Page 8 of Road Trip

CHAPTER

THREE

JACOB

2703 miles to go

Norfolk, VA, to Boone, NC

Fuck Norfolk traffic.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that bad, but I was used to driving around Cape Charles, and there wasn’t a lot going on back on the pointy end of the peninsula, traffic-wiseorotherwise. Take the tunnel to Norfolk, though, and it was a different story. I was suddenly a hell of a lot more nervous at the prospect of driving across the entire country. Hell, even some of the interchanges in Norfolk looked like complicated Celtic knots on the map, and I was having flashbacks to every dashcam compilation I’d ever watched on YouTube and wondering if me and Matt were about to become unwilling collateral damage in one. Like, you indicate before you change lanes, you know? And you fuckinglook.

I either had to get real chill about driving real soon, or I’d leave indentations in the steering wheel from gripping it so hard. And have a meltdown before we even got out of the state.

“You’re driving like someone’s grandma,” Matt said, flipping the visor on the passenger side up and down. “On her way to church, with a three-tier cake on the back seat.”

“Fuck off,” I said, keeping my eyes on the road.

“Bro,” he said, his voice tempered with rare amusement. “Did your dad’s talk really wig you out that much? You can, like, unclench alittle, you know?”

“I’ll unclench when we get through this next goddamn interchange,” I bit out.

I thought Matt would laugh at me for finding the traffic pants-shittingly scary, and I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t up for the trip or anything. I totally was. The traffic was just alot.

“You got this,” he said, and there was no sharp edge to his tone. No sarcasm. “The map says just stay in this lane and follow it around.”

I felt warm and stupid all at the same time. Warm because Matt had my back and stupid because it was dumb to be so nervous in the first place. It wasn’t as though this was my first time behind the wheel. Just, like everything else in my life right now, it felt like I was about to be on a really steep learning curve and I wasn’t sure I was ready. What if I couldn’t handle the pressure? And no, I didn’t mean the trip because at least for that I still had Matt right beside me. But when summer was over, what then? Like, what then for the rest of my life?

“Nice one, bro,” Matt told me as we made it through the interchange.

I let out a breath and tried not to hold the next one for quite as long.

“Hey,” he said. “I want your phone.”

“What? Why?”

“Because my Spotify has ads,” he said. He plucked my phone out of the center console. “I know you’ve got premium.”

I snorted and kept my eyes on the road, waiting for him to start playing something. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“How long does it take to pick a song?”

“I’m making a playlist.”

“You can put something on while you make a playlist.”

“It’s got to be perfect. What sort of vibe are we going for?” he asked. “Kind of retro lo-fi beatnik Kerouac road trip—that one’s pretty hard to pull off in a RAV4, honestly—or more of an unhinged, psychedelic Hunter S. ThompsonFear and Loathingkind of road trip? Also hard to pull off in a RAV4.”

“Just put on a daily mix.”

“But which one? Daily Mix 1 is more indie rock, but Daily Mix 2 is leaning hard into hip-hop. And Daily Mix 3 is like that K-pop stuff you like.”

“Dude, Hyukoh isnotK-pop. I’ve told you this like a hundred times—” I was cut off by his laughter and glanced over at him. “What?”

He pointed to my grip on the steering wheel, where my knuckles were no longer bright white. “I got you to unclench.” His laughter faded into a smug grin. “Daily Mix 3 it is.”

---