Chapter Fourteen

“Buy me these chips?” Molly asked Emma.

“Why should I?”

“Because it’s my birthday.”

“Kate literally just gave you a whole bunch of screenwriting books. The gift wrapping is still on the backseat of the van.”

“So? They weren’t from you, they were from Kate. Don’t be stingy.”

“The books were from all of us, right Kate?”

Distracted by the encounter evolving outside the service-station convenience store, Kate tore her gaze from the window and glanced over the snack shelf at the girls. “It was from Tilly and me,” she murmured, returning her attention to Tilly by the van, deep in conversation with a British tourist who had asked for route advice. Kate squinted in the morning sun as she watched Tilly throw her head back in laughter at whatever he had said. What was so funny about the Great Ocean Road? Kate lowered her sunglasses and stared as Hugh Grant leaned a hand against the beam of the petrol bowser, grinning as Tilly talked animatedly.

At least she’s talkative with some people, Kate mused bitterly as she stepped further up in line to pay. Tilly had been incredibly quiet that morning when she’d returned from the school to pack the car with Kate. The tension was thick, the memory of last night’s encounter still raw. Kate had offered to forget it, but that was proving impossible. Since they’d taken the causeway out of Lords that morning, twice she had caught Tilly chancing glances across the front seat when she thought she wasn’t looking. Tilly seemed torn between wanting to ignore what had happened and wanting to acknowledge it, and knowing that only made it harder for Kate to resist the hope that bubbled away at the surface of her longing.

Bristling with irritation, Kate pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Where are Grace and Lexi?” Kate asked the other girls.

Molly looked up from a magazine she had pried from the rack. “I think they already went back to the van.”

“Good,” Kate said. “I’m going to pay for the petrol and go to the restroom. Hurry up and get something if you want it.” After paying, Kate cast one last glance outside before she pushed the door open to the restroom, stepping past a woman on her way out.

The whistle of the hand dryer was loud as Kate latched the cubicle door behind her.

A toilet flushed, a cubicle opened. Another flush. Just as she reached for her own flush, Grace’s voice echoed across the tiles. “Kate’s got it bad for Tilly, hey?”

Her hand froze in midair, hovering above the flush as her entire body rushed with fierce and sudden embarrassment.

Lexi’s cubicle door clicked loudly as it opened. “I know, right?”

“I don’t know why,” Grace pondered. “Maybe Kate’s just lonely on Lords.” A tap turned on, then another. “Like, if I were a lesbian, I wouldn’t be into someone like Tilly. I’d be into Kate, though. Maybe. But Tilly? I mean, she’s the sweetest thing on the planet, but she’s not really hot. Kate must be hella desperate.”