Page 37 of Betting on her Best Friend
“It’ll be close, but it’s worth a shot.” Will ran after Charlie. His athletically large frame dodged people in his path like a football player avoiding the defensive line on his way to the end zone. It took less than a minute for Will to stop him, give a quick explanation, and get him turned around to pick up the rest of them. Extending his hand to Alyssa, he smiled. “Your chariot, m’lady.”
She placed her hand in his and climbed in next to him as everyone else found themselves a seat. Charlie warned them to hang on and then the cart jerked forward as he put his foot to the floor. When the whining of the electric battery didn’t warn people of their approach, Charlie honked the horn and parted the crowd like Moses of the TSA. Alyssa’s heart beat a crushing rhythm against her ribs despite her slow breaths and reminding herself that it wasn’t likely they would catch the plane in time.
The showgirl twisted in her seat the best she could. “Hi, I’m Amber.”
“I’m Alyssa. Sorry for hijacking your ride. What happened to your ankle?”
Amber glanced at it with a disgusted look on her heavily made-up face. “Rolled it. That’ll teach me to buy knockoff heels.” She held up the offending shoe in one hand and its broken heel in the other.
“Yikes. I hope you recover quickly.”
“Thanks. Me, too.” Amber looked wistfully at Alyssa’s gown. “I love your wedding dress, by the way. You look beautiful.”
“Oh, um, thanks,” Alyssa replied awkwardly, “but this isn’t a wedding dress. I was going to a masquerade ball. It just happens to be white so…”
Amber’s eyes narrowed as though she were thinking hard or trying to recall something. “Are you sure? Because my cousin got married about three months ago, and even though I had a lot of champagne, I’m almost positive she had the same dress.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. Why did everyone care what kind of dress she wore? Right then and there Alyssa vowed to never wear a white dress again until her actual wedding day. If that day should ever come to pass. “Really? Huh.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess anything is possible.”
Over the last minute, the density of travelers had thinned considerably until now their cart had no obstacles whatsoever. Alyssa searched for signs of airline life—flight attendants ushering on the last few passengers, people dragging their carry-ons behind them as they disappeared into the gangway, anything that would tell her she still had precious seconds left to get to Dylan—but there were none.
The only thing she did see was Dylan’s plane pulling away from the gate to taxi its way into position for takeoff.
Charlie pulled the cart to a quick stop. Alyssa ran to the wall of windows, the flat of her hands slamming against the glass as her heart got stuck in her throat. Logically, she knew it wasn’t the end of the world. She knew that she would see Dylan eventually and that she could tell him how she felt then. That she could and would apologize for being so blind, so afraid, and hurting him like she had. It was only a little matter of the world turning several more times. Not very much at all.
Except that wasn’t how it felt.
As tears streamed silently down her cheeks, she closed her eyes and thought of how strange time was. It ticked away in exact increments, never changing no matter where you were in the world. Whether in Rome, Italy or in Rome, Colorado, a day was twenty-four hours long. One thousand four hundred and forty minutes. Eighty-six thousand four hundred seconds.
And yet, for something that was so mathematically sound and scientifically constant, time could feel so relative.
Alyssa had spent the last twenty-four hours with Dylan as lovers. Long spans of time had been eaten up as he explored every inch of her body with his hands and mouth, learning what she liked and what drove her positively crazy. But that day passed in the blink of an eye, gone before she’d even had time to fully appreciate the magic of what they’d shared.
Unfortunately, the day she now had ahead of her wouldn’t go near as quickly. Instead, the hands on her watch would drag with each passing hour until the minutes barely crawled and the seconds mocked her with stutters and pauses. And it would only get worse until she finally saw him again.
“You okay, sweetie?”
Trent’s words and arm wrapped around her in a compassionate embrace. Alyssa wiped the tears from her face and blinked the rest back. She turned to see the whole group fanned out around her with concern for her—someone they’d only just met—etched into their features. If she’d ever doubted the kindness of strangers, it would have been eradicated in that moment.
“Thank you, all of you, for putting your lives on hold—and your jobs on the line—to help me. I’m sorry it was all for nothing.”
Marilyn reached out and gathered Alyssa’s hands in hers. “Everything will work out, honey, you’ll see. The most important thing is that he loves you. The rest is just details.”
Alyssa gave the woman a quick squeeze before letting her go. “I’m fine,” she said. Looks of doubt or outright disbelief met her gaze. “Really, I am. I just have to wait and tell him how I feel once I get home.”
“Why don’t you tell me now?”
* * *
Dylan hadto assume he was sleepwalking, but with the deafening buzz of his swarming thoughts and the piercing headache punishing his skull, he’d doubted even a bed at The Ritz could have lulled him to sleep. However, when he considered the scene in front of him, dreaming was the only logical explanation. Either that or he was being Punk’d.
A small group of people—Correction. A strange group of people, half in airline uniforms with the other half in costumes, stood in the empty terminal. An older gentleman had his arm around the waist of a mostly naked showgirl standing on one leg. A dude too good-looking to be anything other than a model or one of those actors you see in a dozen movies but never know their names was arm in arm with a baby-faced ringmaster wearing a tux puked up by the hotel that was puked up by Mardi Gras. The rest of the ensemble consisted of Salma Hayek, Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Betty White, celebrities that ranged from young to dead to, well, almost dead.
And in the center of it all, still wearing the regal white gown from earlier, Alyssa held court like a queen over her oddly random subjects.
“Why aren’t you on the plane?”
Because the thought of not having you in my life terrifies me. Because even if it makes me the biggest idiot in the world, I planned to beg you for a chance to show you how happy I can make you.Dylan locked those thoughts down. If he’d learned anything in Vegas, it was to hold his cards a lot closer to the vest. So, he offered her a half-shrug instead. “My horoscope said I should stay away from pressurized metal tubes today.”
