Drive Me Crazy (12 page)

“Dude, I’ve gotta pee.” Alexis adjusted in her seat uncomfortably about an hour after they’d left Love. “It’s serious.”

“Lex!” Kate cried. “We don’t have time to stop. We’re already behind the bus by a few hours. We don’t stand a chance of catching it anytime before Pennsylvania if we stop for a potty break.”

“Okay, Mom.” Kate saw Alexis smirk in the rearview mirror. “I’ll just go in this OJ carton back here. If I miss at all, it’s spraying in your direction.”

Kate signaled to get off the interstate. “That’s nasty, Lex.”

Alexis shrugged. “I didn’t get to go before we hit the road. This was sort of a sudden trip.”

“I’m being spontaneous. I’m not going to let Adam get away,” Kate said, and pulled into the parking lot of a Perkins restaurant, just off the interstate. “I need to find him now—not when we get back to New Jersey in a few weeks. I need to know if we can be together, and I don’t want to wait.”

“How are you going to know?” Sierra asked, unfastening her seat belt to get out of the car.

Kate followed her friends into the restaurant. “A kiss will answer that. A kiss will tell me everything I need to know. I just hope he doesn’t hate me for taking this long to figure everything out.”

While Alexis and Sierra hit the bathroom, Kate bought a bag of muffins. She felt guilty for using a restaurant’s bathroom without buying something, and figured it was the least she could do to thank her friends for coming with her on the road. On the way back to the car a few minutes later, Sierra dug into the bag and pulled out a lemon poppy seed muffin. Alexis requested a raspberry, and both were so engrossed in their snack that neither noticed the bus that was pulling into the parking lot as they were piling into their Ford.

But Kate did. Laughing, she said, “Look! It’s the Q-tip tour!”

“What?” Alexis looked up from her muffin, muttering through a mouthful of crumbs. “What’s a Q-tip tour?”

Kate put the keys into the ignition and backed out of their parking space. “The ladies from the bus trip. Remember, they were at the amusement park, and then we ran into them at our hotel outside Ann Arbor? Adam and I hung out with them playing cards?”

“That’s so funny,” Sierra assessed. “It’s like they’re stalking us.”

The bus stopped, and the door opened. The three girls watched as some of the ladies climbed down the bus steps into the parking lot. Something kept Kate from driving away—perhaps it was the memory of her night with Adam, playing pinochle with Fern. Or maybe it was just that the bus tour reminded her of their road trip—when everything had seemed so much simpler, and her summer with Lucas was still just an imaginary and perfect scenario in her head. They sat there so long, with Kate paralyzed and unable to move, that a car pulled up behind them and started honking.

Startled, Kate pushed her foot on the gas, then ground to a stop again when Sierra yelled, “Adam!”

“Adam is in that bus, Kate!” Alexis was waving her muffin in the air and had turned herself completely around in the backseat to look out the back window.

Kate looked in the rearview mirror. “He’s with the Q-tip tour?” she wondered aloud. Sure enough, Adam was sitting in the back seat of the bus, staring absentmindedly out the window. His dark hair was immediately obvious, in stark contrast to the white heads bobbing around next to him. Kate threw the car into drive and whipped a U-turn, causing several cars turning into the parking lot to screech to a halt to keep from hitting them.

The sound of the squealing tires made Adam look their way, and he perked up in his seat when he saw Alexis’s familiar little green Ford in the parking lot beside the bus. He stood up, and they could see him hustling down the aisle of the bus toward the front door.

Kate was out of the car in an instant. She met Adam as he descended the steps of the bus into the parking lot. Her heart was beating fast, telling her that her instincts had been right. She needed to be with Adam—she was sure of it. “Your hair is too dark for the Q-tip tour,” she said, grinning when she saw him. “You’re ruining the effect.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “Um, what are you doing here?”

“We’re looking for you.”

“Kate, listen,” Adam said seriously, looking down to watch his own feet shuffling across the gravel in the parking lot. “I was on my way home…”

Kate nodded. “I know. Your mom told us. How did you end up here? Why are you on the Q-tip tour?” She was so confused, and mildly freaked out. This was surely some sort of sign, bumping into Adam in the parking lot of Perkins, back on the road.

“I got off the bus about an hour east of here and hung out for a few hours, waiting for a bus to take me back toward Love. I was chilling in a rest area, and out of nowhere, Fern comes up and taps me on the shoulder. They were going my way and invited me to tag along, so I hopped onto the bus. I figured I could get a lift the rest of the way back from my dad or Alexis once I got a little closer to the resort—”

“But I thought you decided to go back to New Jersey for soccer practice. But now you’re not—” Kate wasn’t following. Adam was making no sense.

Adam cut her off to say, “There is no soccer practice. I just wanted to get out of Love. But I realized I’m not ready to give up yet.”

“Give up?” Kate asked.

“I know you’re with Lucas, but—”

“Not anymore,” Kate said. She realized she should stop talking, since it seemed like Adam had something to say, and she was expertly ruining the moment.

Adam looked at her, hopeful, and started talking again. “I guess a part of me hopes that if I stick around long enough, maybe you’ll realize that you’re being a total idiot for not realizing that we need to be together.”

“So why were you taking off on a bus back to Jersey, then?” Kate asked, grinning. She couldn’t help but tease him, just a little bit.

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I just couldn’t stand seeing you and Lucas together anymore. But it only took a few minutes on that bus before I knew I needed to come back and make a fight for it…for you.” He paused. “Okay…in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that the bus was nasty. The dude sitting in the seat next to me was picking strings of something out of his teeth and sticking them to the bus window, like little stacks of hay or something. I didn’t want to be there when they dried and started to fall off the window again.” Kate laughed. “But that’s not why I got off the bus. I wanted to come back for you. Kate, we have to try.” He looked at her seriously, studying her face for a reaction, some sign that she agreed. “I know I drive you crazy…. I’ll wait—the rest of the summer, next year—”

“Stop!” Kate said suddenly. “Enough. That’s enough.” Without another word Kate grabbed Adam’s face and pulled him toward her. His eyes stayed fixed on hers as their lips connected, but then Kate closed her own, so she didn’t know if he was still looking at her. She didn’t think so. No one could kiss like that with his eyes open. She could tell that Adam was focused on their first kiss with every part of his body. It was electrifying, a kiss unlike anything Kate had ever felt before. The parking lot faded away, the loud roaring of the bus motor behind them became a low murmur in the background. All Kate noticed was Adam’s body leaning into her, and the beating of her own heart.

She opened her eyes slowly as their lips pulled apart. His eyes were still closed. Kate smiled. “Yep,” she said, still grinning. “That definitely feels right.”

“Good,” Adam said, smirking back at her. “I’ve been saving that one for you.”

Kate rolled her eyes and jokingly said, “
How
is this going to work? We’re crazy to think we can be together, aren’t we?”

“I’m crazy about you,” Adam said, pulling her into a hug. “And
you
—you are fascinated with my charm and subtle humor, correct?”

“Correct,” Kate said, laughing.

Suddenly Kate became aware of their surroundings again. She waved to Fern, who was standing by the door of the bus. Then she pulled Adam into the backseat of Alexis’s car. Sierra had already grabbed Adam’s bag from the back of the bus, and Alexis was in the driver’s seat. They were ready to go.

As they merged onto the highway, headed back toward the resort, all Kate could think about was how romantic this scenario was. Kate and Adam’s first hours together as a couple were on the road to Love…. She could think of no happier ending than that.

“Hey, princess, what’s going on?” Adam sauntered up and pinned Kate against the wall next to her locker, movie-star-style. It was the first day of senior year, and Kate was starting the year with a boyfriend. “Tell me I’m the guy of your dreams,” he demanded in his mocking tone.

“I don’t know about
that
,” she joked, beaming at Adam. She laughed as he kissed her quickly. “Where’s your locker?” she asked when he pulled away. “How far do I have to go to see my boyfriend between classes?”

“Right around the corner.” Adam gestured toward the band hall. “In fact, if I remember correctly, it is in the very same bank of lockers you were in last year.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hmm,” Adam murmured, nuzzling her ear with his lips. They were still in that new-couple stage, and Kate loved it. “It’s possible,” Adam whispered into her ear. “It may be the very same locker, as a matter of fact.”

Kate’s heart started pounding harder as he slipped his hand into hers; a tiny slip of paper was pressed against his palm. She pulled their hands apart and twisted the piece of paper open. The words written on it were in her handwriting, and said: “hello, you, from kate.”

“I found this in my locker,” Adam said goofily, studying her face. “Look familiar?”

Kate smiled and held his hand tighter. “Yep,” she confessed. “I left it there for you.” Gazing up into Adam’s smiling eyes, Kate knew for certain that she had finally found her prince.

Erin Downing is a onetime book editor who now works at Nickelodeon. She spent a few months as a cookie inventor (but had to quit after she ate too many). Erin has lived in England, Sweden, and New York City and now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the author of the Pulse Romantic Comedies
Dancing Queen
and
Prom Crashers
. Visit her at
erindowning.com
.