Page 24 of Road Trip

“You okay?” Jacob asked me. “You wanna go see the cats again?”

“The bobcats?”

“No, the regular ones.”

A cat on a leash had met us when we’d arrived. Like, just a house cat. That was weird, right? But I liked weird, and Jacob liked cats, so we went back to see the cats again. Jacob crouched down and petted the cat and it purred loudly at him. He was wearing a big dumb grin, like the cat was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, and with the way the sunlight was bouncing off his messy blond hair, it almost looked like he had a halo.

I snapped a photo, then slipped my phone in my pocket and crouched down to pet the cat. It hissed at me, its back arching, and Jacob laughed. I flipped him the bird, only noticing the toddler watching me when he waved his middle finger enthusiastically in my direction. Shit. I pretended I hadn’t seen him and stood and stretched, hoping that if we got out of there, his momwouldn’t come for me. “We should go. We need to find somewhere to camp.”

Jacob straightened as well, but the way the corners of his mouth were curled up told me he’d seen what the kid had done and he was gonna give me shit about it later. I didn't mind. I’d pretend I was offended, sure, but in reality there weren’t many more days left for Jacob to tease me, and I’d tuck it away in my memory bank along with all the other times, just like I’d tucked the drawing I’d done of him when we were sitting around the campfire away for safekeeping in the back of my sketchbook. It was one of the best drawings I’d done, but I’d been too honest. I might as well have drawn cartoon hearts all around it and practiced signing Matthew Mercer in cursive with how obvious my feelings for Jacob were. Which was why it was now in the back of the sketchbook, face down and out of sight.

We looked around Amarillo for a while longer, taking in the sights, before we drove west and took a bunch of back roads until we found a place we could camp for the night where we wouldn’t run into anyone and they wouldn’t run into us. We got there just before dark and set up. We were getting pretty good at pitching our tent, and we finished up just as the last of the daylight melted into colored streaks across the sky.

Jacob settled on a log by the firepit and lit the campfire. Then he heated our canned franks and beans in the cheap shitty saucepan we’d grabbed at Walmart. He tipped it onto our tin plates and we ate in comfortable silence. The flames danced and crackled as we ate, and the firelight lit up the planes of Jacob’s face, his teeth gleaming as he grinned at me.

I grinned back. Yeah, this was pretty great.

After we’d eaten I found some sticks and we made s’mores. I only set two marshmallows on fire this time, which was a new record for me. There was a full moon, and it gave everything a magical glow. We joked around and shot the shit like we always had, and it felt like things between us were getting back tonormal. When I caught Jacob smothering a yawn, I nudged him with my elbow. “Let’s go to bed.”

He opened his mouth, probably to argue, but when the yawn escaped, he gave me a sheepish look. “I guess.”

I got it. I wanted to stay awake too, knowing we only had a few nights left. But it had been a long day, and I was fighting off sleep myself. I stood and stretched, and we made sure to put the fire out properly before we took turns in the tent changing into our sleep shorts. We settled in on our mats, and it wasn’t long before Jacob’s breathing had turned deep and even. I lay there listening to him for a while and resisted the urge to reach out and trace the soft curve of his belly with my palm.

I might be weird, but I drew the line at creeper-level weird.

I rolled away from Jacob’s sleeping form and closed my eyes, and when I slept I had weird dreams where I was flipping off a bear while protecting Jacob with my pointy marshmallow stick.

I woke with a start and sat bolt upright, unsure why my heart was beating out of my chest. Jacob jerked awake as well. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.

“Hear what?”

A loud crash came from just outside, followed by a rustling sound and what sounded like an animal snuffling around the door of the tent.

Oh shit.

Jacob turned to me, eyes wide. “Is it a bear?”

Shit. Had we ever found out if Texas was bear country? I couldn’t remember. My stomach twisted with fear. “Stay still,” I said in hushed tones. “They can sense movement.”

Jacob blinked. “That’s the T-Rex inJurassic Park.”

The snuffling noises grew louder, followed by the sound of claws scrabbling in the dirt. Cold fear coursed through my veins. I tensed, ready to do something, although I wasn’t sure what. Run? Fight? Curl up in a ball and cry? The snuffling got louder, and then there was a series of…squeaks?What the fuck?

I wasn’t any kind of wildlife expert, but I was one hundredpercent certain bears didn’t sound like cartoon aliens. Well, ninety-nine percent anyway. I leaned over and grabbed the flashlight, and with a bravery that I absolutely didn’t feel, said, “I’m gonna go see what it is.”

“No, wait!” Jacob gripped my arm and for a second I thought he was gonna volunteer to go instead, but he just said, “I’ll come with you.”

I thought he expected me to argue, but I thrust the flashlight at him and said, “Okay. You hold the flashlight.”

He took it from me and shuffled over to the tent opening. Once I was next to him, he grasped the zipper. “Ready?”

To be eaten by a bear? Fuck no.

“‘Course. What are you waiting for?”

Jacob swallowed loudly, and then he yanked the zipper up and shoved the flashlight outside, sweeping the beam of light from side to side.

A pair of yellow eyes glowed in the darkness about ten feet away from us, and Jacob let out a squeak of his own. Because it wasn’t a bear sitting outside our tent. It was so much worse than that.

---