shopping on Beverly Hills Boulevard, looking for celebrities (of which we found none) and taking pictures of the Hollywood sign, I kind of just want something that reminds me of home. Luckily, Jace agrees and we hit up the first McDonald’s we find on the way back to the airport.
I haven’t told him about what I looked up on the tablet last night. As far as he knows, neither one of us have been checking social media at all. After all, this is our honeymoon. We almost didn’t bring the tablet at all, but then Jace got worried that he might have some work emails or something urgent come up, so we brought it just in case.
Not only had I stayed up later than Jace to snoop online, I’d also woken up about an hour earlier than he did. I used this time to stare at the gorgeous silk canopy above our heads and practice the art of telling myself to be cool. Okay, maybe it wasn’t as lame as that sounds, but I just focused on good thoughts and tried to push out all of the bad things I’d read online, things like being called a skank and ugly. I think it helped a little.
And now as I walk into McDonald’s with Jace by my side, I glance over at him for the millionth time today and smile. He is all mine. He doesn’t think I’m a skank or ugly. He thinks the world of me. Yeah, maybe he’s messed up in the head for thinking that and maybe I totally don’t deserve him, but guess what, bitches online? I got him!
“What’s that look for?” Jace asks, nudging me in the ribs with his elbow. “Are you that obsessed with McDonald’s?
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
He shakes his head and stares at me, contemplating something. “I don’t know…for a second there you looked like…well like you were going to kick some ass. And it was when you were looking at the menu, so...yeah, you’re weird.”
I laugh. “I wasn’t looking at the menu like that, I was just thinking those things to my head.”
“And what thoughts are in your head?” he asks, bumping into me in this purposefully annoying way that he does while we stand in line behind an older woman.
I shrug. “You know. Thoughts.”
“Aww, come on! I wanna know.” With record speed, he juts out his bottom lip as if he was a gold medalist in the game of puppy faces.
I roll my eyes and step forward in line. It’s our turn to order, which makes this even more fun because now he can suffer while he waits to find out what I was thinking. I order a coffee, two hash browns, a set of hotcakes and then a third hash brown for good measure. What can I say? I’m eating for two now and I won’t let the opportunity to eat pass me by.
Jace orders the biggest breakfast meal they have and he doesn’t say a word about my embarrassingly huge food order and it makes me love him even more. When we sit down to eat, I shove half a hash brown in my mouth and roll my eyes back at how good it is. “Gourmet five-star restaurant food is good and all, but nothing beats this kind of comfort food.”
“Truth,” Jace says with a nod. “Although your lazy nachos are pretty good, too.”
Lazy nachos are what I call one of my most embarrassing snack food concoctions. It’s where I fill a plate with tortilla chips, then dump a bunch of shredded cheese on top and nuke it all in the microwave for thirty seconds. It’s about as lazy and pathetic as you can get, but as a teenager with a hungry stomach and zero cooking skills, it’s a lifesaver.
I was so embarrassed the first time Jace came over and caught me making some. I almost left them in the microwave until he left, but of course, he smelled them and opened the microwave himself. Then, not only did he not make fun of me, he gave me a tip: if you use a glass plate instead of a paper plate, then the cheese won’t stick to the paper and you get to eat more of it.
Yep. He’s a keeper.
“Sorry I’m eating such an embarrassingly huge amount of food,” I say sheepishly, as I start in on my second hash brown and open the