Gilded Gold ⚭ NH

08 | Gold Digger

181 Days Until

"How much longer?"

Niall pinched the bridge of his nose. They were only an hour into the trip to Gunstock Mountain and already Tallulah was driving him up the wall. He sat in the passenger seat next to Wes behind the wheel, but it felt like the only person in the car with him was Lulu for as much as she liked to talk. He had been fine with it for the first half hour; even entertained with her wild stories when she was in school, but now she had run out of tales and resulted in complaining – about how tired she was and how sore her ass was.

Looking in the rearview mirror, he caught Emma's eyes. She sat in the way back of the SUV, squeezed between Gino and about a million suitcases that wouldn't fit in the trunk. She smiled at him sheepishly, looking rather small next to Gino's build. Niall felt bad. He had wanted to sit next to her, mainly because she wasn't good with new people, but she seemed to be doing fine. It helped that Tallulah was taking up most of the attention in the car.

"I swear we've been in this cramped compartment of a vehicle for twelve hours," she groaned for the fifth time in ten minutes.

"If you want, you can watch something on my phone, Lulu" Jade offered kindly. "I don't have much data left but you can use what I have."

Tallulah smiled at her. "That's sweet, but I don't want you use what little you have. I just want to get out of this damn car."

Right then, Niall's phone buzzed with an incoming FaceTime from Libby.

"What's up, Lib?" He asked when he answered the call

"I hate when you call me that. It sounds like bib," she scrawled.

"I can start calling you Bib from now on, if you like?" Niall questioned with a lopsided smile.

Libby only glared at him. "I'm in no mood for this. I hope your trip is going a lot better than mine. Carson and Gracie have switched from car game to car game the moment we got on the road and it's-"

She didn't have to explain further. Niall and everyone else in the SUV could hear exactly what was going on.

"-literally nothing else that's blue!" Gracie was shouting. From behind Libby's shoulder, Niall could see her in the seat, seatbelt stretching tight against her chest as she leaned across the middle where Ian was sitting and pointed a finger at Carson on Ian's other side. "Are you messing with me? You don't actually have anything that's blue, do you!?"

"I do, too! You just suck at this game!" Carson insulted angrily.

The car they were in jerked suddenly, slamming everyone against the side. "If you don't shut up right now, I won't hesitate to drive off this road and into the ditch!"

The car went silent. Libby looked back at the phone. "As you can see, Mack is taking this very well."

Then she moved the phone so it was facing Mack who had both white knuckle grips on the wheel, jaw set and eyes on the road. When she looked over at Libby behind the phone, her dark eyes were on fire. It made Niall laugh. Mack had serious road-rage, it was one of the many reasons why he wanted to be in the other car instead of the one she was going to be driving. It looked like the rage also extended to the interior of the car, as well.

"Die," was all she said to her best friend, which only made Libby bust out laughing.

"I'm hungry," Jade said from the seat behind Niall. "Do we have any more snacks?"

"I think there's granola bars in my bag, if Emma doesn't mind grabbing one for you since she's sitting right next to it," Wes said. And then he drew in a breath and grabbed the phone out from Niall's hand.