Last night, I had trouble falling asleep. In a practical sense, traveling with Blake is a no-brainer. Ever since I arrived in Vancouver on my own, I've been secretly craving someone to share this adventure with. When I clicked with Esther and Colin on the bus trip, that was a bonus. After dropping them off at the airport, I felt a bit lost and disoriented.

Having Blake rescue me from the side of the road, having him refuse to leave me at the murder hotel, even just staring at him across the common area last night as we worked out whether traveling together was a good idea have all contributed to this low-level anxiety in me that I'll end up falling in love with him and ruining everything. 

Maybe the falling in love wouldn't ruin everything, but the inevitable falling out of love would. I wasn't kidding when I said five and a half months would rival most of my romantic relationships. My attention span is intense and fleeting.

The next morning, the smell of coffee seeps under my door while I'm still trying to gather my thoughts. Blake has been up for a while. I've heard him come in and out of the hotel suite, and now he seems to be puttering around the kitchenette. Meanwhile, I'm in here stalling while I slowly repack my things.

Go out. Say yes. Set firm ground rules.

When I open my bedroom door, there's a map laid out on the coffee table, and Blake is leaning against the counter, a bowl of fruit beside him and a cup of coffee in his hand. He's in shorts and a light green T-shirt, and his dark, shaggy hair is still damp from a shower.

"I picked up a few groceries," he says. "Oatmeal for breakfast, if you want it." He lifts the bowl beside him. "Some berries."

That's exactly what I've eaten for breakfast every morning if the motel we were at had it. "What kind of oatmeal?" I ask, stomach grumbling. Even though I ate every last bite of the Bannock and elk stew, I never really recovered from missing lunch yesterday.

"Only the best," he says. "Maple and brown sugar." From the small fridge beside him, he plucks out a tiny jug of maple syrup. "Extra maple."

My heart melts. This is literally my dream breakfast. "This is amazing," I say, and I get a little choked up at his kindness. "Is this—do you normally eat this?"

"I'm not a picky eater," he says. "Not much I won't eat or try." He sets down his coffee and picks up his bowl of oatmeal from behind him, spooning a large bite into his mouth.

Gorgeous and thoughtful. I'm in really big trouble. My ground rules are going to have to be epic. Legendary. Unbreakably firm. Haul out some big ass "no trespassing" signs and hang them all over him. Because I have ideas, and those ideas are bad, bad, bad.

"You okay?" Blake asks, bending slightly to catch my gaze.

"Yeah. Yeah. I'm good. So good." I mix the oatmeal and put it in the microwave. "There's just, like, one thing I should mention before we decide whether we should travel together."

He scrapes the last of his oatmeal from his bowl and nods for me to continue.

"I'm going to need you to not be so nice."

"Uh, okay?" He gives me a confused look and then laughs a little.

"I have this habit—this really bad habit—of falling in love so hard and so fast and then having it fall apart equally hard and fast. That's all on me." I point to my chest. "And I realize that any feelings I develop would be totally one sided, but if we're going to travel together for five and a half months, I don't want to ruin it. We need very clear boundaries because I don't want this trip to be about me doing something stupid... Again."

"Right." He scoops up his coffee, takes a long sip, and then he mixes himself more oatmeal while I stir maple syrup and berries into mine.

He's probably regretting all his life choices right now. Picks up his seatmate from the side of the road, one he clearly barely tolerated, invites her to travel with him, only to realize she's emotionally unstable, can't stop herself from falling in love with people.

"If you've changed your mind—"

"I haven't." He plucks his bowl out of the microwave and mixes it, but he doesn't add any words of comfort to his statement.

We eat, both of us standing up in the kitchenette, with me sneaking furtive glances at him, trying to decide what he's thinking.

There's already soapy water in the sink, and he sets his bowl in it, finished before I am.

"At the risk of you falling at my feet," he says, "there's coffee in the pot if you want it."

"Blake! Are you seriously teasing me right now?" I grab a mug from the cupboard near the sink, and I pour the coffee in.

"You'd rather I took it all seriously?" He finishes his coffee and slots it into the soapy water too.

"Serious enough," I say. "I am serious."

"We'll set the ground rules you want. I'll go back to being a giant asshole, and we'll be fine."

That makes me laugh. "Giant is a bit of a stretch."

"Just a regular sized asshole then."

"A warthog sized asshole," I say, unable to resist.

"Did you look that up?" His green-blue eyes spark with mischief.

"Of course. Did you?"

"Didn't need to. I saw the episode where Anthony Bourdain ate it. Absolutely vile. The potential for serious illness and hospitalization..."

"He really held it together in the moment, but I did read he got a parasite."

"As expected."

We're grinning at each other. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ground rules. The stoic guy who barely tolerated me needs to make a reappearance. Yesterday was a turning point, and I'm not sure I like where it's turned.

"Do you think we should write these rules down?" I ask, going to the desk area to search for the customary pen and paper. When I find it, I hold it up.

"I have a good memory," he says, coming to where the couch and desk chair reside, the coffee table between us.

"I do not," I say. "That's not true. I have a convenient memory." I roll the chair over to the coffee table, and I slap the tiny pad of paper down. Across the top I write, Rules for Platonic Travel.

"Is number one "don't be kind to Gwen"?"

I scrawl "no mutual kindness" across the page. Even though he's trying to tease me about that, I'm serious.

"You can be kind to me," he says, leaning back on the couch and crossing his arms. "I don't mind."

"Nope," I say, popping my P. Next I write, no sex or sexual contact of any kind.

"That's a given," he says.

Though it honestly makes me a bit sad to write it. When I first met him, I thought he was prime for love 'em and leave 'em. Sprawled on the couch opposite me, he's no less sexy than he was sitting in silence on the bus or casually leaning against the kitchen counter. 

He's fit, and tall, and broad, and whatever the deal is with the scar above his pretty eyes, it adds the tiniest bit of danger. He is the epitome of temptation. If I saw his photo on social media, I'd be like, "Yes, please, I will order that."

No shared beds. I write that next because I clearly have issues.

"But hotel rooms are fine?" He rests his arm across the back of the couch.

"Pooling our resources, right? Your gold status is a resource." I give him a wink.

At each location, we engage in our own activities. That's one I'm sure he won't object to.

"We're sharing a vehicle and a hotel room, but nothing else?" he sits forward with his elbows on his knees to peer at my list.

"We probably wouldn't even want to do the same things," I say.

He glances up at me, and I realize how close we are now that he's sat forward to read the list and I'm leaning over it. He smells like peppermint, and I wonder whether that's his cologne or body wash or something else. I never noticed it on the bus, but I like it. I sit back, and I wiggle the pen.

"Meals?" he asks.

"Together when traveling, otherwise on our own at destinations." I add that to the list. "Anything you want as a boundary or ground rule?"

He shakes his head and leans back again. "I don't really think we need the list, so you can put whatever you want on it."

"But you'll honor it, right?" I give him the side-eye. Obviously he's not worried about falling in love with me. He seems to be immune from my normal charm, but I am already in lust with him.

"I have no issues with your list, Gwen."

It's a bit of a sharp response, but I did ask him to stop being nice to me. I sigh. This actually might be really hard.

"Can we plan the trip now? You can add more to your list as we figure out what we're doing and when."

"Sure." I move my paper off the map. "So, where are we?"

Blake chuckles and points to Prince George on the map. "Here, and in five and a half months, we want to be here." He points on the other side of the country at an island. "I can use my phone's GPS for routes, but we need to pick destinations and durations. Where? How long? I have the truck for the whole trip."

"Probably would have been cheaper to buy a used vehicle and then resell it at the end instead of all these rental costs."

"Look at you being thrifty," he says.

"Okay," I say, ignoring his teasing to dig my phone out of my back pocket and then logging into the hotel wi-fi. "Routes."

Blake produces a highlighter and a pencil from beside him on the couch, and when I meet his gaze across the map, he gives me a wry smile. "I like to be prepared."

It's sort of adorable how organized he is this morning, and it makes me a tad excited for planning the next few months. Before I got here, I was sure the secret to happiness, to discovering who I wanted to be, was to relive parts of my youth. 

Maybe the secret is to embrace whoever I've become or am becoming. I don't know. But sitting here across the coffee table with Blake, a map of Canada between us, I feel like I've somehow stumbled onto the right path.

Three hours later, Blake has called to get us a late check out, and we're still waist deep in planning, but I'm surprised how much he knows about his country whether it's which route to take or what we should see along our way.

"Should we stay here another night?" I ask.

"I don't know. How many of your rules will that break?" He tips his chin at my list which is now five pages long. Each time we planned something on the trip, another place to put a boundary occurred to me.

"None," I say.

"What was it you said about your memory being convenient earlier?"

I give his bicep a light tap with my fingers, and the gesture, meant to scold, sends a zing through my fingers.

"No physical contact is definitely a rule," he says, glancing at where I just touched him. "Now broken."

"Oh, my god. Please. Stop." I laugh. "We're nowhere close to having it all planned, and that's what you want, right? I can pay for the hotel tonight."

He gives me a withering glare as he picks up the phone from its perch beside him. After he confirms with the front desk that we can stay for another night, he sets the receiver back in its cradle.

"You can pay for food. We missed lunch, and the rest of those berries we split only went so far. Order a pizza or something."

"I can pay for decent food. It doesn't have to be fast food."

"Pizza slice in one hand and the phone in the other to keep planning." He demonstrates. "It makes good economical and practical sense."

"Okay, fine," I say, and I find the best pizza place in Prince George that delivers. We debate pizza toppings and crust styles and find we are, of course, opposites, so I order two pizzas.

"Technically, our inability to agree helps with rule number..." He peers over at my lists. "Can you turn that one over? I can't find the right one."

"Yeah, okay. I get your point. It's a long list."

"Insanely long." He twirls the pencil across his knuckles. "It was rule number twenty-five. No shared food, which was why I had to bring two bowls for the berries and create twice the dishes."

"I said I'd wash them." I lean back and cross my legs.

His eyes sweep over me for a beat, an awareness heating, and the briefest spark jumps between us. No. No. No sparks.

Then he grabs his phone off the coffee table, and I wonder if the spark was all me. It's not normally all me, but Blake is nothing like the guys I've dated. They're usually outgoing and a bit outlandish. Not reserved and a bit prickly.

"Where were we?" he asks. "Northern Ontario?"

"Yeah," I agree. "That's where we're at."

The pizza arrives and we eat it while continuing to plan routes, timelines, and things to see. In total, we end up with thirty-one stops of varying lengths that crosses the rest of Canada. I also learn that St. Anthony, where Blake's sister is getting married, is on the opposite side of Newfoundland to where I'm flying out. 

He offers to arrange some things in Newfoundland with some of his friends before I fly out, since he'll be busy with the wedding. I tap number one on my list of rules with the end of my pen as a reminder, and he just grins.

Now that it's just the two of us, it's almost like he's a different person.

When we're finally done, I toss the pen on top of the map before stretching. "Bed?"

"I would make a joke here, but that would violate rule number forty-seven. No sexual innuendos."

I flip through my pages, and sure enough, that rule is number forty-seven. Throughout our day, he's teased me about my list so many times I've lost count. He knows the items better than me, seems to have instantly memorized them. 

Doesn't help that I find his behavior endearing rather than aggravating. I'd tell him that, but I think it would only encourage him to keep doing it and then maybe I would find it annoying.

Does that mean I should tell him? Why can't he just go back to being the silent hulk of a man who I thought vaguely despised me? This trip would be so much easier if he hadn't turned out to be somewhat charming.

Rather than answering him and violating rule number forty-nine—no banter of any sort—I gather my stuff and head toward my room.

"Bright and early, Johnston," Blake says from the couch. "If we want to beat the crowds in Jasper."

"Got it," I say, shutting the door to my room and then leaning against it.

If I'm lucky, I'll make it through all the stages of a relationship without Blake even noticing. Lust, infatuation, love, annoyance, intolerance, goodbye. Six stages. Five and a half months. 

By my calculations, if I can stretch out each stage by refusing to give into them, I'll be right on schedule to say goodbye to Blake in November, probably eager to get on the plane, get on with my life, whatever I decide to do. 

My feelings for him, undiscovered and unexplored. I love it when I make smart choices. 

If you've been following along with my trip in my Instagram Stories (million.wendy) you'll have seen everything I've been up to while on vacation. Luckily I had a few chapters banked because there hasn't been much writing time. I'm home Monday, but we have a few other summer-y things on the go next week too. After two and a half years of not much going on, it's strange to be so busy again.

Before you go, hit the star. 

Update: Friday

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