It must be… Well. I can’t remember the last time I took more than a few hours off in the outside world.
It’s usually a chore, and the only time I dust off my car and take it for a drive.
Today, I wish I’d had it washed and cleaned up a little, but Katelyn doesn’t seem to mind.
“It looks like a classic, is it?” she asks as I hold the door open for her.
I wouldn’t have picked her for a car enthusiast, but I’m not much of one either. I just know what I like.
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I confess, pulling out of the parking garage and making for the main gates of the campus, eager to put some miles between us and this place for a while.
“What about your computer?” she asks, sounding concerned. “Didn’t you say you had some budget thingy to take care of before Tuesday morning?”
I laugh softly to myself.
If I ever needed someone to remind me of stuff I’d choose Katelyn Webster. Hell, I wished I’d met her years ago, might’ve saved me a whole lot of time.
“I do,” I tell her in a low voice. “But I think I should be able to access that stuff from any computer, am I right?” I ask, not totally convinced until I see her nod.
“Anyway, today is about us. About you,” I remind us both, and we drive in silence for a while, until the long, tree-lined avenue leading up to the campus grounds gives way to busier streets that head towards town.
“So, what sort of car is it?” she finally asks, having waited for me to talk it up like a guy should.
“Uh… It’s a Dodge, I know that much,” I confess, showing how little I really know about cars myself. “And it needs a wash. Mind if I just run it through a carwash?”
She readily agrees, and I pulling up to the first gas station with a carwash, feed some bills into the slot and drive through as we make sure the windows are up, waiting for the machine to do all the work.
“I try to keep it clean,” I murmur, feeling the space between us, knowing we have at least a few minutes alone.
No, Wes. Save it. Learn to just be with her doing other stuff. You don’t have to have her breasts in your mouth every moment of the day.
I may not need to, but I certainly want to.
“So…” she starts to say, her eyes a bit of a question.
I know she wants to know where we’re going and to be honest I haven’t decided yet.
“We can go wherever you want,” I tell her. “I may as well tell you, I do have a place of my own, several really, but I thought we could go someplace nice. Somewhere special.”
“You have an apartment off campus too?” she asks, wide-eyed with a look of someone who’s impressed.
“It’s somewhere to stay,” I mumble. “A bit like this car though probably needs a little TLC.”
She opens her mouth to say something but changes her mind.
We’re not going anywhere just yet so I want to hear it. “What?” I ask her, “What were you gonna say?”
She shakes her head. “It’s silly, don’t worry about it,”
I give her a firm look and cock my brow. “Katelyn.”
“I was just gonna suggest we do both, but like I said that’s silly. I’ll go where you wanna go, I’m not fussy.”
“Well, I want it to be somewhere special,” I volunteer, opting for some royal treatment for my queen.
And I don’t want her to feel pressured, either. I remind her it’s as slow or as fast as she wants to go.
“I know, Wes,” she says softly. “And thanks for being so understanding,” she adds.
“What did you have planned this weekend?” I ask her, changing the subject a little and remembering how little she’s really told me about what it is she actually does.
She blushes and looks down at her lap.
“To tell you the truth, it seems stupid now,” she says.
“Why?” I ask her.
“Because this is just way better, that’s why,” she says and I can tell she wants to leave it at that.
When I recall how I’m supposed to be hunched over a computer, punching out a budget proposal, I feel myself agreeing with her more than ever.
“This is way better, isn’t it?”
My first attempt at landing a five star suite for my queen doesn’t go so well.
They’re booked solid because of the extended weekend and I almost lose my temper, which doesn’t make matters any better.
“Might I suggest The Excelsior Hotel?” the concierge tells me, looking down his glasses at me, which he has to point looking up on account of my height.
Katelyn’s got the patience of a saint, and by the time I do get us a suite in a different hotel, I’m so wound up it takes a minute for me to remember why I’m here, why this is so special.