Along for the Ride

by Mimi Grace

  “Oh, we love it,” Cliff said. “We do bike marathons every couple of years. But we’re up here just to have fun.”

  “And we found some new bikes and helmets for this season,” Megan said.

  “Found?” Jolene squeaked.

  “Yeah, we were searching for different bikes and accessories we could travel with. We found some online for a reasonable price a few months ago. The guy who sold it to us used to own a bike shop and was getting rid of inventory.”

  And with that explanation, they’d arrived at a dead end. Jason watched Jolene’s smile dim and her shoulders slump slightly. The waiter arrived with Cliff and Megan’s drinks and appetizers, and Jason took the opportunity to soothe some of Jolene’s disappointment by leaning in close to her and saying, “Try to resist stealing their fries.”

  He received the small smile he wanted but also an unexpected squeeze from her at the spot just above his knee. The four of them finished their meals, and Cliff and Megan shared a dessert while Jolene ordered her second alcoholic drink. Jason discovered that Cliff and Megan were actually interesting people to talk with when he wasn’t lying to their faces and he could be himself. He wasn’t exactly talkative, but he found himself contributing to the conversation. They were well travelled and had done things one might consider cultured, but they didn’t come off as snobbish when they talked about spending weeks in Whistler and competing in triathlons all around the world.

  Jason was so absorbed in the conversation, he didn’t notice that someone stood behind him until a strange hand ran across his shoulder. The woman from earlier, the one Jason had forgotten even existed till now, had returned to fulfill her implied offer.

  Earlier when the stranger had first approached Jason, he was about to let her know he wasn’t interested when Jolene returned from the washroom. The look that had briefly passed on Jolene’s face, however, threw him for a loop. She couldn’t have been jealous. There was no way, but as he sat there and tried to decipher the intricacies of human facial expressions, the strange woman had whispered that she’d be right back.

  “Hi, again,” the random woman now said in his ear.

  Cliff and Megan’s eyebrows raised, and they cocked their heads to the side.

  “Not interested,” Jason said.

  But his response was cut off when Jolene stood and removed the woman’s hand from where it lay on his shoulder. She then grabbed his face and kissed him. It wasn’t as thorough as the one they had shared earlier in the day, but the sparks that coursed through him were still strong enough that the thought Jolene probably kissed him to maintain their con didn’t cross his mind.

  The sound of Cliff and Megan’s laughter finally drew Jason from the kiss. He hadn’t even noticed the stranger had left without further protest.

  “You can let me go now,” Jolene said, her voice breaking a bit.

  He looked down at where he still held Jolene about her waist. He kept his arms around her for a beat longer before releasing her. They turned back to their company with bashful smiles. For the second time that day, Jason had lost himself. It unnerved him to know kisses were at fault. He chanced a glance at Jolene who anxiously chewed the tip of her straw.

  “Wow,” Cliff said. “And I thought Meg was possessive.”

  Cliff and Megan left shortly after they’d finished their dessert. Jason dreaded going back to the motel room because that meant he’d have to sleep in the same bed as Jolene and contend with his attraction to her. Last night he’d been too tired to even register that he slept in bed next to her. But the day’s events wouldn’t make that the case tonight. So, when Jolene made no moves to end their night at the pub, he didn’t either. Maybe they could stay out long enough so that when his head hit the pillow, he’d immediately fall asleep.

  The buzz that had swirled in the bar still went strong, but the majority of the energy now stayed around the area surrounding the stage. The staff set up sound equipment and turned on the stage lights.

  “Oh, they’re doing karaoke!” Jolene exclaimed. She put her drink down and turned to him. Her eyes danced.

  He bristled. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that.”

  “Karaoke is not your thing?”

  “Crawling back to the motel on my hands and knees sounds more pleasurable,” he said bluntly. The idea of standing up in front of people and doing something he wasn’t 100 percent good at seemed like his version of hell.

  She smiled. “I think I’m going to do it.”

  He remembered her pitchy voice from yesterday on the road. Did she know? “If you get booed off stage, I promise I’ll whisk you out of here.”

  “I won’t get booed off stage,” she said, sounding offended.

  Dear God, she didn’t know.

  “Actually, I think it will be quite the opposite,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “I’ll get a standing ovation.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “Jolene, I don’t know how to say this…but I’ve heard you sing—”

  “I know I have a bad voice. I actually might be tone deaf. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to get a standing ovation,” she said with such conviction that Jason experienced a wave of mild pity for her.

  “All right, then let’s make this interesting.”

  She scrunched her nose. “What do you mean by interesting?”

  “If you get a standing ovation—”

  “How are we defining a standing ovation?”

  “There are about”—he scanned the bar—“a hundred or so people in here. If twenty of them get out of their seats and clap for you, then I’ll pay for all your meals tomorrow.”

  “And what if they don’t?”

  He wanted to ask for another kiss. “Then you’ll have to give me one sincere compliment.”

  “Damn, so sensitive. You call a man old and boring one time…”

  He gave her a mischievous smile in response.

  “All right, deal.” She extended her hand and he grasped it.

  Jolene left her seat to sign up, and the first brave soul got on stage and sang a rendition of Britney Spears’s “Toxic.” He had sufficient energy, but he tried too hard to sound good. Another decided to do Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” that just ended with the whole pub singing along. Each section of the audience took a different harmony. Jason watched politely and clapped when appropriate. Meanwhile, Jolene enthusiastically swayed to the music and offered supportive whoops. He thought she might actually join the singer on stage that sang “Jolene” by Dolly Parton.

  “This is my jam,” she shouted over the music.

  Several more people performed before Jolene’s turn. For some reason his heart rate picked up like he was the one going up there. He reasoned that his reaction came from the stakes he had in her performance. Jolene threw her head back and finished the rest of her drink. She rotated her shoulders and shook her head like a fighter warming up to enter the wrestling ring. She made her way to the stage, and the bright lights illuminated her and the Creamsicle dress.

  She tapped on the mic. “Hello, testing one, two—”

  “We can hear you just fine, darlin’!” someone in the audience shouted.

  “Great. My name’s Jolene.” A number of the patrons responded with a hello, while the beginning instrumentals of Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” played.

  The first note that escaped Jolene’s mouth wasn’t a note as such, but a squeak. It didn’t improve from there. Her voice did not quite catch the right notes, and it grasped for a semblance of a melody. Though Jason involuntarily cringed at the off-putting notes she hit, he could not help but be impressed. Despite her awful voice, she sang each bad note with certainty and confidence. And the audience swayed and watched politely because karaoke didn’t require singers of The Voice caliber.

  When Jolene hit a particularly bad note, Jason mused how nice it would feel to actually receive a compliment from Jolene even if it were a forced one. Through the first verse, Jolene conservatively step
ped side to side. She didn’t look at the monitor that had the lyrics; she obviously knew the song very well. And once the chorus hit and the tempo picked up, a switch flipped and Jolene started to really dance.

  She twirled across the stage. She shimmied her hips while pointing to individuals in the audience, and flipped her head side to side, animating her coily hair. She essentially made the stage her Soul Train line. She didn’t let any beat go to waste. Jason stared in awe, and soon after caught himself grinning like a fool. The audience clapped, enthralled by her performance. By the time the song ended, the tipsy spectators were on their feet whooping and hollering. She graciously bowed and gave mock kisses to her new fans. As she made her way back toward their table, the bar’s patrons gave her thumbs-up and high-fives. He breathed in the cheerfulness she exuded.

  So damn beautiful.

  She collapsed on her stool, looking bright-eyed and exhilarated, and before he could commend her or even take in how her hair fell in her face with nymph-like abandon, she leaned toward him. “Tomorrow I think I’d like lobster for at least one of my meals.”

  He gave her a good-natured laugh, but found it difficult to draw a full breath.

  Chapter 8

  It was one a.m. when Jolene and Jason arrived at their motel room. The two drinks she’d ordered had lost their effect, and now all that occupied her mind was the thought of sleep. Well, not the actual act of sleeping, but rather the understanding that she would have to sleep in the same bed as Jason again. This time knowing for a fact how her body would respond.

  “Umm, I’m going to use the washroom first.”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” he said absentmindedly, already at the tiny desk in the room, no doubt planning tomorrow out.

  She got herself showered, flossed, and brushed. Unfortunately for her, she had run out of clean underwear.

  A laundromat, I need a laundromat. Tomorrow.

  She also hadn’t expected to share a bed with Jason on this trip, so the oversized T-shirt she packed as her version of sleepwear barely hit her upper thigh and did nothing remotely flattering. She decided to keep her bra on and slip it off when she crawled into bed while he used the bathroom. She didn’t need to come out boobs jiggling.

  She strategically placed her day’s clothes and toiletry bag in front of her, and bent her knees so the hem of the shirt would fall as low as possible. When she left the bathroom, Jason sat on the far side of the room, reading his trade medical magazine while the news played on a low volume. He looked so…disarmingly handsome. He’d removed his shoes and slouched in the chair with his legs crossed at the ankles. An image of him in that exact pose in her own apartment sprung into her mind, and she quickly filed it in a mental drawer called “Things That Will Destroy You.”

  “All done?” he asked without taking his eyes away from what he read.

  She made some sound in affirmation. He finally looked up, and his eyes widened slightly and perhaps they even darkened when he dragged his gaze up her body. She should have wrapped a towel around her waist.

  Too late now.

  He collected his things and walked to the bathroom without comment. She sprang into action the moment the bathroom door closed behind him. She quickly shuffled to her suitcase and shoved her clothes and toiletries inside. Without removing her T-shirt, she took off her bra and threw it into the bag as well. Then, as if she hadn’t been rejected from her elementary school gymnastics team, she leaped into the bed and hauled the covers to her chin.

  After she let the pounding of her heart settle, she debated if she should turn off some of the lights. But what if Jason tripped and hurt himself? Okay, so she would leave the lights on, but she should turn off the TV. She looked at the door. She could hear the shower running. Where was the remote? She scanned the room and found it balancing on the armrest of the chair Jason had sat on. She gave the closed bathroom door one last look before she retrieved the remote and turned the television off. Getting back into the bed, she closed her eyes and tried to relax. If she were lucky, she would fall asleep before he left the bathroom.

  Relaxing things. Think about relaxing things.

  She mentally conjured up her vision board, and when that didn’t work, she mentally put together an outfit she’d wear to work in the upcoming week. But that didn’t work either.

  She opened her eyes again. Where had she put her phone?

  Just leave it, Jolene.

  But the nagging need to locate her phone grew. Somewhere a think piece about Millennials and technology mocked her. How long had it been? She couldn’t hear the shower anymore. But he probably still brushed his teeth, and as a dentist, he definitely would floss so she had time, maybe a minute or two. She looked around the room, examining where she could have placed it. She hadn’t left it at the pub. Did she take it to the bathroom?

  No.

  She remembered throwing it on top of her suitcase before heading to the bathroom. She must have flung it aside when she opened it the second time to return her belongings. It had to be lying somewhere on the floor. She left the safe confines of the bed once again, got on her hands and knees, and immediately spotted it under the chair. But as luck would have it, as she reached for her cell phone, the bathroom door swung open.

  The cold shower and quiet jerking off worked somewhat to diffuse the lust that had rushed through Jason when he’d seen Jolene exit the bathroom. The T-shirt she wore had barely concealed her shapely legs. But all his efforts went out the window when he reentered the bedroom to see Jolene crouched down on the floor. Her gorgeous ass was visible underneath the T-shirt, and God help him, she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  She clumsily got up when the door opened. And her breasts gently bounced, drawing his attention to them.

  His mouth went dry.

  He wanted to rush toward her and feel her body unhampered by underwear and thick fabrics, but instead, with control that would make some deity proud, he walked toward his bag to deposit his stuff. His movement kickstarted Jolene’s, and she scampered to the bed like the floor was lava. If he wasn’t battling a hard-on, he might have been amused. When he turned around, he knew she’d been watching him because her eyes shut a little too late. She’d hoisted the sheet all the way up to her chin. He took measured breaths, turned off the lights in their room, and gingerly entered the bed. He positioned himself so his back faced her.

  His thoughts moved in all sorts of directions. It would first settle or get comfortable with a safe subject or idea but quickly bounce to more dangerous visuals. The epic game of pinball his mind played made falling asleep very difficult.

  “I’ve set my alarm for six a.m.,” he said into the darkness.

  “Okay,” she replied in a shrill voice.

  He didn’t know how much time had passed before incessant ringing started. Thinking it might have come from the neighboring motel room, he didn’t say anything. But it persisted.

  “Is that yours?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  A beat passed with the ringing continuing to fill the silence.

  “Are you going to answer it or at least turn it off?”

  “It’s under the chair.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll need to turn on the light to get to it. You’ll have to stay turned away. My top is short, and I don’t have any more clean underwear.”

  “I know.”

  He sensed her turn to face him, and he willed himself not to do the same. In the dark room he wouldn’t be able to make anything out, but it would be one step too close for him. It would end in him doing something ill advised.

  “God, you saw my butt, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t respond.

  She groaned. “Okay, so to prevent that from happening again, just don’t turn around.”

  The sheets rustled and the bed lightly bounced as she got out of the bed, and the lights came on a moment later. The ringing stopped, but then she said, “Shit.”

  “Is that a I-have-a-charley-horse-and-require-assistance
shit or a more mundane this-has-been-one-long-day shit?”

  “Neither.”

  The way she said it, without any real humor in her voice made him pause. “Jolene, can I turn now?”

  “Fuck.”

  “Okay, I’m going to turn around…make yourself decent.”

  He found her slumped in the chair he had been sitting in earlier, staring intently at her phone. She worried her bottom lip.

  “What’s wrong?” And because he’d learned to brace himself for the worst, he added, “Is someone hurt?”

  The latter question got Jolene’s attention. She looked up, and he swore the tension in her face reduced a bit.

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. It’s just”—she took a breath—“apparently one of the owners of the apothecary line we’re launching was filmed being an asshole to a waitress, and the video has gone somewhat viral.”

  “Is it really bad?”

  “I can’t load the video, the damn WiFi sucks, but from what my team is describing, it’s really, really bad.”

  He resisted the urge to do what came naturally to him, solving problems. “What are the implications?”

  “Well, nobody wants to buy anything from assholes. Plus, our whole campaign is leaning into their brand of positivity and lightness—” Her cell rang, interrupting her explanation.

  “Hey, Yvonne. No, go ahead.”

  Jason watched as she went into a conversation, parsing out logistics and coming up with a plan as she spoke to Yvonne on the other line. Realizing this might take a while, Jason turned the TV on and muted it before switching on the subtitles. Jolene sent him an apologetic look. He found a program on the History Channel that explored the fascinating habits of sixteenth century royalty, but he couldn’t give a damn because he was focused on what Jolene did.

  She sounded confident and amazingly calm seeing that failure could derail her project. So caught up in the conversation she had, Jolene paced around the room. Her breasts, freed from the constraints of a bra, moved tantalizingly. Every now and again, she would mindlessly raise her hand to her face and her T-shirt would inch up, not enough to see anything, but enough for Jason’s heart to beat at a funky rhythm. He thought about how she would feel on top of him, underneath him, curled up beside him, and by the time she’d finished her call, he had a full-blown erection he tried to hide with a pillow.