Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Thirteen (edited)

I rolled my eyes. "If you keep worrying, I'm going to have to slap you with this pamphlet."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a brochure on the back of the seat and rolled it up, lifting it threateningly.

"Vienna?"

"What?"

"You're about as threatening as a baby squirrel."

I frowned. "I know."

I unrolled the brochure and put it to good use. " 'European Couples Therapy, helping mend relationships since 2007.'" I read aloud. Then, my eyes widened as I did a double take, and Elliot did the same.

"Wait, what kind of tour are we on?" he said, staring blankly at me. 

I licked my lips and grinned foolishly, shoving the pamphlet away. "It's nothing."

"A Couples Therapy?" he echoed, his eyes widening. "Out of all the tour buses, we chose to sneak up on the one bus that helps middle-aged couples on the verge of divorce?" he whispered, lowering his voice. 

"They're not all middle-aged. We're here, remember?" I said teasingly, but I couldn't erase the irritation in his eyes.

"But we're not a couple, Vienna, and we're definitely not Zoe and Alfie."

I quickly defended, "Zoe and Alfie must have been a couple, and technically, we are them, for the time being. And hey, if it wasn't for me, we would've probably still been stuck in Tennessee." I saw a green sign up ahead, proudly declaring that we crossed the border into Arkansas.

"See?" I pointed a proud finger to the sign as it quickly whizzed by. "We've made enough progress to get here. And at what cost? Nothing."

Elliot was silent a moment, wondering whether or not to swallow his pride or mutter his thanks, none of which he did, by the way. After a pause, he whispered with a twisted, disgusted face, "So we have to pretend to be a couple now?"

My fist automatically connected with his shoulder in a punch. 

"Ow! I was just messing around!" Elliot pouted, rubbing his shoulder and exaggerating. 

"If I recalled, you kissed me under that basketball net, hotshot," I retorted. "Cooties."

"I was just teasing you," He bursts into an onslaught of soft chuckles, rubbing the side of his arm and leaning away from me. I stopped hitting him, reluctantly.

I suddenly felt a pair of eyes on me and sure enough, I was right. Across the aisle from us, a middle-aged couple looked on with pity at Elliot and I. "Oh, so young and already having troubles," the wife mumbled under her breath, shaking her head before saying, "Good thing you lovely blokes are on this tour!"

Elliot looked surprised, but being the wonderful speaker he is, he quickly snapped out of it. "Um, yes. We are so delightfully lucky to be on this tour with um, my lovely girlfriend, here." He gestured over to me, but the woman looked skeptical.

"I don't hear an accent from you, dear. Say, what part of England are you from?"

It didn't take a mad scientist to figure out that Elliot was panicking. Without a second thought, I interjected, faking a faker-than-plastic English accent. "Oh, I'm terribly sorry ma'am, but my... boyfriend... here, isn't from England. At least, he wasn't raised there. He was raised here, in the States, with English parents."

"Oh! My mistake, dearie," the woman kindly smiled, the wrinkles at her eyes deepening when she did so. She seemed about fifty or so, maybe sixty.

"Me and my husband here have been on this tour for the past three years. Lovely scenery in the Americas, don't you think? It's really good for the therapy...We've had a lot of ups and downs but this tour just comes with the best relationship therapists. Anyways, my name's Karen, and this here -" she pointed a stubby thumb to who I assumed was her sleeping husband - "is Harold."