Page 15 of Road Trip

He held out the stick and turned it slowly, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth like it always did when he was concentrating. When nothing burst into flames, he shot me a triumphant grin.

I grabbed myself another stick and waved it through the flames. “Gotta sterilize it,” I said. He jabbed me in the ribs with his marshmallowy stick, so I guessed he didn’t care too much about germs after all.

“Why’d we wait so long to do something like this? Just the two of us?” I asked once we’d both stopped laughing, and Matt shot me a wry look. “What?”

“What?” He laughed. “Dude, you always had like homework, and your job, and your parents on your case, andgirlfriends, and?—”

“I didn’t always have girlfriends.”

“You had Layla.”

I still felt a little bad about Layla. Like, it had always felt as though she was way more into being my girlfriend than I was into being her boyfriend. I liked her. I liked her a lot. I wouldn’t have gone out with her when she asked me otherwise. But she’d always complained that she wasn’t my top priority, which, to be fair to her, was true. I had been a pretty shit boyfriend probably. Even now we’d broken up, she was still checking in on me when I hadn’t even thought of her once until she’d texted.

And I still hadn’t texted back.

“Honestly?” I stared into the fire. “Layla deserved a better boyfriend than me. Anyone deserves a better boyfriend than me.”

“Oh, fuck off with your pity party,” Matt said. “Layla’s clingy and you’re chill, that’s all. At least you got laid, right?”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

“Like what? Sheisclingy.”

“No, like she’s just a thing I used to get laid. That’s not fair. I like Layla. I just wasn’t as into her as she was into me.”

Matt’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t mean it like that. Like, you wouldn’t do that to someone. Use them.”

“I mean…” I chewed on my bottom lip. “It sort of sounds like I did, though, right? I just said I knew she was into me more than I was into her.”

Matt stabbed me with his stick again. “You’re overthinking it. You don’t need to feel bad just because you didn’t want to put a ring on it. Why would you feel bad about getting laid? That’s what you do when you’re dating someone. And she was into it, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, guilt squirming low in my gut. Laylahadbeen into it. In fact she’d been the one to start things the few times we’d actually had sex. I’d never pressured her. I’d liked making out, but every time we’d gone further I’d been so stressed about getting busted that I’d mostly just wanted to get it done before anyone caught me with my pants around my ankles. My parents were cool, so it would have been embarrassing to get caught but not the end of the world. But Layla’s parents had the Ten Commandments in cross-stitch in the bathroom and The Last Supper in their kitchen, so that would have been a whole other thing. That was maybe why I hadn’t enjoyed it that much, if I was honest. Sex was probably a lot more fun when you weren’t listening out for footsteps on the stairs and clenching your sphincter so tight you could crap diamonds.

“Anyway, I’m glad we’re doing this now,” Matt said, givingme a lopsided smile and pushing his dark hair back out of his eyes.

The fire crackled in the darkness, and the sounds of the other campers settling in drifted over the night air. We spent the next little while roasting the rest of the marshmallows, with Matt wondering aloud if s’mores would have been better, which was his not-so-subtle way of hinting I’d better not eat the graham crackers and chocolate beforehand next time.

A light breeze teased the back of my neck, providing some relief from the humidity, and I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, soaking up the cool air against my skin. When I opened my eyes again, Matt was watching me and then his gaze flicked down to where his pencil was moving rapidly against the page of his sketchpad.

“What are you drawing? Our stunning view of the bathhouse?”

He flipped the page shut. “Something like that.” He folded the book over, then wrapped the ever-present elastic band around it and shoved it into the pocket of his hoodie. “We should probably go shower.”

I raised an arm, sniffed my pit, and grimaced. He wasn’t wrong. We’d worked up a sweat getting the tent up, and I smelled of woodsmoke as well. The smoke I could live with. My own body odor, not so much. Plus our sleeping bags would be pretty gross in no time at all if we got in them dirty.

I kind of wished we could stay by the fire all night, eating marshmallows and basking in the glow of the flames, but if we were going to make it across the country and back before college started, we needed to sleep.

Besides, I was kind of looking forward to spending the night in the tent. It’d be fun.

The tent was not fun.

I’d be the first to admit that forward planning wasn’t exactly our strong point and when we’d bought our camping supplies we’d been more concerned with the price tag than anything else. The tent was barely big enough for both of us to lie down in, and the yoga mats we’d bought for mattresses were basically useless, with every stone and branch and tree root poking into my back. I might as well have been lying directly in the dirt.

I rolled over for the fifth time trying to get comfortable, and my head brushed the wall of the tent, making that creepy, whispery noise that nylon does. Matt let out a frustrated huff and propped himself up on his elbows. “This yoga mat fucking sucks.”

I sat up next to him, my sleeping bag pooling around my waist. “So does this tent.”

“And it’shot.” I heard his sleeping bag rustling, then the rasp of a zipper as he opened the tent.

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