Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

No, I think, as he pauses at an intersection and, without warning, pulls me in for a pulse-stuttering kiss.

Far, far more.

24

“I knew you’d forget.”

“Very briefly,” I assure Clara, who hugs me tightly and then, when Ruby offers a handshake, yanks her into an even tighter hug, saying how great it is to meet her.

“You’ve...heard about me?” Ruby stammers, looking uncomfortable but not unhappy. Gradually, she returns Clara’s hug.

“Well, not a lot,” Clara admits, rolling her eyes when she hitches her thumb at Wes and me. “Grapevine. And you know how men are; they ditch all the details. Which is probably why Theo got you two lost on the way here, when I specifically told him—”

“Maybe if you hadn’t said ‘not the weird fork in the road’ with such insistence,” I tell her, “I wouldn’t have remembered it so prominently.” Together, Ruby and I sit on the front mat of the cabin’s porch and remove our soaked shoes and socks, feet numb after the Jeep got stuck in a snowdrift and we had to push it back to solid turf.

Clara punches my arm with a laugh and passes our luggage to Wes, who takes it inside and calls out that we’re stuck in the smallest room, due to our lateness. I shout back that we’re fine wherever. The smaller our quarters, the more excuses I’ll have to get close to her.

Not that I think I’ll need any. She’s relaxed a lot since we left her place. Now, cheeks red from the cold and a bright smile on her face, she marvels at the cabin’s interior while Clara introduces us to everyone.

In total, there’s eleven of us spending the weekend together, almost all of them beauty bloggers. The sunken living room, graced with wood furniture, high ceilings, and an enormous wall of windows overlooking the mountainside, fills with loud chatter about social media within seconds.

“Are you guy influencers, too?” a girl named Isabella asks, when Ruby and I cautiously extract ourselves from the chaos and find a bar cart loaded with premium vodka and tequila.

Ruby shakes her head. “I clean houses. All this stuff is, like, a foreign language to me.”

Isabella laughs sympathetically, apologizing that the weekend will probably be filled with even more of that. Her eyes flit to me. “What do you do, Theo?”

Aaand there it is: yet another reason my social batteries short out faster than the average. Why does getting to know new people always start with career questions?

I open my mouth to sputter some half-assed answer—what’s the least pathetic way to say, “I live off my father’s income?”—when Ruby puts her hand on my arm and says, “He plays piano, actually.”

I’d gawk at her, if Isabella didn’t suddenly gasp and shake the hell out of my other arm hard enough to slosh my rum and Coke. “Oh, my God, really? Because there’s a piano in the other room—we were all just talking about making Wes sing something for us. He didn’t say his cousin was a musician, too.” She says this last part extra loud, over her shoulder to the group, so Wes will hear.

He does. And, judging from the long sigh he gives the ceiling, he isn’t happy about it. “I’m not singing.”

Isabella waves him off, like his willingness isn’t important to the actual event. To me, she adds, “We’ll roll the piano out, Wes has his guitar upstairs—”

“I haven’t played for an audience in a while,” I interject. Too late. She practically skips away to tell everyone the good news.

I spin to Ruby with a plastic smile. “Hey, thanks.”

“Sorry,” she laughs, adding more vodka to her orange juice. “How was I supposed to know they’d force you into a concert?” With a quick glance at the group behind me, she tucks herself into the corner and swigs straight from the bottle. I laugh and do the same when she passes it to me. It’s going to be a long night.

“Wes Durham,” she whispers, nodding. “I remember him.” Fumbling for a bit, she explains, “From his sitcom, I mean.”

“Please don’t tell me you had some childhood crush on him.”

Ruby cracks up at my disgust, even though I’d actually understand: any party of mine Wes attended, girls would fall over themselves with nostalgia and the idea of dating a TV star. Word spread pretty damn fast that talking about Cut to the Chases was a surefire way to get Wes ignoring you.

“Relax,” she says. “I actually hated that show. Way too cheesy. But don’t tell him I said that.”

“He’d be thrilled. He hates it more than anyone.” I take her hand and pull her to an empty leather loveseat near the group, so we look a little less antisocial. “Though I think he tolerates it slightly better now that he’s with Clara, because she loves it. So if you hide that hatred from anyone, let it be her. If she hears you call it cheesy—”

From across the square of couches and chairs, Wes calls, “What’s cheesy?”

“Cut to the Chases,” I tell him. He gives a thumbs-up in agreement before Clara, overhearing, swats him.

“See?” I tell Ruby. She smiles into her drink.

The group starts talking about the show, which prompts Wes to flash me the finger. I flash it back with a grin.

Clara, her sister Georgia, and Isabella cook dinner for the group, while someone else starts a holiday movie marathon on the television mounted over the fireplace. Ruby and I stay under our blanket on the loveseat, making polite conversation with anyone who sits nearby, but it’s mostly just us talking under the buzz of activity and Christmas soundtracks.

“This is fun,” she whispers, kissing my neck. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Thank you