“Well, I think I’m going to head upstairs and get changed so Hailey and I can lounge around and feast on room service,” I said, smiling.
“May I walk you upstairs to your room?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” I said, handing my mug to the bartender and grabbing my coat off the back of the chair.
Hailey had already gone upstairs, and the bar was starting to fill up, so I figured it was the perfect time to make my exit for the evening. We walked slowly across the marble floor and over to the elevators, talking about the time he spent in Denali teaching safety to the adventurous skiers out there. I thought about the bunny slope I had just been down and couldn’t even start to imagine just randomly skiing down something like that. However, the thought of seeing such an amazing place made me a little jealous.
“I would love to travel,” I said. “Alaska has always been on my list.”
“It truly is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been,” he said as we climbed into the elevator.
“Floor five,” I said, watching as he leaned over and pressed the button, the muscles in his arm tensing and then releasing.
“There was part of the trip where they took us ice fishing, and I actually saw a moose and a bear,” he said. “It was like being inside of a National Geographic film. I’d love to go back there sometime just as a tourist so I can really see the land.”
We got off the elevator and walked down the hall to my room. I stopped and turned toward him, smiling. I reached up and kissed him gently on the cheek and reached for the door handle.
“I had a really nice time,” I said. “Thank you for teaching me how to ski and then keeping me company.”
“Do you think that I could get your number?” he asked, with a strangely shy tone to his voice. “I mean, I’d love to take you to dinner while you are in town.”
“Well, I think that we should leave it up to fate,” I said with a smile. “When we run into each other again, we will know that is the perfect time to go out.”
With that, I walked into my room and shut the door, standing there with my head pressed against the wood and butterflies lighting up my chest. Wow. Just wow.
Chapter 11
Cameron
I stood there and watched as this captivating woman closed the door. While I would have loved to go inside and continue forward with our conversation and obviously more, I was okay with the fact that she was making this a little harder than most girls that I met. There was something about her that made me want to try harder. There was an innocence about her eyes that made me know that she was guarded, having been burned by this ex-boyfriend. Though I knew this was not about being long-term, I wasn’t against drawing this out past one date, and that was something completely new for me.
I stood there by her door for a little while, my body leaning against the wall and my eyes blankly staring down the hall. I was replaying every way that her lips moved as she talked about her life back home and her dreams for the future. She was incredibly intelligent, I could tell, but she didn’t rub it in people’s faces at all.
After about ten minutes, I decided that I should probably head back down. Not only was it slightly creepy that I was still standing there, but I knew that Glen would be waiting for me with some choice words on how I just dipped out on him and left him to clean up alone from the class. Hopefully, when I told him about how I was feeling, he would cut me some slack, playing on his whole “happily ever after” mentality. There wasn’t a girl I considered my happily ever after, but Bea had definitely caught my attention in a way that I had never experienced before. I had been traveling a long time and had met a lot of different girls, but there was something different about this one, something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
I turned and walked back toward the elevators, jumping onto one that a couple had just exited. The doors shut slowly, and I leaned up against the wall, crossing my arms in front of me and letting the smile that had been simmering below the surface finally come out in the open. When the doors opened, I got out and walked over to the bar where Glen was sitting, waiting for me to come back. He had actually walked in before I left, but he had sat down, seeing me talking to Bea, giving me a chance to talk to the girl I had been obsessing over for two days.
“Thanks for leaving me completely alone at the top of the mountain to put everything away,” he said, sipping his beer. “Was it worth it? I mean, I saw you talking to the girl.”
“Dude,” I said, letting out a deep breath, “It was more than worth it, no offense. There is something crazy special about that girl. She is a hell lot sexy, totally into me, but she is like a normal human being. She has dreams, aspirations, can hold a conversation, knows where Alaska is.”
“Wow,” Glen said, laughing. “That is way above the curve for ski resorts.”
“I know, right?”
“So, did you bang her?” he asked. “I mean, if you did, it must have been like the best ever because you were up there for like fifteen minutes at the most.”
“No, I did not bang her,” I said, laughing. “What are you like fifteen? We had a really good conversation, talked about like everything we could in that little span of time, and then I left her at her door.”
“You mean she turned you down,” he said, smiling.
“Yeah,” I
replied chuckling. “But I was strangely okay with it. She thinks that if fate wants us to go back out, we will run into each other again.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I feel like maybe it’s time that I started to manipulate fate a little bit,” I said, laughing. “I mean, I can’t just meet this girl and then leave it up to chance. It just can’t happen.”