I can manage to say as I get up the stairs, crudely pull off the heels, and drop them on Penny’s seat. Penny’s gone. Everybody’s gone, except for Trina. “No, it seems I’ve been a bit delusional, as it turns out.”

She’s up from her seat now. Standing in the walkway. “About . . . ?”

I drop down on my knees. Pull out my little suitcase.

Begin grabbing odds and ends that are still on my bed.

I hear the question in her voice. Is this about that young man you’ve been seeing on the top bunk? Or the crazy lady who lives in the back?

I throw it all into the suitcase. Squeeze it shut. Throw my purse around my shoulders with my phone inside. “About everything. About it all. And now”—I glance out the window, see Jack halfway across the parking lot, striding quicker now, a stream of people disembarking the boat behind him—“I just need to get out before they catch me and make it worse.”

“On it.” She’s back in her seat like a pilot given fresh orders.

I feel a jerk as the bus turns on and shifts into gear.

Before I know it she’s peeling the bus forward, toward the entrance to the parking lot.

“Trina?” I say.

To be honest, the whole peeling-out-of-the-parking-lot thing takes me by complete surprise. I had hoped, at best, to duck out and dash out of sight before Jack reached the doors. But to escape in a bus. Well.

“You always were my favorite.” She glances over her shoulder as she turns the big steering wheel and gives me a big smile. “The rest of ’em I wouldn’t take a dollar for.”

“No. Stop. You can’t put your job at risk here—”

“Worry about yourself for once, honey. I’m not worried about me at all. Believe me, I can handle myself. Now, where do you need to go?”

I stumble to reply. Where do I need to go? I don’t have a clear answer to that. “Home,” I say simply.

“How about the airport then? The airport will have to do.”

I nod and sink back into a seat.

As we get onto the main road, she adds, “And I know this’ll be novel to you since you haven’t been able to get in that bathroom because of that vanity hog all week, but you might want to consider changing into something a little less Cinderella for when you get on that plane. Unless you’re going for a girl-running-away-from-the-ball feel.”

The bathroom.

Changing.

Right.

I gather up some jeans and make my way to the bathroom. The tiny bathroom is cluttered with hair spray bottles and lotions and dozens and dozens of bottles of this and that—vanity creams and foundations and serums and prep sprays, heat sprays, setting sprays. The room still stinks of chemicals dispensed without care earlier this evening. I barely can move without tripping over some French label of this or that.

I pull open the door.

Squeeze myself out.

I’m going to Amelia’s room.

I can see Trina looking at me from the big rectangular rearview mirror as she wheels us down the expressway. “Even better,” she calls out. “You go, girl.”