Page 52 of Road Trip

“Hey,” Jacob said. “We don’t have to do anything right now. We can figure it out in the morning, okay?” He gently took my food wrappers and dumped them in the trash, then closed the curtains, shutting out some of the traffic noise and making theroom darker. “I’m gonna take a shower, okay? I’ll be right back. Try and sleep.”

Part of me wanted to snap at him for treating me like I was broken or something, except right now? I sort ofwas. Or at least I was too wrung out to fight with him about it. That was frightening in its own way. I’d never been too tired to be angry in my entire fucking life, and it was like I didn’t even recognize myself. I didn’t know what todo, except listen to Jacob.

So I climbed under the comforter, squeezed my eyes shut, and fell asleep to the sound of the shower.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

JACOB

2728 miles to go

San Diego, CA, to Goose Run, VA

Matt slept for about an hour, leaving me nothing to do but sit at the little table and jiggle my knee while I watched him. I also watched my phone screen, hoping Mom and Dad would come through with a text message full of advice that would make everything magically better. That was what parents did, right? At least, that was whatmyparents did.

My chest hurt when I looked at Matt.

Matt’s parents weren’t like mine. His mom was okay, I guessed, but she worked a lot of long hours, and sometimes it was like she was his roommate instead of his mom. I’d thought that was pretty cool, the way Matt could do pretty much whatever the hell he wanted because his mom barely noticed. I didn’t think it was cool now. His mom was hardly ever there for him, but it turned out she was Carol fucking Brady compared to his dad.

Who the fuck didn’t want to see their own kid? Sure, it had probably been a shock when Matt turned up, but the guy hadn’t even recognized him. And when he’d found out who he was, he’d been desperate to get rid of him—like Matt was an embarrassment, a relic of a past life that he wanted to keep hidden. Hehadn’t even hugged him, too busy chasing us off the property before the neighbors saw. He hadn’t wanted to know him.

The ache in my chest grew.

Matt was awesome, and sometimes it felt like I was just about the only person who knew that because he was also a weirdo who got a kick out of acting like an asshole, but you know who else should have known how amazing he was? His parents.

I checked my phone again, but there was nothing.

Funny.

When I’d decided to come on this road trip with Matt, I’d told myself that my parents couldn’t really stop me since I was an adult. I didn’t feel much like an adult right now, sitting here waiting for Mom and Dad to tell me what to do. But shit, at least I had them to fall back on. Who did Matt have?

The pinging notification of a text message made me jolt and check my phone, but there was still nothing. It had to be Matt’s phone then, which was sitting on top of his open backpack. I grabbed it in case it was important.

The preview screen showed a message from his mom. For a split second, I had a glimmer of hope that maybe she was going to be there for Matt after all, but then I read the screen.

Your father just called me. What the hell were you thinking?

That seemed like something I didn’t need to see, so I set the phone back down. As I did, my fingers brushed against the cover of the sketchbook Matt always carried, and I saw that the new elastic band he’d gotten to keep it closed was missing. I lifted the book out and discovered it wasn’t missing at all. It had snapped, just like the first one, and gotten caught in the wire spiral of the spine. I pulled it out, turning the book over as I did, and the pages fell open.

A couple of menus and the postcard from Goose Run and some receipts fell out. I barely noticed them. I was too busylooking at a sketch of myself, and it was incredible. I wasn’t sure if the invasion of privacy here was mine, for looking in his book, or his, for stealing what must have been a thousand glances at me that I hadn’t noticed. Back when I’d thought I was straight—somehow only a few days but also a whole lifetime ago—he’d been watching me. And this wasn’t one of his funny doodles. This was…

I didn’t really have the word for it, except that it hurt a little to look at it. To look at me, as he must have seen me, totally fucking oblivious when it was so fucking clear that he was in love with me.

I turned the pages and found more pictures of me interspersed with Matt’s doodles and rough sketches. There was a cartoon of me being chased by a skunk and another one of me asleep in the passenger seat with my mouth open with a row ofzzzzs. They were cute, and it was obvious that Matt was an expert at sketching me. None of those drawings was as much of a love letter as that portrait was, though. I closed the sketchbook, my heart pounding fast and my breath catching in my throat.

“It’s just messing around,” Matt said, his voice raspy from sleep, and I jolted and dropped the book.

I straightened up and threw him a wary look, unsure how he’d react. “They’re really good. The skunk one is funny.”

His mouth twisted, and he sat up and stretched. “Maybe I’ll be one of those guys who does caricatures of tourists at the beach or something.”

I stared at him. “In Cape Charles?”

“What?”

“You’d do caricatures at the beach in Cape Charles,” I said and Matt looked away. My stomach tied itself in a knot. “Matt, you’re coming back to Virginia with me.”

---