Traveler by L.E. DeLano (book suggestions .txt) 📕

guy is wearing a vivid red sweatshirt and a neon-green hat and has been bugging us at five-minute intervals for the last half hour. Clearly he’s too concerned with candy to worry much about fashion. I smile apologetically.

“Any minute now,” I promise, silently vowing to myself I will never volunteer for this stuff again, no matter how pathetically Ben begs me to.

“You said that last time I asked,” the guy persists.

“You can buy candy next door at the dollar store, you know,” Ben points out.

“They don’t have Giant Pixy Stix,” the guy gripes, then lumbers off.

Ben leans in and lowers his voice.

“If he asks me one more time…”

“Be nice,” I say. “We’ve been promising him five minutes for half an hour now.”

“How’d we get talked into this, anyway?” he complains.

I look over at him with raised brows. “You volunteered.”

“Why in hell did I do that?”

“You volunteered both of us,” I add. Then I drop my voice in pitch to mimic him. “Mr. Fielding? Jessa and I can take the first shift. We don’t have anything better to do. Like homework. Or a social life, in general.”

“I’m not enough social life for you?”

I give him a look and check my phone for the time once more.

“I’m only kidding you, St. Clair.” He reaches out to playfully punch my arm. “If you had somewhere else to be, you could have told me. I’d’ve picked a different shift.”

“What if somewhere else to be was ‘anywhere but here’?” I grumble. “This chair is hard. And cold. It’s messing with my concentration.”

I look back down at my list and close my eyes tight, pulling my dream guy’s face up once more in my memory. There’s a weariness to him. Like he’s seen too much that he shouldn’t have seen, but at the same time he’s not one to wallow. I like characters like that. The ones who just keep going.

He’s got a rough edge, this guy. I can feel his desperation, see the pain on his face as my hand slips through his fingers.

I imagine his green eyes wide with horror as I fall away from him. I see him punch the bar on the ski lift. His hands fist in his hair and—

I’m about to put my pen back on the paper again and work through the scenario when Ben bumps my elbow as he’s putting his phone away, sending the pen scratching across the paper, leaving a jagged line across one of my paragraphs.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” he says apologetically. I start to close my journal but find Ben’s hand in the way.

“What is this, anyway?” he asks. “Talk to me. I’m bored.”

I push his hand aside, closing the journal.

“It’s nothing. Just a list.”

“Dark hair? Green eyes?” He looks at me curiously. “Anybody I know?”

“No. It’s stupid. Just something for creative writing class.”

“You can always write about me. I’ll even model for you.” He flexes his bicep.

“Impressive. But I’m afraid I’d never do justice to that physique.”

“So write about my outstanding knowledge and application of vocabulary,” he suggests.

You’d never know Ben was such a nerd. He’s over six feet, muscular but not bulky, with raven hair and deep-brown eyes. Basically he’s the epitome of “tall, dark, and handsome.” His mother is native Hawaiian, and Ben has that great allover tan that came with his islander heritage.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promise. “You can star in my next novel—the one that will be published after I die on a cold metal chair.”

“Well, the candy is supposedly on its way, courtesy of the brother of a friend of Mr. Fielding’s.”

“That’s not helping us,” I fume. “We’ve got people staring at us with hunger in their eyes, and that’s not because I’m looking hot today. They need their chocolate.”

“Speaking of hunger … you wanna hit Mugsy’s after this?”

“Can’t today. I have to get right home. I promised Danny I’d help him make some of the decorations for the party at the library next week, and I have to get that translation project done for Spanish.”

“Did he get Volunteer of the Year again?”

“Yes, but this is the library’s birthday party. Fifty years. Which is only half as long as we’ve been sitting at this table.”

He leans back on his chair, tilting dangerously on the uneven concrete. “I’m fixing to leave and grab McDonald’s if they don’t show up soon. I was planning on eating candy for dinner, but I guess that’s a bust.”

I can’t help but smile. Ben always uses that phrase. He’s fixing to go or fixing to do stuff all the time.

“Candy isn’t dinner,” I remind him. “How about Mugsy’s tomorrow after school?”

“Can’t. I’ve got chorus rehearsal.”

“Ah yes,” I sigh. “Bringing badly needed culture and excitement to our small-town lives.”

“It’s just chorus.” He plays absently with the zipper on his hoodie, zipping it back and forth. “Now if I was a drummer…”

“Too ordinary.”

“Girls like ordinary,” he says.

“Ordinary girls like ordinary,” I correct him. “You can aim higher.”

I can tell he’s pleased with my backhanded compliment.

“Okay,” he says with a grin. “I’ll test the next one by making her sit on a cold metal chair for hours. She has to be up to the challenge.”

“You’ll have a hard time replacing me,” I say. “I think I’m frozen to the seat. You’ll have to chip me out of here.”

He reaches for my hand and clasps it, pulling it up to his chest. “I’ll stay by your side through the bleak, cold winter. I’ll even sing to you. Ninety-nine candy bars on the wall, ninety-nine candy bars…,” he sings. I pull my hand away, laughing.

“Great. Now everybody’s looking at us.”

“Let ’em look,” he says. “Maybe I should grow out my hair more.” His fingers comb through it. “It’s easier short, but if I’m going to join a boy band that I’ll eventually up and leave for my solo career, I need a better look.”

“Thought you were going to go pro in soccer.”

“That was last week. Keep up.”

“No, you were a cultural anthropologist last week.”

“I’m investigating all my options,” he says. “I’ll