Page 1 of Road Trip

CHAPTER

ONE

JACOB

Cape Charles, VA

Kennedy’s party waswild.

Savannah got wasted and flashed everyone. Gage set fire to a tree in the backyard—Ithoughtit was on accident, but I wasn’t sure. My cousin Charlie, who was in town for the summer, kissed Tanner the baseball jock. Things were getting crazy fun and I would have liked to stay longer, but Matt, my best friend, got that pinched look around his mouth that told me he’d hit that point where he hated it, so I told Charlie we were leaving and we got out of there.

“Hey,” I said to Charlie as we drove back toward town from Kennedy’s folks’ place, “so just so you know, Tanner’s okay. For a jock. I guess.”

Matt was riding shotgun, so I had to check out Charlie’s expression in the rearview. He looked about one part thoughtful and three parts worried, which was very much his default, but at the mention of Tanner he glanced down at his phone, and the worry was replaced with a look of triumph that was reminiscent of my little brother that one time he’d caught a rare Pokemon in the middle of the camping section at Walmart—like he couldn’t quite believe his luck, but he was gonna take the win anyway.

I was taking at least some of the credit for putting that smile on Charlie’s face since I’d been the one to suggest that he give Tanner his number. Mind you, I'd also cockblocked him by dragging him out of there. “You think he’ll call tonight?”

Charlie’s face darkened in the rearview mirror and I knew he was blushing, but his mouth was curved up in a smile. “Maybe. And thanks. For prodding me to give him my number, I mean.”

“No problem,” I said. “I figured if I didn’t say something, you two would still be standing there making heart eyes at each other and sayingumby the time college started.”

Charlie snorted out a laugh. “Maybe.”

“I didn’t even know Tanner was gay,” Matt said, digging around in the glove compartment for some of the gum I usually kept there. He probably wanted to fix his breath before we got to his place. If his mom was home, she wouldn’t like smelling alcohol on it.

“It’s no big deal,” I said, glancing at Charlie again.

“I never said it was a big deal.” Matt rolled his eyes. “I just said I didn’t know, was all. I was just surprised. You don’t need to get all on my ass about it.”

Matt was moody. That was how my mom had described him once, with a pause before she said it, like you knew she’d come up with something different first but then went for a more diplomatic option. And if moody was the diplomatic option, her first choice probably hadn’t been great. She liked Matt a lot, don’t get me wrong, but yeah, he wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine.

Matt was like a porcupine—prickly as hell on the surface, but if he let you get close, you could see his vulnerable underside. I was grateful to be one of the few people who got to see the softer parts of him. I’d never tell him that, though. He’d get all defensive and those spines would go right back up.

“I wasn’t getting on your ass about it,” I said, unbothered by the sideways looks he was throwing me. I was immune to Matt’s scowling. “Anyway, I say that if you like someone, you shouldn’tbe afraid to shoot your shot because who knows? Maybe they feel the same.”

“In the movies maybe,” Matt muttered under his breath.

See? Moody.

I eased my foot off the gas as we entered the outskirts of town, such as it was. Cape Charles wasn’t exactly hopping, even on a Friday night.

“You wanna crash at my place?” I asked Matt, giving him an out in case he didn’t want to go home. “Luke said something about a horror movie marathon.”

My brother Luke was sixteen and had been steaming with jealousy that he hadn’t been invited to Kennedy’s party—as if she would have wanted sophomores there. Kennedy’s party had been our senior class’s last big blast before we all headed out in different directions into the world. This last summer in Cape Charles felt momentous, and even a little scary. Like, I didn’t give two fucks about a whole lot of kids I’d gone to high school with, but now that we were about to get scattered on the wind? Suddenly I was going tomissthem, and the feeling was an uneasy weight in my gut that wouldn’t settle.

“Nah.” Matt chewed his bottom lip and shoved the pack of gum into the pocket of his light hoodie. “Let me out here. I’ll walk.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“Yeah. Gotta clear my head.”

I pulled over and Matt got out. Charlie did too and claimed the front seat.

Matt knocked on the top of the car with his knuckles, then gave us a grin and a half wave and strode off into the darkness.

“He seemed much more hyped at the party,” Charlie said as we kept driving.

“That’s Matt for you,” I said. “He’s got a social battery that takes all day to charge up, he burns through it in about an hour of being the life of the party, and then it’s dead again. He’s the human version of a shitty laptop.”

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