Chapter Five

I sat in a tiny arm chair in a quiet hotel lobby. My eyes were pacing back and forth as I watched a very stressed Nolan walking from one corner of the lobby to the other. His hands occasionally made wide gestures as he talked on the phone. Talk is too calm of a word. He definitely wasn’t talking. Maybe aggressively speaking to someone on the phone would better describe the type of conversation he was having. 

It had already been an hour since we’d gotten here. An unexpected winter storm had shut down the city closing the main highway through town. I couldn’t help but wonder if this would have happened had I not been here. So far I seemed to have been bringing all the bad luck from California with me.

I walked up to the lobby desk to see how much progress they’d made. “Excuse me,” a young women looked up at me surprised. Although, the longer I stared at her the quicker I realized she wasn’t surprised, but that her French braid was tied a little too tight. “Do you know if the room is ready yet?”

She nodded her head and raced her fingers crossed the keyboard. “Not yet, ma’am. We’re still trying to find available rooms. It looks like most of them booked up just before you came in.”

I huffed as I leaned my elbows onto the desk defeated.

“I guess everyone's taking caution of this storm. We haven’t had any extreme weather like this in years.”

“You don’t say.” I rolled my eyes realizing that it was in fact my horrible luck that landed us in the position. “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem.” A soft smile stretched across her cheeks as she continued on with her work. 

I took my bag and went back to my arm chair. Nolan was sitting on a couch now on the other end of the hotel. He seemed to have relaxed a bit more than before. I took this opportunity to pull Twenty One Questions out of my purse. I skimmed through the first few pages and found the next question. 

     Do you ever practice what you’re going to say before talking on the phone? Why or why not?

The question couldn’t have been more perfect. After my last attempt of asking a random question I needed a good leeway into this next one. 

I glanced up when I heard the noise of shoes against the floor. Nolan had finished his conversation and was walking towards me. He sighed heavily as his body plopped down in the arm chair across from mine. I hurried to close my book and toss it back in my bag.

“Any updates?” He asked. 

“Not yet.” I shook my head. “Most of the rooms booked up before we got here.”

“Great.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose as he stared at his phone. “There isn’t another hotel for ten more miles. I doubt we’ll be able to leave now.” We both looked over our shoulders out the window. “It looks like it’s getting worse.”

Just then the young woman from the front desk called for our attention. “Excuse me, mister, your room is available now.”

“Room?” Nolan asked as he made his way to her. 

“Yes, I’m sorry we only have one room available at the moment. It’s a double occupancy room if that makes any difference.” Her brows furrowed with anticipation of Nolan’s reaction. 

“We need two rooms. One isn’t going to work.”

“Yes, but this is the last room we have available.” Her voice was becoming softer with each word. “We’re at full capacity for the night.”

Nolan closed his eyes for a couple of seconds before he turned to me. “Are you okay with sharing a room?” 

“I would prefer not to,” the expression on his face seemed exhausted. “But if it’s our only option.”

“Okay, here’s your key card. It’s on the fifth floor. Our elevators are out of service, so you’ll have to take the back stairwell up.”

Nolan and I exchanged a single glance. A simple act of kindness from his end was turning into a major regret, or at least I could assume it was. 

It took us a couple of minutes, but we finally made it up five flights of stairs with our overnight bags. I was embarrassingly out of breath. Looking over at Nolan the travel up didn’t seem to wind him as much. I made sure to stay a few steps behind him as I inhaled a deep breath to  bring my heart rate to a normal range. I was hoping Nolan wouldn’t turn around because this wasn’t a pretty sight. I really should have taken Celeste up on all those attempts of trying to get me to workout with her.

Our room wasn’t as big as I thought a double occupancy room would be. It was small and severely outdated. Nolan pulled the window curtains and a smoke cloud of dust erupted. We both coughed covering our mouths. 

“Do you mind if I open up the window for a bit?” He asked in between gasping breaths. I nodded my head trying hard not to open my mouth. 

He struggled at first, but then pulled the window all the way up. A gust of freezing air filled the room. My fingers crawled up from my mouth to covering my whole face. I reached down to grab my coat and threw it over my shoulders. 

“It took them over an hour to find us a room that looks like it hasn’t been used in this century.” Nolan mumbled. 

The sun had already set by the time we dusted out our room and closed the window. The cold air still lingered through the room and beneath my skin. I sat on my bed wrapped in layers of scarves and my blanket, as dirty as it might have been. We couldn’t get very far outside so we decided to order room service.

“I’ll have the rib eye steak, a side of french fries, a slice of chocolate cake, oh maybe I should order a Cesar salad to balance it out. Yeah, yeah, definitely add a Cesar salad.” Nolan turned to me. “What do you want?” He asked. My eyes were bulging out of their sockets realizing all of that food was just for him. 

“Just the chicken Alfredo is fine.”

Once he hung up the phone I debated on when I should bring up the next question. It almost seemed a bit ridiculous. What did this Alexander Nottingham guy think when he came up with these random questions. How was knowing when the last time Nolan sang or how he prepared for a phone call suppose to make him fall in love with me? 

“So, is everything alright?” I asked Nolan. He looked at me unsure. “You seemed a little stressed when you were on the phone earlier in the lobby.”

“Oh.” He brushed off my question and went back to whatever it was he was doing on his laptop. “Just business. You know how it goes.”

This was my chance to casually bring it up. “Do you ever practice what you’re going to say on the phone?” I tried not to look at him when I said it. I noticed him look up at me for a second and realize that the level of importance for the question wasn’t very high.

“I guess sometimes.” He shrugged.

“Like when?” 

He turned towards me completely this time leaning his chin on the palm of his hand. “Maybe when I’m talking to someone in a higher position than myself. That isn’t very often though.” His eyes looked up at me again. “Do you ever do that?”

I stayed quiet for a moment. “I guess If I know I’m going to be called for an interview.”

“What is it that you do again?”

I furrowed my brows suddenly remembered this morning at the diner when Nolan let it slip that he knew I was a writer. “I’m a writer, but how did you know that?”

“How did I know what?” He looked away.

“That I was a writer. I mean, it isn’t very obvious when someone is a writer.” I slung my legs over the bed and stared at him.

“I…I…” He stumbled on his words as he tried to figure out what to say. He shut his laptop and finally confessed. “When I found your car on the side of the road I tried tapping on the glass. You didn’t move so I tried opening the doors. The only one unlocked was the back door. A few of your things fell out, so I just looked over them to see if I could find anything out. You know, maybe some personal information in case I needed to call someone. The papers were some that you had written. Plus, all the books and the nagging questions. I figured you were a writer.”

“Nagging questions?” My eyebrows were half way hiked up. “I’m sorry I don’t just jump on road trips with random strangers.” I huffed as I crossed my arms.

“Well” Nolan shrugged. “We don’t exactly know each other and we’re in a hotel room together.”

“I could say the same about you.” My patience was wearing thin. “I can’t believe you opened up my car door and went through my things. Do you not understand how violating that is?” I grabbed my head as my thoughts spun around. “Oh my God. What am I doing here?”

“Okay, take it easy. I was just looking out for you.”

“Looking out for me? How do I know you didn’t do more than that? How do I know this wasn’t your plan all along? How do I know you're really taking me where you said you're taking me” I felt my breath becoming shorter with each realizing thought. “I need to get out of here.” I grabbed my bag and shuffled past Nolan.

He stood up trying to stop me. “Wait!” He held out his arm, but I ignored him. 

I flung the hotel door open and ran right into the bell hop’s tray of our food.