Seatmate

Gwen has five hours and ten minutes to get from Boston to New York City before a once-in-a-lifetime professional opportunity slips away. Her only option is the second-to-last seat on a discount bus, right across from the bathroom, and she is still wearing last night's clothes. If it gets her there on time, it will all have been worth it. Then a tall, friendly man with a bright indigo streak in his brown hair takes the seat beside her, and her nerves finally ease. He is headed to New York to reconnect with an old flame, the one who got away. If the traffic cooperates, both of them can arrive just in time. Road-trip games, his mother's calls that he keeps dodging, and easy conversation make the miles fly by, and neither of them watches the clock. Then the bus breaks down. Her seatmate becomes her copilot as the two of them talk their way into a ride in a car three decades old, then run into every traffic jam and detour the route can offer. Somehow Gwen ends up racing across town on the handlebars of a Citi Bike, with a box of kittens in tow. He is her hero at every turn, and she may be falling for him. But what happens when the ride is over and they each reach the destinations they were aiming for? Seatmate is a romantic comedy by Cara Bastone, the author of Ready or Not and Promise Me Sunshine, and this is its first print edition in the U.S.