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very welcome,” he says with a huge grin.

      “Denver?” he asks, looking up at me.

      I’m assuming he’s asking if that’s my next stop. “Yeah, almost seven hours away.”

      Andrew shakes his head, seeming as dissatisfied with that time-frame as I am.

      Ten minutes later and the bus pulls into the Garden City station. There are three times as many people at this station than there were at the last one and this worries me. I make my way through the terminal and to the first empty seat I see because they are filling up quickly. Andrew slips around a corner underneath the vending area sign and comes back with a Mountain Dew and a bag of chips.

      He sits down beside me and cracks the top on the soda can.

      “What?” he asks looking over at me.

      I didn’t notice I had been watching him gulp that soda down with a disgusted look on my face.

      “Nothing,” I say, looking away, “I just think it’s gross.”

      I hear him laugh under his breath beside me and then the chip bag rattles open.

      “You seem to think a lot of stuff is gross.”

      I look over at him again, positioning my bag on my lap. “When was the last time you ate something less … heart-attack inducing?”

      He crunches another chip and swallows. “I eat whatever I want to eat—what are you, one of those uppity vegetarian girls that complain about how fast food is making the country fat?”

      “I’m not one of those,” I say, “but I think the uppity vegetarian girls might be onto something.”

      He chomps down on a couple more chips and takes a swig of his soda, grinning over at me.

      “Fast food doesn’t make people fat,” he says steadily chewing away. “People make their own choices. Fast food restaurants are just bankin’ good on the stupidity of Americans who choose to eat their food.”

      “Are you calling yourself a stupid American?” I grin right back at him.

      He shrugs. “I guess I am when my options are limited to vending machines and burger joints.”

      I roll my eyes. “Oh, like you’d actually choose to eat something better if you had the choice to make. I don’t buy that.”

      I think I’m getting better at these comebacks.

      He laughs out loud. “Hell yeah I’d choose something better. I’ll take a fifty-dollar steak over a day-old burger any day, or a beer over a Mountain Dew.”

      I shake my head, but can’t wipe the faint grin off my face.

      “What do you normally eat, anyway?” he asks. “Salads and tofu?”

      “Bleh,” I say with a wrinkled face. “No way in hell would I ever eat tofu and salads are just weight-loss fads.” I pause and grin over at him. “Honestly?”

      “Well, yeah—spit it out,” he says.

      He’s looking at me as though I’m something funny and cute that needs to be studied.

      “I like SpaghettiOs with meatballs and sushi.”

      “What, like all mixed together?” Now he looks quietly disgusted.

      It takes me a few seconds to catch on.

      “Oh, no,” I say, shaking my head back and forth, “that would be gross, too, by the way.”

      He smiles, looking relieved.

      “I’m not big on steak,” I go on, “but I’d eat one if offered to me, I guess.”

      “Oh, so you’re asking me to ask you on a date?” His grin just got wider.

      My eyes bulge and my mouth falls open. “No!” I say, practically blushing. “I was just saying that—”

      Andrew laughs and takes another swig.

      “I know, I know,” he says, “don’t worry. I’d never consider asking you on a date.”

      My eyes and mouth get even bigger and my face flushes hot.

      He laughs even louder.

      “Damn, girl,” he says, still with laughter in his voice, “you don’t catch on too quick, do you?”

      I frown.

      He frowns, too, but he’s still sort of smiling at the same time.

      “I’ll tell you what,” he says, looking a bit more serious, “if we happen to get lucky enough to find a steakhouse at one of our rest stops that can cook a steak in the fifteen minutes we have before the bus leaves us behind, then I’ll buy you one and let you decide while we eat our steaks together on the bus if it’s a date, or not.”

      “Well, I can tell you now that it won’t be a date.”

      He smiles crookedly.

      “Then it won’t be,” he says. “I can live with that.”

      I think he’s done with the topic, but then suddenly he adds, “But then what would it be, if not a date?”

      “What do you mean?” I say. “It would be a friendship thing, I guess. Y’know, two people who happen to be sharing a meal together.”

      “Oh,” he says with a sparkle in his eyes, “so now we’re friends?”

      That catches me off-guard. He’s good. I give it a moment’s thought, pursing my lips in contemplation.

      “Sure,” I say. “I guess we are sort of friends at least until Wyoming.”

      He reaches over and offers his hand to me. Reluctantly, I shake it. His grip is gentle, but firm and his smile is genuine and kind.

      “Friends until Wyoming it is then,” he says, shaking my hand once and letting go.

      I’m not sure what just happened, but I don’t feel like I’ve done anything I’m going to regret later. I guess there’s nothing wrong with having a traveling ‘friend’. I can think of a hundred other kinds of people who Andrew could be and it could be worse. But he seems harmless and I admit he’s interesting to talk to. He’s not an old lady looking to tell me stories of when she was my age, or an older delusional man who still thinks he’s as hot as he was when he was seventeen and that somehow he thinks I might be able to see him for what he used to look like. No, Andrew is right there in the goldilocks zone. Sure, it’d be better for many different reasons if he was a girl, but at least he’s close to my age and he’s not at all ugly. Oh no, Andrew Parrish is far from being anywhere near the Ugly Tree.

      Truthfully, he lives right next door to the Sexy Tree and I think that’s the only thing that bothers me about this whole situation.

      You know damn well that it doesn’t really matter what’s going on in your life, who you just lost, how much you hate the world, or how inappropriate it is to have an attraction to someone before that mending phase has reached the acceptable zone. You’re still human and the moment you see someone attractive, you can’t help but make note of it. It’s human nature.

      Acting on it is a whole other story and that’s where I draw the line.

      That’s not gonna happen, no matter what.

      But yeah, the fact that he’s hot bothers me because it only means that I will have to try that much harder to make sure that nothing I say or do will give him the wrong impression. Hot guys know they’re hot. They just do, even the ones who don’t go around flaunting it. And it’s also human nature for hot guys to automatically assume that an innocent smile, or a conversation that goes on for three minutes without awkward silence, are signs of an attraction.

      So, this ‘friendship’ is going to take a lot of work on

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