My Favorite Souvenir

by Ward, Penelope

“Or creepy,” Milo whispered.

  Genuinely curious, I asked, “How did Shirley react?”

  Wyatt flashed a wicked grin. “She didn’t know.”

  My eyes widened. “What? How did she not know you cut a piece of her hair off?”

  “Had a pair of those kiddie scissors stuck between my fingers when I went in for a hug. Made my move nice and quick.” He winked. “It was all innocent fun.”

  “It’s all innocent fun until someone gets arrested, yeah,” Milo said.

  “I have some other hair samples in the drawer if you want to see ’em?”

  Milo and I looked at each other. I could tell he was just as freaked out as I was.

  I pretended to yawn. “I’m feeling kind of tired, actually. Think I should turn in.”

  • • •

  There was one bathroom down the hall from our bedrooms. I took a shower, which was badly needed after our long day. The water pressure was good and the temperature hot.

  As I settled into bed, Milo peeked his head inside my room.

  “Just checking on you. You still feeling okay here?”

  I sat up a little. “Well, Mr. Hooker, I think this detour definitely takes the cake.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. At least the rooms are nice. The sheets smell good.”

  I was certain his sheets smelled amazing—because they now likely smelled like him.

  “Last chance, Mads. I’ll sneak us out of here right now if you’re not comfortable.”

  I honestly loved how protective Milo seemed, how considerate he was about whether or not I was happy.

  “This bed is really comfortable. I’m good. I might have nightmares about stuffed mice, but I’m good.”

  There was a moment of silence, and I wondered if he was thinking about our moment earlier, when he’d put his hand on my face. It was the closest we’d come to crossing the line. Well, aside from that striptease I’d given him.

  Even though I knew there was no point in fantasizing about his touch, I couldn’t help it.

  After he left, I fell asleep quickly. Today had been an active day, so that was no surprise.

  But sometime later, something woke me in the middle of the night. When I opened my eyes, I could’ve sworn I saw the door to my bedroom move. Was someone leaving my room?

  What the hell?

  Was it Milo?

  Old Man Wyatt?

  Am I hallucinating?

  Not knowing was starting to freak me out. So, I got out of bed and went to Milo’s room.

  He turned at the sound of the door opening.

  “What’s up?” he asked groggily.

  “Did you just come into my room?”

  “Can’t come into your room if I’m asleep. You woke me up. Anyway, why would you think I was in your room?”

  “I could’ve sworn someone was in there. I saw my door close.”

  “Not me, babe.”

  His calling me babe made me tingle inside.

  Snap out of it, Hazel.

  “Okay. Well, sorry to wake you.”

  “It’s okay. Try to get some sleep and not worry,” he said. “I’m right next door if you need me.”

  Back in my room, I spent the next several minutes tossing and turning.

  Milo must have heard my bed creaking, because no more than ten seconds later, there was a knock at the door.

  “Mads, can I come in?”

  I straightened in the bed. “Yes.”

  Milo entered, and I sat up against the headboard as he took a spot on the corner of my bed.

  “How did you know I needed company, Milo?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m starting to know you. We’ve spent every waking minute together for days.”

  “Can you stay here with me for a bit?”

  He didn’t immediately answer. “Yeah. Of course. I’ll stay on the floor.”

  “No. This bed is big enough. We’re both adults. We can handle it.”

  As soon as he laid next to me, I started to feel like something was brewing. Given how close we’d come to kissing earlier, that was a safe assumption. As much as I needed him here in order to be able to sleep, I knew if I slept next to him I would end up in his arms. And then he would end up inside me.

  I flipped around so my head faced the foot of the bed. If I turned my head now, I only saw his big feet. Since I was short and my legs didn’t reach the top of the bed, the only thing he’d see if he turned his head to kiss me was an empty space.

  • • •

  The following morning, Milo and I got dressed in our respective rooms and prepared to hit the road.

  It seemed Wyatt was a late sleeper, because he was nowhere to be found when we ventured downstairs.

  “I say we grab coffee and breakfast on the road and skip it here. At this rate, it’ll be noon by the time we get out of this place.”

  “Yeah. That’s a good idea,” I agreed.

  We were just about to head out when Milo’s expression changed. He bent down to pick something up off the carpet. “Holy shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a piece of hair. But it’s the same color as yours.”

  I approached to examine it. That wasn’t just a random piece of hair. It was my hair.

  Milo raced to the set of apothecary drawers where Wyatt had kept the Shirley Temple hair sample. He opened every drawer and searched through various Ziploc bags.

  He finally lifted one and said, “Bingo.”

  It was labeled, Jessica Rabbit and had yesterday’s date on it. Apparently, Wyatt must have thought I resembled that fictional redhead from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

  “I think I know who entered your room last night.”

  Frantically, I ran my fingers through my hair in search of the spot where strands were missing. It wasn’t a very big chunk so I might never figure it out.

  Milo put the bag of my hair in his pocket as we rushed out of the house together.

  He started the car, and we took off down the road.

  As he drove, he lifted the baggie from his jacket pocket. “I guess we have our souvenir from Bumford.”

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  Hazel

  “Hazel, I’m so sorry!”

  My face scrunched up. No name had come up on my cellphone’s caller ID, so I wasn’t even positive who was apologizing.

  “Felicity?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on? Is everything okay?”

  I’d taken over behind the wheel for a few hours so Milo could grab a nap. Apparently, once he’d joined me in my bed last night, he’d had trouble falling back asleep. He’d been out cold in the passenger seat for about a half hour now. But he blinked his eyes open and looked over at me on the phone.

  “I’m in the hospital,” Felicity said.

  “The hospital? What happened?”

  Seeing the look of concern on Milo’s face, I covered the phone and whispered, “It’s my friend back home. I’m going to pull over to talk to her. I don’t like driving and talking on the phone.” I put my blinker on and moved into the right lane.

  “I’m so sorry to bother you on your trip,” Felicity said. “But I had a car accident.”

  “Oh no. Are you alright?”

  “I’m okay now. It happened last night. Some jerk blew a stop sign and hit the passenger side of my car. My Toyota took the brunt of the impact, but, unfortunately, I took the brunt of the airbag. My husband is always telling me I sit too close to the steering wheel and it’s dangerous. But I’m so short that it’s hard to sit too far back. Well, turns out he was right, and I should have tried harder. I fractured my neck and broke my wrist—all from the airbag.”

  After getting off at the next exit, I pulled over to the side of the road and put the car into park. “Oh my God! A broken neck!”

  “The doctors said I’m lucky I’m not paralyzed.”

  “Wow, Felicity. I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “But I feel awful. Even though I
’ll probably only be in the hospital another night or two for observation, between my neck being in a collar for who knows how long and my right wrist being in a cast, there’s no way I’m going to be able to cover the upcoming shoots for you. I feel terrible about it.”

  “Of course you can’t. Don’t even think about it. That should be the furthest thing from your mind right now. What’s important is that you’re okay, and you get the proper rest and treatment you need. I’m so sorry this happened.”

  “Thank you. But listen, yet another doctor just walked in, so I have to run.”

  “Go. Good luck. I’ll call and check on you in a day or two. I hope everything goes well.”

  When I hung up, Milo was looking at me, waiting to be filled in. I shook my head. “That was my friend Felicity. She was in car accident and fractured her neck and wrist.”

  He reached over and took my hand. “I’m sorry. That sucks. But she’s going to be okay?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. It definitely could have been worse.”

  Milo nodded. “You mentioned her the other day. Is she a good friend?”

  “We’re pretty close. We met in an underwater photography class, actually. She’s a photographer, too. She sometimes covers for me in my school portrait business when I’m in a pinch or need to take some time off.”

  “You do underwater photography?”

  I smiled. “I took a class with hopes to. But I’ve never gotten around to it.”

  Milo frowned and nodded. “Well, I’m glad your friend is okay.”

  I’d been so concerned about Felicity’s accident that I hadn’t fully realized what her being out of commission meant for me. My stomach suddenly dropped, and it felt like someone reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. “This…sort of puts a wrench in our plans.”

  Milo’s eyes caught with mine. “You need to head home?”

  I nodded. “She was the one covering for me while I’ve been gone and was supposed to do all my school shoots next week, too. Now she can’t, obviously.”

  His eyes looked as panicked as I felt. “When do you need to be home?”

  “Monday. Which means I’m going to have to fly home from Atlanta tomorrow.”

  • • •

  When we got to Atlanta, Milo navigated through the city and pulled up in front of the Four Seasons. We hadn’t yet discussed where we were staying. Just like every other city we’d been to, I’d thought we were going with the flow.

  I looked out the passenger window. “Wow. This place is beautiful.”

  “I researched the nicest hotels in the area while you were driving. Since it’s our last night together, I figured we deserved something special.”

  Just hearing him say last night made my chest tighten again.

  The valet came around and opened my door while Milo took our bags out of the trunk. The attendant handed him a ticket.

  “Hang onto it for a few minutes,” Milo told the valet. “We don’t have reservations, so we might be leaving if they have no rooms.”

  The guy bowed. “No problem, sir.”

  Milo and I walked into the opulent lobby. It was, by far, the nicest hotel we’d been in. The lobby had sky-high ceilings, a massive crystal chandelier, and sun streaming in from floor-to-ceiling windows on two of the four walls. The room literally sparkled. I was pretty sure the marble floor was clean enough to eat off of, too.

  “This is so fancy,” I said. “I sort of feel like a movie star coming in here.”

  Milo linked his hand with mine. “These rooms are on me.”

  “I can’t let you do that. They’ll be a fortune.”

  “I insist.”

  We walked up to the front desk, which had no line.

  “May I help you?”

  “Hi, yes,” Milo said. “We don’t have a reservation. Would you happen to have any rooms available?”

  The woman nodded and smiled. “We do. What kind of rooms were you looking for?” She punched a few keys into her computer and said, “Our regular rooms are four hundred seventy-five dollars a night, or we have a suite for five hundred ninety-five a night.”

  Milo looked over at me and winked. “Two suites, please.”

  “Okay. And how many nights will you be staying?”

  Again my heart sank. Milo’s face was glum when he answered, “Just one.”

  “Very well. I’ll need a license and a credit card.”

  As the clerk clicked away, the reality of this as our last night sank in. If we had less than twenty-four hours left, I wanted to spend every last moment next to Milo. He handed the woman his credit card and license and strummed his fingers on the counter.

  “Actually, ma’am,” I said. “Could we change our reservation?”

  The woman’s brows knitted, and she looked up. “You want to stay more than one night?”

  “No. But we only need one suite.” I turned to the man standing next to me and lowered my voice. “Would that be okay with you?”

  Milo’s eyes washed over my face, and he looked into my eyes for a few, very long seconds. He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely.”

  Linking our fingers together on the counter, I smiled at the clerk. “One suite instead of two, please.”

  The woman looked amused. “No problem.”

  After she finished checking us in, she put two plastic key cards into a small holder and looked around the lobby. Leaning in, she said, “I ordered a bottle of champagne and some chocolate-covered strawberries to your room. If the manager happens to ask, your bathroom wasn’t working, so I sent it as an apology for the inconvenience. It’s also why you’ve been upgraded to our deluxe suite.”

  Milo took the keys with a giant smile. “You’re the best.”

  She looked at us with a coy smirk. “Enjoy your evening.”

  • • •

  Our suite was gorgeous. We had a view of downtown Atlanta, a separate living room and bedroom, and a bathroom that was bigger than most decent-sized hotel rooms. After I went online and made my flight arrangements, I decided the big bathtub was too irresistible to ignore. Plus, the hotel had a bevy of spa products lined up on a glass shelf in the bathroom that I couldn’t wait to try, including a coconut and sea salt bath bomb.

  So I filled the tub, told Milo I’d have my ear buds in, and climbed into the warm water. Shutting my eyes as I settled in, I put on classical music and tried to relax. I’d had a tension knot the size of a golf ball in my neck ever since Felicity called.

  It seemed unimaginable that tomorrow at this time I’d be back home in Connecticut. Obviously, this trip had to come to an end sooner or later, but I wasn’t ready for tonight to be the last one. Milo and I had been together less than two weeks, yet the thought of going home and not seeing him left a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d grown so attached to him.

  Deep down, however, I did know I needed to figure things out with Brady before starting anything new. Milo had been right about that from the very beginning. And it made me so much more attracted to him to know he put my emotional needs above his own physical ones. Because a lesser man might not have. It would’ve been so easy for Milo to get me into bed, to take advantage of my neediness and vulnerability, especially because I was so attracted to him. But he didn’t. And while not quite two weeks might not be that long to know someone, the way he’d handled things between us had really shown me the type of man he was.

  My effort to relax in the tub turned out to be an epic failure, though it wasn’t for lack of trying—my skin was pruney by the time I stepped out of the bath. I twisted my wet hair up in a towel, slathered on some of the free body and face lotions, and wrapped the hotel’s luxurious bathrobe around myself. Slipping into monogrammed, matching plush slippers, I finally returned to the living room.

  Milo was standing at the windows, drinking a glass of wine. He seemed lost in thought—so much so that he didn’t notice me walking over, until I slipped the wine glass from his hand so we could share it.

  I sipped. “Penny for your though
ts...”

  He looked me up and down. “Well, that answers that question.”

  My brows furrowed. “What question?”

  “Could we ever just be friends?”

  “That’s what you were thinking about while looking so serious?”

  Milo nodded. “I was trying to convince myself we could—that regardless of what happens when you go back home, the two of us could still be friends.”

  “Were you successful? I mean, at talking yourself into it?”

  Milo smiled. “I was until you walked out with your hair wrapped in a towel, your body hidden beneath ten pounds of cotton bathrobe, and without a lick of makeup.”

  I laughed. “So we can’t be friends because I don’t look so hot after a bath?”

  Milo took the wine from my hand and downed the rest of the glass. “Just the opposite. I think you’re beautiful without any fancy outfit, makeup, or hair.” He lowered his head and stared down at the floor. “I was trying to talk myself into being able to stay friends if you decide to get back with your ex. But the truth is, I can’t be friends with you because you’re so much more to me already, and there’s no going back from that. It’s fucked up that this might be the last time we’re together.”

  He looked up at me, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. I could see he was struggling, and I swallowed, trying to force down my emotions. But I wasn’t as strong as him. A big, warm tear rolled down my cheek.

  Milo wiped it away with his thumb and opened his arms. “Come here.”

  I snuggled into the warmth of his embrace. It felt so good. So right. Like this was exactly where I was meant to be. Yet…it wasn’t the right time, and we both knew it. We held on to each other for the longest time, clinging like it was the very end, though we still had a whole night ahead of us.

  Eventually, Milo pulled back. He brushed the hair that had fallen from my towel out of my face. “What do you want to do tonight? It’s your call. Whatever your heart desires. I looked through a book on Atlanta, and this city has a lot to offer. There’s an entire underground area with shops and restaurants and an improv comedy club we could go to. We could go to Centennial Park and take a ride on the SkyView Ferris wheel. It’s supposed to have a great view of the city from the top. They also have a haunted pub tour, or there’s a hotel not too far away with a rooftop bar and restaurant. You name it, and we’re there.”