But he softened some when the pizza arrived on a little elevated stand. It wasn’t quite New York standard—crust thicker, sauce less spicy, cheese a little less stretchy—but it was still very good, and watching Conrad devour his half was worth suffering through his bad mood over me paying.
“Man, this is even better than I remember.” Each bite seemed to evaporate more of his funk until he was grinning at me again.
“I’m glad,” I said and meant it. There was something about doing things for him that I found deeply satisfying—like a long run or solving a particularly complex equation.
“Thanks.” His tongue darted out to capture some melted cheese before it escaped his crust, and warmth gathered low in my gut, all that talk the day before rushing back with a vengeance, a fresh set of inappropriate thoughts taking over my brain.
“What?” Head tilting, he blinked at me.
“You have some sauce on your face.” No way was I confessing what I’d really been thinking about, but I also wasn’t lying. He had a little smear on his chin that somehow made him more, not less, attractive.
“Where?” He swiped at his lips with a napkin a few times but missed the bit on his chin entirely.
“Oh, here.” I grabbed a napkin myself and reached over to blot the sauce away before I could think through the invasion of his personal space. I hadn’t realized how close my fingers would come to his lips, their softness grazing my knuckles.
He made a low, startled noise that went straight to all the parts that had no business being interested, making my insides dance as I awkwardly shifted on the wooden bench.
“Sorry,” I murmured, my voice a bare whisper as my body tried to figure out what the heck was going on.
“Two can play at that game you know.” His eyes flashed as he did the same thing to my cheek, fingers brushing my skin. Something was happening. A sort of…anticipation. Like when I knew a big turn was coming in the game, a chance to play a card that I’d held since my opening hand. My breath sped up as our gazes met. The moment hung there between us, all charged energy, hands resting too close to each other on the table, eyes holding—
“Stop it, Lance.” A mom chasing a kid came rushing by our booth, and all the energy fizzled away. I should have been relieved by the interruption since I’d had no idea what my next move was supposed to be, but instead, I was irritated, as if I’d lost my chance to win a game I hadn’t even realized I wanted to play.
“We should go.” Conrad’s eyes shuttered. “There’s probably at least one game store in town, but it’s not on the agenda, and we’re already behind.”
“Yeah.” I followed him back to the car, where predictably, he insisted it was his turn to drive.
“I’m better at making up time.”
“Better at speeding, you mean.” I wasn’t sure why I was arguing with him. I didn’t actually want to drive. But something in him pushed all my buttons, both good and bad.
“At least I’ll leave the slow lane.” He slid into the driver’s seat without waiting for my reply.
“Fine. Don’t get a ticket.” I took the laptop with me into the passenger seat and spent the next portion of the trip using my phone as a hot spot to upload video until the cell phone signal fizzled out, exactly like whatever had happened back at the pizza place. Not wanting to deal with Roam, I put both phone and laptop away and turned my attention to the increasingly rural scenery. We’d filled up the tank in Columbia, and Kansas City was our next scheduled stop, which I associated in my brain with barbecue sauce and baseball and little else.
“Are there any landmarks in Kansas City that we should get a picture of?” I asked, shuffling my pages of notes as I studied the billboards.
“Nothing iconic like the Arch, but I’ll think of something.” Conrad sounded distracted, but talking felt better than strained silence.
“Hey, do you hear something?” Conrad frowned, tone turning serious as he signaled to move from the fast lane back to the middle and then the slow lane.
Concentrating, I focused on the car’s noises, anxiety returning all at once as all sorts of terrible scenarios rushed through my head.
“I hear something,” Conrad said again, voice tight. “Steering got wonky on me for a second too.”
“What?” I strained, trying to hear any errant sounds, but I wasn’t a car guy. A glance over at the console didn’t reveal any warning lights. The engine hummed, road noise same as—
Rattle. Thump. Rattle. There. An ominous sound that did nothing to help my anxiety. “That?”
“Yeah.”
“There’s an exit ahead.” I hated the idea of losing time to investigate what was probably nothing, but I also wasn’t an idiot. Conrad took the exit right as the maybe-something noise became a massive thumping, rattling, shaking event.