A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter thirty-nine

t h i r t y - n i n e

*

It’s hard to tear ourselves away from the Golden Gate Bridge viewing spot, especially when the weather is so perfect – it may be hot and slightly muggy thanks to the foggy sky, but there’s a delicious breeze coming off the water for the first time since San Diego – but eventually, we have to move on.

Sam has some admin to do, and we have luggage to drop off and a whole new city to explore, so we reluctantly pile back into the van and exchange the waterfront views for the steep, crowded streets that carry us to our city centre hotel. It’s not long since Las Vegas, the last time we stayed in rooms rather than tents, but so much has changed since then that it feels so much more significant now.

It’s a huge hotel, hundreds of rooms sprawling over twenty-one floors, and we’re right at the top. The eight of us pile into the lift, leaving Sam on his phone at the front desk, and anticipation builds until we tumble out and Arjun unlocks our door, which is right next to Carrie and Ade’s room.

There was some switching around of partners when Sam doled out the keys. It was pretty obvious Carrie and Ade would be sharing, but when Brannan headed over to Young-mi and promised that he’s quiet and respectful, Kristin butted in and told him that he’d be sharing with her, not Young-mi.

Which means that tonight, Young-mi’s sharing with Klara.

I manage to hold onto my surprise until I’m shut away in my room with Arjun and I drop my bag with a heavy thud, and a delayed gasp of shock.

“Oh. My. God. Are they hooking up?”

“That girl,” Arjun says with a grin as he flops onto one of two double beds, “is a lot wilder than I thought. I was not expecting this side of her.”

“Me neither. Wow. She’s gone from never been kissed to sharing a room with a very adventurous Swiss twin in, like, a day.”

Arjun laughs. I drop onto the bed next to him with a sigh and he says, “Good for her. She knows exactly what she wants, I guess.” He rolls onto his side to face me, resting his cheek on his arm. “You know, if we had Klara’s balls, we’d have got here a lot sooner.” 

“Klara definitely won the balls lottery,” I say, still admiring the confidence and fierce brazenness with which she offered herself to Young-mi, like it’s no biggie. “Next to her, I feel like I haven’t earned my testicles.”

Arjun’s face creases with laughter and he drops onto his back with a mutter of, “Fucking hell, March.” He tuts to himself and says, “Don’t worry. You deserve your balls.”

“Thanks. I’m quite fond of them,” I say.

“Mmm. Me too.”

He flips onto his front and lifts himself up on his elbows so he’s looming over me, those dark eyes so alluring. One hand goes to my chest and I think he’s about to kiss me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “This might be too much too soon, and please tell me if it is, but tonight ... I think that maybe I’d like to make full use of us having our own room.”

The cogs of my mind churn out of control to piece together what he’s saying, and what he’s not saying, and when I reach a conclusion I blurt out, “You want to have sex?”

“I was going for a slightly more subtle approach,” he says, “but ... yes. If you want to. I, uh, well, I obviously have zero experience and I could spend forever overthinking it and worrying about it, or I could ... not.”

I’m nodding along fast, messing up my hair against the pillow and trying to control my out-of-control pulse. There’s no use in bothering, though. It’s a runaway train, hurtling down the tracks with a very specific destination in mind. It takes a lot to rein in my overflowing thoughts and not splatter him with word vomit, managing instead to simply say, “Yes.”