Page 3 of Road Trip

“Sure,” I said, feeling a strange lightness catch me. Since graduation, I’d felt up and down and all over the place, but sneaking out with Matt in the middle of the night was familiar. Just stupid and fun and something we’d done a hundred times before because it was Cape Charles and there was nothing to do except go to the beach, especially at three in the morning.

It wasn’t like we were delinquents or anything. Okay, that was probably what the old folks who drove golf buggies through town thought if they ever saw us out after dark, but they thought that about anyone who was under twenty-five. Or older than twenty-five but with tattoos. Point was, we weren’t up to any trouble when we snuck out. We just liked to sit on the beach. If either of us had one, we might have smoked a blunt, but mostly we just sat and talked shit, and sometimes we sat and didn’t say anything at all, just breathed in the salt and listened to the waves washing back and forth for hours on end.

We walked the couple of blocks to the beach. The wind was coming in off Chesapeake Bay, ruffling the tussocky grasses on the fenced-off dunes and keeping the worst of the sand flies away. It also made Matt’s dark hair dance wildly. He pulled his shoes off and we took the nearest access path through the dunes to the beachfront.

We sat and watched the ocean for a while, and then Matt said, “It was my birthday on Wednesday.”

I punched him on the shoulder. “I know that. I was there.”

He punched me back. “And after the summer you’re off to Old Dominion while I’m going to community college in fuckingMelfa.”

“Old Dominion isn’t that far away,” I said. “We’ll still see each other all the time.”

“Sure, man. Sure.” Matt laughed, and the twist in my gut that had been bothering me since graduation was back, and it was stronger than hell this time. But before I had time to protest, he turned his head to look at me, the bright moonlight catching on his suddenly wide grin. “We should go on a road trip.”

“What?”

“A road trip!” He knocked his shoulder against mine.

“A road trip to where?”

Matt’s grin grew. “ToCalifornia, bro! Sun, sand, and surf, right?”

Like we didn’t have that here.

I dragged my heels through the sand. “Doesn’t your dad live in California?”

“Yup.” Matt looked away, fixing his gaze on the dark ocean. “And my mom won’t be able to do shit about me going to see him now I’m eighteen.”

Matt’s dad had left when he was like seven or eight or whatever, and ever since then Matt had been butting heads with his mom about never seeing him. I’d felt guilty whenever he bitched that she wouldn’t let him go live with his dad, hot disloyalty squirming in my gut even while I’d nodded along with him, because I hadn’t wanted him to leave.What about me?I’d wanted to yell at him, but I never did. I never had to because Matt’s mom was like that guy in a war movie who threw himself on the grenade so the other guy hunkering down in the foxhole didn’t get blown up.

Matt was very much the grenade in this scenario.

But he was right. When summer was over, I’d be going off to Old Dominion and he’d be staying home. A road trip might be our last chance to really hang out together, properly, before college pulled us apart. He was right to laugh when I’d said we’d still see each other all the time too. We wouldn’t. I knew we wouldn’t. Was I really gonna drive home every weekend? Maybe at first, but I was gonna try to get a job, so I’d probably be working weekends. And there would be studying, and writing papers, and—that squirming sense of disloyalty was back—new friends to party with.

“Okay,” I said too quickly, just to push the word out before Matt could sense my guilt.

He turned his head to look at me. “Seriously?”

“Fuck, yeah,” I said, holding my hand out for a fist bump. “Of course, bro.”

Sand scraped my knuckles when he knocked his fist against mine, and I guessed that, shit, we were actually doing this.

“It’s not that I think it’s a bad idea,” Mom said later that day, unloading groceries onto the kitchen counter. “But, honey, Charlie came to spend the summer with you and Luke, and now you want to take off to—” She frowned at a can of tomatoes. “Where are you even going to?”

“To California,” I said. “That’s where Matt’s dad lives now.”

Mom pursed her lips together and let out a breath through her nose. “Jacob.”

The way she said my name was like she was laying the groundwork for a whole lot of gentle reproach.

“Charlie won’t mind hanging with Luke,” I said. “Maybe it’ll even civilize him a little. Luke, I mean, not Charlie.”

Mom snorted. “I knew who you meant.”

“It’s our last summer,” I said. “Me and Matt. And we…”

“You what?” she asked, gaze sharpening.

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