Page 4 of Road Trip

CHAPTER

FOUR

MATT

2121 miles to go

Fall Creek Falls, TN

T he guy on the phone said we were lucky they’d had a cancellation, and when we got to Fall Creek Falls, most of the sites were already occupied. There were campers and tents clustered around the amenities buildings and kids climbing all over the playground. We were a little farther along from all of that in what was called a primitive site. We could drive to it, but there wasn’t any water or electricity. Since we were right near a bathhouse, it didn’t matter much.

Our campsite was in a grassy area with a picnic table and a firepit. I didn’t like how we were so close to other tents that people waved at us as we pulled up, and we could hear their conversations drifting over to us once we got out of the car. I would have preferred a site that wasn’t near anyone else but not enough that I’d be willing to shit in the woods. So our neighbors were a compromise I was happy to make in exchange for that handy bathhouse.

“This is awesome.” Jacob stretched, putting his hands on his ass and arching his back. I could hear his spine popping from where I was hauling our new tent out of the back of the car. “We should go for a walk.”

“We should put the tent up.”

“The map says Cane Creek Cascades is only like half a mile. We’ll be back before it’s dark.” He threw me a puppy-eyed look. “Come on. We’ve been sitting on our asses all day.”

“I don’t want to get murdered in backwoods Tennessee,” I complained, but I was already following him.

Once we were on the trail, it didn’t take long for the trees to close in and the sounds of people’s voices to fade. We didn’t talk, but we slowed our footsteps so that we were almost dawdling, both of us drinking in the fresh air and the dappled sunlight and the clean, earthy smell of the woods. Insects buzzed and birds sang. It felt good to move after being stuck in the car for so long, so I didn’t complain too much about the walk.

I maybe complained a little, but I knew Jacob would know it was bullshit. It usually was when I opened my mouth, and Jacob had always been the only person who could tell the bullshit that was just bullshit for bullshit’s sake from the bullshit that was only there to hide what I really wanted to say.

When I was twelve and my mom had started working nights more often, there had been this weird guy who lived across the street from us, and I got it in my head that he was gonna kill me. I didn’t need a reason to think it, but it was probably a combination of too many killer-with-a-chainsaw movies and the fact he yelled at me once for skateboarding in his driveway. Mom always said I could put two and two together and get five. Anyhow, one night when Mom was working, I was making myself a sandwich when I heard a thump on the back porch.

Raccoon? Probably, but try telling my twelve-year-old brain that. So I did what every idiot in a horror movie does—I bolted out into the darkness. I grabbed my bike and rode as fast as I could to Jacob’s house, convinced every second of the way that I’d hear the splutter-rev-roar of a chainsaw starting up right behind me .

“Hey,” I’d said when I hit Jacob’s window with enough pebbles to wake him up. “What are you doing?”

I didn’t tell him I was scared, so instead I tried to pass my whole midnight flight off as a casual visit. He saw right through me, with my wild, crazy hair, my heaving chest, and my sweaty fear. But he would have seen through me anyway, without any of that, because he always did.

“Um, nothing,” he said as he very clearly blinked himself awake. “Do you want to come up?”

And that was Jacob in a nutshell. Last night when I’d fallen asleep listening to him breathe, it had hit me hard: I wouldn’t have him in my life anymore after this summer. Not the way he’d always been there before. If I freaked the fuck out about chainsaw killers or bear attacks or flunking out of college, who was I going to go to? Who was going to sit beside me and pretend he couldn’t see what a mess I was while I frantically got my shit together again?

It was part of the reason I was going to California. If Jacob was leaving Cape Charles, then what the hell was keeping me there? Jacob had cut me loose, whether he knew it or not, and I had to find my own way. No more running straight to his side whenever I was afraid.

Okay, so this whole fucking road trip was that, but after the summer I’d be going cold turkey, right? And it’d be fine. I’d be okay. I was going to be a new person in California.

“When we get back to camp, I should check in with Mom and Dad,” Jacob said, the sunlight turning his unbrushed hair into a wild golden halo. “You should check in with your mom.”

“I did already,” I lied. I’d said everything I needed to say to Mom in the note I’d left, and I’d blocked her number temporarily—just until I got to my dad's and got settled. I’d call her when I had everything worked out, but I didn’t need to hear her tell me I was making a mistake, not when I knew this was for the best.

When Jacob craned his head to look at the sky, I took the opportunity to drink him in. I knew every inch of him, but I never got tired of looking. Because guys weren’t supposed to look, were they? Unless they were hiding something like me. I’d slept on the mattress beside Jacob’s bed more times than I could count since we were kids, listening to him breathing as he slept, but I wasn’t allowed to look at him. Not in a way that might give away how much I wanted him. Not in a way that might give away all my secrets.

Well, one secret.

But the risk of being found out could never stop me from looking. Once you knew you could fly, how could you pretend you didn’t want to reach the sun? And me and Icarus both knew it was gonna end badly, but to feel that warmth on your skin just before you fell?

Why wasn’t the point of that story whether Icarus thought it was worth it or not?

This summer already felt like flying too close to the sun, just me and Jacob and the way the light caught in his eyelashes. The way his skin glowed under that messy halo of his hair. The way my fingers twitched to reach out and trace the line of his jaw, his cheekbones, his mouth. Sometimes I wanted to touch him so much I could feel the ache of it down to my bones.

I jammed my hands in the pockets of my shorts because I wasn’t ready to crash and burn. Not ready to turn our friendship into a crumpled mess of blood and bones and broken wings if it could soar for just a little longer and I could soak up some more of the warmth that was Jacob.

We continued on our way, and I tried not to feel Jacob’s shoulder brushing mine when we moved closer together to let someone pass us coming the other way. Leaves and grit crunched under our shoes as we followed the trail.

At the end of the trail, a set of concrete steps led up over a hill. From the top of the hill, we could see down through the trees to a creek, but going down was rougher than climbing up, so I kept my attention fixed on where my feet were landing. At the bottom of the hill on the bank of the creek, we stepped onto a long wooden suspension bridge. We were the only ones on it—there was a family coming toward us from the other side of the bridge, but they were still a little way off—so I jumped to see how much I could shake the bridge, and Jacob grabbed ahold of the cable guardrail and threw me a dirty look.

“The sign says not to jump!”

“Bruh, it hardly moved!” I protested. “I won’t do it again, promise.”

The creek swept underneath the bridge, white water marking where it hit the rocks before dropping over the cascades. At the bottom of the drop, the creek ran through a shallow gorge. Rock walls topped with trees rose up out of the water. I wished I’d brought my sketchbook with me.

Beside me, Jacob unpeeled his fingers from the cable and took his phone out to take some pictures of the view. I took a couple too.

The family passed behind us, kids wrapped in towels, hair dripping.

“Mommy, I’m cooooold!”

The mom was wrangling another kid, so the dad picked the complaining kid up and they kept going.

Jacob looked at the water while I turned my head to watch the dad carrying the kid. I couldn’t see much, just a pair of small bare feet sticking out from either side of the dad’s hips, but I felt a nudge of something in the back of my mind that was too faint to be a specific recollection. Sense memory, maybe, of being small and being carried.

Jacob’s shoulder knocked against mine, pulling me from my thoughts, and he said, “Come on.”

We crossed the bridge, walked up behind some building on the other side, then followed the sign down a series of wooden steps and walkways to the cascades.

It was beautiful.

The water spilled onto the rocks below, filling a series of rock pools and a swimming hole. There were a few people sitting in the rock pools and some kids standing right under the falls. It must have been busy in the heat of the day, but it was late afternoon and most people seemed to be packing up. The light was golden now, filtering down through the trees and landing in dappled coins on the surface of the water. Above the cascades, I could see the suspension bridge we’d crossed to get here.

Jacob was already taking his shirt off.

“Didn’t you hear that kid?” I asked him. “It’s cold .”

“Don’t care.” He flashed me a broad, easy grin that could make me do anything. “You coming in or are you chicken?”

“What are you, twelve ?”

He made a chicken noise, the asshole. Did the wings with his arms and everything.

“Fuck you,” I muttered and pulled my shirt off too.

We took off our shoes, shoved our phones in them, and then picked our way down over the slippery rocks and into the water.

Holy shit.

That kid hadn’t been wrong. It was freezing but neither of us was going to admit it. Hell, we went swimming in the ocean in winter sometimes. No Tennessee water hole was going to get the better of us, even if it was apparently fed straight from some polar ice cap. But it was okay once we got in deep enough to get our shoulders under the water—or maybe we’d just lost all the feeling in our limbs. It was hard to tell.

I shivered, then launched myself forward in a dog paddle in an effort to warm up. It wasn’t super deep, and while kicking around messily, I ended up splashing Jacob right in the face. It was an accident, mostly. He squawked and lunged after me, and the next thing I knew, he had me in an iron grip and was pulling me under the water.

He let go after a few seconds and I surged back to the surface, sputtering and hissing like a wet cat, and he grinned at me like he’d done something hilarious—which he kind of had, but I wasn’t going to admit it. His sunny smile made it impossible to stay mad, but it would have been a betrayal of our friendship if I hadn’t dived forward, grabbed him around the waist, and pulled him underwater. I wasn’t going to let him beat me just because he was bigger.

My palms skated over his cool skin and down his broad back as we grappled together, both of us wet and slippery and laughing, and fuck, I was going to miss this more than I’d thought.

I let go before he did, like always, because what if I touched him for too long? It was habit at this point, listening to the automatic voice in the back of my head that said, Don’t be too gay, Matt ! So I guessed that Icarus was in no danger of trying to fly just yet, huh?

We floated for a little while once we were done horsing around and then I got cold again, so I got out of the water and stood in the sun. Really wished about now that we’d brought towels, but thinking ahead wasn’t either of our strong points. I thought about using Jacob’s shirt for a towel, but his spidey senses must have picked up on my evil plan because he waded out of the water and hurried toward me.

I didn’t look for too long at the way the sunlight gleamed on the planes of his wet body. I got real busy bending down to check my phone because my dick suddenly forgot how cold we were and was taking an interest too.

Jacob shook himself like a dog, and a halo of water exploded from his hair, catching the light. Then he crouched down beside me and squinted at his phone screen. He made a face.

“What?”

“It’s from Layla. She says she hopes I’m having a nice time. Is that weird?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she just being friendly, or is she trying to get back with me?”

I shrugged. “Would you get back with her?”

“We’re going to different colleges, so.” It wasn’t a no, though, was it? He wrinkled his nose. “I dunno. It’s like she’s being all extra nice in case I’m upset the way she broke up with me, so I feel kind of bad for not being actually, you know, upset at all.”

“You’re not upset?” I slid my wet feet back into my shoes, leaving the laces undone, and slung my shirt over my shoulder.

Jacob squinted at the sky for a moment and then shrugged. “Nah. Maybe I’m a sociopath.”

“You’re not a sociopath.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” I started picking my way over the rocks toward the stairs that would take us back the way we’d come.

“But how do you know?” he asked, following me.

I knew because Jacob was the best friend a guy could have, and he always had been. Because he let me sleep in his room when I was too afraid to go home to an empty trailer. Because his mouth twisted up a little whenever I said something about an asshole neighbor in the mobile home park or a kid who was giving me shit at school. Because Jacob was full of empathy, and the only reason it didn’t translate into action when it came to me was because he knew I’d hate it. Because even worse than getting scared or getting bullied or just getting generally shit on in life would be the whole world finding out about it. I didn’t want anyone’s pity, because fuck that and fuck them. But Jacob knew, and so he protected me as best he could even while neither of us acknowledged it. Jacob cared so much about how I felt that he was whatever the opposite of a sociopath was.

But it wasn’t like I could say any of that, so I said instead, “Because you cried like a baby that time we watched the video of the kitten climbing out of its cage into the one next to it.”

“It wanted to be with its friend !” he said and swatted me on the ass with his shirt. “Besides, I was super fucking high.”

I laughed and then, when we reached the stairs, I said, “Race you!” and got a head start.

He beat me to the top anyway.