Page 22 of Road Trip

The gay thing hurt too, and not because Matt was gay but because he hadn’t told me. And I didn’t want to make it about me, because it wasn’t, but I was allowed to feel hurt, wasn’t I? Matt knew all my secrets. So why hadn’t he trusted me enough to share his with me?

I knew coming out was different. I knew it had nothing to do with me.

I hated how it still hurt.

I hated how selfish that hurt made me feel.

“So, um, I guess you’ve got game after all,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but my tone was too cautious. I wasn’t sure if he’d think it was funny.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and his gaze met mine briefly before he dropped it again. “Don’t make it weird.”

“You’reweird,” I said automatically, then blanched. “Shit. Fuck. I?—”

Matt snorted. “It’s fine. Are we going, or should I pitch the tent here while I wait for you to get your shit together?”

He got in the car and looked at me expectantly, making a hurry up gesture like he wasn’t the reason we’d stopped in the first place. Well, joke was on him.

“Nah,” I said. “I need to take a leak now. And while I’m in there, you better call your momor you’ll havemymom on your ass, and you don’t want that, trust me.”

Matt pulled a face but he dragged his phone out of his pocket, and as I walked away I heard, “Hey, Mom? Yeah. It’s me.”

CHAPTER

EIGHT

MATT

1809 miles to go

Memphis, TN, to Amarillo, TX

Ihadn’t known how much keeping secrets from Jacob had been weighing me down until I wasn’t keeping them anymore. But the next day, now that I wasn’t in a constant state of high alert, watching everything I said and did so I didn’t give myself away, I found myself enjoying the trip. Or maybe that was because I knew these were the last days Jacob and I would spend together, and I was determined to wring every ounce of enjoyment from them I could.

I know. Shockingly positive for a miserable little asshole like me, right?

But it turned out that my mom had actually been worried about me—I knew this because she’d told me so repeatedly, at volume, when I’d called her—and despite the fact she was mad as all hell, hearing she cared enough to worry had untwisted some of the knots I’d tied myself up in. I’d convinced myself that she’d forgotten I existed, too busy with her shiny new boyfriend, but that was just my naturally suspicious nature kicking in. My mom always said I could find the cloud to every silver lining, and she wasn’t wrong.

I wasn’t going back, though, no matter what Mom said about California being a bad idea. Zeke and I were never going to be best buds, and I was sick of feeling like an intruder in my own home. Besides, my dad had always said I could live with him when I was older, so this was the best solution all round.

Jacob and I had talked when we’d stopped at Memphis. I’d asked if he’d be wigged out sharing a tent with me now he knew I was gay. He’d glared at me and told me to fuck off with that bullshit. So I guessed we were all right on that front. The other stuff? We were getting there. I knew he was still mad that I hadn’t told him I was moving, and I didn’t blame him. But I’d had my reasons. Jacob couldn’t keep a secret to save his life, so really I’d done him a favor by not telling him, a fact I pointed out. We both knew he would have felt obliged to spill his guts to his parents and it would have been a whole mess, and then we wouldn’t be having this epic road trip right now. Lucky for me, Jacobalsocouldn’t hold a grudge to save his life. Not when it was me anyway.

After Memphis, we blew through Arkansas and most of Oklahoma in two days of driving, stopping mostly for meals and to stretch our legs. We saved money by camping, this time at the side of the road instead of at an actual campground, and showered the next day at a rest stop. It was what Kerouac would have done, if beatniks had camped. Or showered.

I still wanted Jacob, and I still wanted him to want me. That hadn’t changed. But there’d been a shift in the air between us. Like, Jacob and I had always been physical. We punched each other’s arms and wrestled and grabbed each other all the time. And I’d kinda thought that maybe Jacob would back off now he knew I was gay. But if anything, he was even more touchy-feely. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince me or himself that my sexuality didn’t matter, but after another night of what felt like having his hands on me every time I turned around, I wasn’t sure I could take much more. It was the worst kind of torture. Or maybe the best. I couldn’t decide. I soaked up every touch like thetouch of the sun’s rays because I was shameless and a little desperate and it wassoclose to what I wanted. But it would never be anything more. Jacob was straight.

I guessed I was holding on to one more big secret after all—namely that I loved him and always had and probably always would. And what was the point in telling him?

Once this trip was over, we’d be over too.

“People are gonna ask us what we saw on this road trip, and the answer is just gas stations and rest stops,” Jacob said as we stretched our legs somewhere in the flat nothingness between Clinton and Elk City.

I leaned against the car and watched a woman walk a little dog around on the dry grass by the parking lot. “What else should we see?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Things. Places. More than the highway.” He raised an eyebrow. “Things you can chronicle.”

“Maybe I’m chronicling the interstate network,” I said. “On-ramps and off-ramps and fast food places. You drive for days and everything looks the fucking same, and the only way you can tell you’re moving at all is that at some point all the Hardee’s turn into Carl’s Jr! It’s one of Dante’s circles of hell probably, but I don’t know which one.”

“Is that another book you haven’t read?” he asked me, one corner of his mouth lifting up in a grin.

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