Page 6 of Road Trip

If I was as much of an asshole as she thought I was, I would have grinned at her or flipped her the bird or something, because hadn’t I just won? Except of course I hadn’t, and I didn’t want to make it blatantly obvious to her that we were in a competition over Jacob. Jacob sure as fuck didn’t have a clue, and there was no way in hell I’d ever tell him—and I didn’t want Layla to figure it out and spill the beans for me. Jacob was all I had. He was all I’d ever had. It was bad enough that after the summer he’d be gone. The thought that he might look at me any differently in the meantime made me sick to my stomach.

Funny.

In all the years I’d known him, he’d never seen how desperate I was to stay his friend because friendship came so easily to him. Not me, though. Without Jacob as a buffer zone, I wouldn’t have had any other friends at all.

Layla stormed down the stairs and right out the front door, slamming it shut behind her.

“Was that Layla?” Mrs. Mercer called from the kitchen. “I guess she’s not staying for breakfast?”

Jacob’s bedroom door was open. He was in his room, pacing back and forth, scowling just as hard as Layla had been.

I dropped my backpack and duffel on the floor with a dull thump, which caught his attention. His expression morphed immediately into relief, followed by guilt.

“Hey,” he said and then cleared his throat and turned away. “I’m just about done packing. Dad and Charlie are in the garage. Dad’s vacuuming the car or something because he does that before every trip, which is dumb, because wouldn’t it make more sense to do it when we get back?” He dragged a hand through his hair, then prodded my bags with one foot. “Holy shit, bro, how much did you pack?”

I shrugged. I’d packed everything, but he didn’t need to know that yet.

“Anyway, Mom won’t let us leave until we eat.”

“Cool.” I sat on the end of his bed between the piles of clothes that might have been meant to go in the duffel bag lying open on the floor or might have been dirty laundry. It was hard to tell.

“I’m pretty sure Layla just broke up with me,” Jacob said, still not looking at me.

I didn’t say anything. Just stared at his wall, at the bookshelf there. I saw books I’d never read but I recognized all the same because of all the nights I’d spent sleeping on the same mattress on the floor that Charlie was sleeping on now. Sometimes I’d lie awake in the middle of the night, listening to Jacob breathing, and reach out to run my fingers along the spines of the books. There was a little Lego rocket ship on the bottom shelf that had been there for years as well. We’d made two that day but lost mine somewhere on the beach. It was probably still there, buried under the sand, salt water filtering through the grains surrounding itwhenever the tide swelled in again. It would probably be there forever.

“I think she’s more upset than I am,” Jacob continued. “But hey, we were gonna break up after the summer anyway, so.” He shrugged and ended his words right there on thatso, leaving the rest unsaid. Leaving me to try and guess.

“Yeah,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.

Jacob kept moving around his room, keeping his back to me. Not pissed, because if he was pissed he was never shy about sharing it. Guilty for upsetting Layla, I guessed.

Jacob pulled his closet door open and stared inside it for a while. Then he closed the door and finally turned around. Leaning against the door, he met my gaze. He shrugged, mouth twisting into a helpless grimace and finally a rueful grin. “She waspissed, bro.”

“Yeah, I got that vibe when she almost shoved me down the stairs.”

He frowned and scrubbed a hand over his face. “It was a dick move, forgetting to tell her. I guess she still had stuff she wanted us to do together before summer’s over.”

“Yeah, but there’s no point in beating yourself up about it,” I said, which was a dick move too. I just didn’t want him to be in a shit mood when we started our trip. “She’ll get over it. Like, you’re not all that.”

He gave me a narrow look and then snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Thanks. Great pep talk, Matt.”

I flipped him the bird, which made him laugh, and I knew he’d be okay.

“So,” Luke said around a mouthful of pancake as the Mercers sat around the big table in the kitchen, “I guess Layla dumped your ass, huh?”

“Fuck off,” Jacob said, but there was no heat in it.

“Language,” Mr. Mercer said, reaching for the maple syrup, but there was no heat in that either. He looked over at where I was leaning against the counter with a piece of toast in my hand. “Matt, sit your ass down. You’re making the place look untidy.” He’d been saying it for years, but I still didn’t like to sit down without being asked, just in case my standing invitation to sit—ha!—turned out to have an expiration date after all.

I sat between Jacob and Charlie, and Mrs. Mercer slid a plate toward me. I set my toast down on it and pulled the plate closer, and Jacob scooped some scrambled eggs on top for me. Breakfast at the Mercers was an actual meal, not just a couple of Pop-Tarts eaten in front of the TV.

“You think she'll be on the rebound now?” Luke asked, and Jacob shot him a glare across the table.

“Luke!” Mrs. Mercer exclaimed.

“What? I’m only joking! She is super hot, though.”

Chair legs scraped against the floor as Jacob half stood. Luke flailed backward, laughing.

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