Page 21 of Road Trip

“You’re planning on coming back, right?”

It was a low blow, and Matt jerked like he’d been shot. Then he flipped me off and stormed into the restroom. I got an uncomfortable squirming in my gut. It wasn’t in my nature to be mean, so when I said something shitty, it sat all kinds of wrong. Especially with Matt, because he wasn’t really an asshole. He acted like he was a bunch of the time, but mostly that was just his hurt and insecurity wearing a bad wig.

This one time when we were nine, he crashed his bike and skinned both his knees so bad that it shredded his jeans. I would have burst into tears, but Matt? He picked up his bike, kicked it, and called it a motherfucker. It was the first time I’d heard a kid say that word. I hadn’t known kids were able to swear. Like, biologically. I thought it was something that only kicked in when you turned into a teenager, like wisdom teeth and body odor.

Matt had laughed his ass off when I’d told him years later. Not many people could make Matt laugh, but I could. But instead of making him laugh and making the most of our time together, what was I doing now? I was acting ugly, just because I’d had my feelings hurt.

Fuck.

I slumped in my seat. We still had a few days left of this road trip, and it was up to us whether they were good days or whether they were shit days. And I’d have plenty of shit days after Mattwas gone. I didn’t need to start with a negative balance. Even if I wasmad at him, I needed to get over myself. Matt was finally getting to live with his dad, and as his best friend, I should be glad for him, not sulking because he hadn’t told me his plans.

The silence was broken by a loud thwap as the elastic band holding Matt’s sketchbook together snapped, sending loose papers skittering across his seat.

I hoped it wasn’t a metaphor for our friendship.

Great. Another thing for him to be pissed at me about, even though I hadn’t even touched it. I peered out the window and saw him approaching, hands shoved in his pockets and a glower on his face. I reached over and began to stack the bits of paper, napkins, leaves, and whatever fucking else he’d stashed in his book together.

He wrenched his door open. “What are you doing?”

“It broke,” I said. “I wasn’t looking at anything. I?—”

Except suddenly Iwaslooking at something. It was the blank back of a postcard. It must have been the postcard he’d bought at that gas station at Goose Run because he was chronicling our road trip or whatever. Like calling it chronicling was somehow cooler than saying scrapbooking, which was what this basically was.

And there was just something about the look on Matt’s face—shocked, maybe even scared—that made me turn the postcard over and look at the front. It was a big white cartoon goose giving a thumbs-up—a wings-up?—and across the top it said, “Goose Run—a honking good spot!” but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was the scrawl underneath.

434-555-7890. DANNY. XXX

There was a smudged, oily thumbprint next to it, as if his name wasn’t enough of a signature.

What the fuck?

Matt snatched the card from me, his cheeks flushed. “Don’t touch my stuff!”

I thought about the way the guy had been super friendly and the way Matt had laughed at his jokes, and I knew he hadn’t bought the card. “But…you’re straight?”

Matt didn’t say anything for a few seconds, busy stuffing the loose papers back into his sketchbook. He was concentrating on the task like he was disarming a bomb or something, his jaw clenched and his face red.

“Matt?” I asked, and he didn’t look up. My stomach swooped and my voice shook when I said, “Matty?”

His head snapped up. “What if I wasn’t?”

“What?”

“What if I wasn’t straight?”

It took a second for what he was saying to sink in, and my first thought was that I absolutely could not afford to fuck this up. “So what if you weren’t?” I said, my heart racing for reasons I couldn’t explain. I met his gaze and held it. “I wouldn’t care.”

Matt’s shoulders, which had been hunched up around his ears, eased down a scant half inch. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Relief flitted over his face, there and gone again. I gestured at the postcard. “Are you gonna call the guy?”

Matt still didn’t meet my gaze. He just shook his head. “What’s the point?”

Right. Because he wasn’t coming home with me. He was staying in California.

That hurt.

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