Worse for Hope- Book #2 in the WF Series

Chapter 32: Friendly

✿Bethane's POV:✿

We've been on the road for two hours now, and I Have Nothing by Whitney Houston is on full volume with me and Rider singing along. Nobody is with us on this road that we're taking, so I don't feel weird or uncomfortable singing out loud. I don't even remember how we started making every song a duet. All I remember is that Rider put the music on full blast and kept shoving his hand microphone in my face so I gave in after a while of moving it away.

"Look at you, finally being fun," Rider says like it's never happened before after the song is over.

"I can be fun," I defend myself, offended by his statement.

"Oh, for sure. Because working on Thanksgiving break sounds like the most fun to me," he fakes his enthusiasm to taunt me.

"I like to work." I shrug.

He looks over at me to observe my face.

"So you're a workaholic?" he summarizes.

"I just like to get my mind on completing a task."

"You mean, focusing on one thing rather than another."

"Exactly!"

I'm a little surprised every time Rider says something that sounds unlike him. For someone who makes jokes for a living, he sure has some wisdom inside of him. I know that all of our past was a lie, but I'll never forget what he told me on the Ferris Wheel.

'Being here doesn't mean you're happy. It just means you're going through every day pretending to be something you're not.'

I hung onto those words every day because they actually meant something to me. I doubt he even remembers them though, and even if he does, I don't think they were that important to him anyway.

As I think about that, my mood changes a little and I begin to sink back into my seat.

"You think people should take the roller coaster cameras and put them at the DMV?" he suggests, making me smile a little.

"It would help the quality."

"Let me see your driver's license picture," he encourages, and immediately I shake my head no. "Oh come on, how bad could it be?"

"Bad," I leave it at that because it's the truth.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he offers with that boyish grin that could make anyone melt.

I contemplate it because although I want to see his picture, I don't want to show mine. It was a humid day so my hair was stuck up a little and the camera made my dark circles look horrible, so it was basically an example of what I would look like in The Walking Dead.

Trust me, no one wants to see it.

I reach into my bag since my curiosity is bigger than the Eiffel Tower, and he reaches into the little compartment to pull his wallet out. We both hand over our pictures and examine them at the red light.

Rider's picture surprisingly looks attractive rather than bad. His hair is slightly messy and he isn't smiling a lot so he looks a little more serious. Oddly, that makes my body tingle.

Stop it.

"You look like the lion from Avatar," he says, and I choke on a laugh immediately.

"What lion from Avatar?" I ask with another laugh coming up my throat.

"You know, the one where there was a lion and he got held up but then taken by an evil mermaid," he mixes movies up, and I'm not going to lie, I missed this part of him.