Page 6 of Road Trip

CHAPTER

SIX

MATT

2121 miles to go

Fall Creek Falls, TN, to Memphis, TN

T his sucked.

It sucked because my dick hated me, and I hated my dick right back. It was going to ruin everything, and it didn’t even care. No, all that little fucker was interested in was the way Jacob was nestled up next to me. He radiated warmth and smelled of soap and skin, and being this close just made me want him more than I already did. So of course my dick decided that now was the ideal time to get hard.

Fuck that guy, seriously.

Jacob hadn’t been wrong—two yoga mats were more comfy than one—but I still couldn’t sleep, not with my dick throbbing in my shorts and my heart pounding in my chest as I prayed Jacob wouldn’t discover the raging boner that was currently a hair’s breadth from touching his ass.

I couldn’t exactly shuffle away. I was balanced on the edge of the mat as it was. And there definitely wasn't room to roll onto my back. So I was stuck lying there in boner limbo, hoping my hard-on would get the hint that nothing was happening, nothing was going to happen, and it might as well give up .

Sadly, my dick was as stubborn as me and showed no signs of flagging. I contemplated getting up and going to rub one out in the bathhouse, but I had no idea where my shoes were and I wasn’t going to walk across the campground barefoot in the dark with a stiff dick. That just seemed like asking for trouble. Like, it would be just my luck that a dick-loving bear would appear—and I didn’t mean the type from Grindr.

Jacob sighed in his sleep and moved his head, and the curls at the back of his head brushed my cheek. I stared at the blond strands for a long minute, wondering if he’d notice if I ran my fingers through them while he slept, and my dick chubbed up more at the thought.

Okay, no. Fuck this.

I huffed and rolled over so I was facing away from Jacob and lying halfway on the dirt, curled in on myself like a pill bug.

Jacob startled awake at the movement and a moment later a hand patted at my hip and down my thigh, searching. “What are you doing over there?”

“Can’t sleep with your fucking hair in my face,” I lied.

“Sorry.” There was movement behind me, and Jacob draped an arm around me and dragged me back onto the mats, then left his hand resting near my stomach. “Better?”

No, it was not better. It was so much worse.

Now I had the entire length of Jacob pressed against my back, and it was just as awesome as I’d always dreamed—except for the part where we weren’t dating and this wasn’t cuddling. It didn’t mean a thing.

Try telling that to my dick, though. It was under the impression progress had been made and was standing at attention like a good little soldier reporting for duty. I closed my eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. I really was tired, what with walking and swimming and setting up camp. Maybe if I lay here long enough, my dick would take the hint, and then I could get some sleep.

“ H ey, sleepyhead,” Jacob said the next morning when I stumbled into the bathhouse, and seriously, fuck him. How was he so bright and cheerful when I’d spent most of the night trying to ignore a boner? Which had been a huge fail, by the way. He dropped his toothbrush back in the fancy toiletry bag his parents had gotten him for college and said, “Let’s hit the road and get some breakfast! I’ll pack up the tent. See you back at the car in five?”

What, so now I wasn’t even allowed a nice long shower to tug one out?

Fuck him.

I grunted, clutching my towel in front of my dick, and shuffled toward one of the cubicles. Hell, maybe I’d jerk off after all and?—

An old man in shower shoes walked into the bathhouse, farted, and killed all thoughts of that.

I locked my cubicle door, undressed and turned the water on, and thought about drowning myself under the shower, but honestly, who had the energy for that on the zero amount of sleep I’d had? Not me. I spent a few minutes standing with my head tipped back under the water in an effort to feel more alive. It didn’t help much, but I managed to get myself clean before the hot water ran out. As I toweled myself dry, I tried to figure out how I was going to make it to California without humping Jacob’s leg in my sleep. If the worst happened, maybe I could pass it off as an automatic response to having someone near me. Sleep humping—like sleepwalking, only hornier.

Hell, at one point last night I’d thought I’d felt Jacob’s dick pressing against my ass—although that could have been wishful thinking. My point was it was a plausible cover story. I was going to come out to Jacob, but I wanted to do it on my own terms and not be incriminated by my misbehaving dick. The last thing I wanted was for him to be weirded out or think I’d been staring at him while he slept or something.

Not that I needed to stare. I knew every inch of that face. The curve of his smile, the freckles scattered over his nose after a lifetime of summers spent outside, that tiny scar above his left eyebrow that was a souvenir from when Luke threw a rock at him that time. I knew his face as well as I knew my own.

I ignored the unhappy ache in my stomach as I got dressed and told myself I was just hungry and it had nothing to do with the fact I was thinking about how much I was going to miss Jacob once I was living in California with Dad. My new life was going to be perfect. It was going to be everything I’d ever wished for. Nobody in California would know I was trailer trash. I’d soak up the sun and connect with my dad in a way we’d never had a chance to before, and I’d get to be a part of a family. The only person I’d miss from my old life was Jacob, and he was going to college anyway, so there was nothing keeping me in Cape Charles.

Still, that unhappy ache intensified when I got back to our site and Jacob flashed me a bright smile as he shoved the tent into the back of the RAV4. Who else would ever look at me like that? Like they were glad to see me and not just resigned to it?

Yeah, okay, I definitely had the hungry sads. I shoved my stuff into the back of the RAV4 and got in the car. “How far until breakfast?”

Jacob shrugged. “I guess as soon as we see somewhere that’s decent?” He rummaged in his bag and pulled out my favorite type of granola bar and tossed it to me. “Here. I know you get cranky when you’re hungry.”

And just that small action, and him knowing that about me, immediately had me feeling better. Although that could also have been the granola.

A fter we found a gas station that sold breakfast burritos, we hit the road. I settled into the passenger seat and I was so tired I didn’t even give Jacob shit about his playlist. He gave me a sideways glance like he wanted to ask what was wrong—Jacob always knew when something was wrong—but in the end he didn’t say anything.

I spent the first part of the drive staring out the window, the miles of endless flat plains sending me into a daze, and at some point the daze must have turned into actual sleep because the next thing I knew Sleep Token was blasting, I had a crick in my neck, and the sun was high in the sky. I blinked myself awake and Jacob grinned at me. “Aw, is someone a sleepy panda?”

“I slept like shit last night,” I said, my voice rough. I cleared my throat. “Someone was all up in my”— don’t say ass, don’t say ass— “space.”

Jacob looked sheepish. “Sorry.”

We drove for a while more before we spotted a sign for Walmart. Jacob took the exit ramp and we found it easily enough. Since we’d done such a shit job of planning so far and had paid with a sleepless night, we took the time to make a list before we grabbed a cart and got what we needed. More yoga mats. Bug spray. Extra deodorant because that tent was small. An extra towel each. Wet wipes. Coke and Mountain Dew. A pair of aviators that I bought for no other reason than they were two dollars on clearance—that, and they made Jacob laugh and call me Maverick. We also got fruit and protein bars and jerky and other things that didn’t need to be kept cool and that we could eat for breakfast. I added graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. I threw an extra box of graham crackers in the cart and when Jacob shot me a sideways look, I shrugged. “Extra for you to snack on.” Weirdo, I didn’t add, but the grin he gave me told me he heard it anyway.

Once we’d loaded our stuff in the RAV4, Jacob held up the keys. “Wanna drive for a while?”

My heart rabbitted in my chest, a combination of nerves and excitement. I hadn’t had my license for long and part of me was convinced that I’d either run us off the road or fuck up in other as yet unspecified ways, but I told that part of me to shut the fuck up. I nodded and grabbed the keys, grinning in spite of my nervousness. It wasn’t like I could get lost driving in a straight line on the highway.

I jumped in the driver’s door and took a minute to adjust the seat and the mirrors, conscious of Jacob watching me. “Shut up,” I said. “I’m getting comfortable.”

“I didn’t say anything.” And the thing was, he wouldn’t. If I needed to sit here for half an hour fiddling with the seat settings, Jacob would let me and he wouldn’t make it a big deal. He knew I got nervous over shit, but he always pretended he hadn’t noticed.

I gave the seat one last tweak, checked my mirrors, slipped on my two-dollar shades, and eased out of the parking lot and onto the road that led back to the highway. Traffic was light and I made it onto I-40 without any problems, and it was pretty much smooth sailing after that. Okay, fine, there were a couple of lane changes where I cut it close and I heard Jacob’s sharp intake of breath, but he never said anything, so neither did I. Near misses were still misses, right?

By the time we were an hour into the drive, I’d gotten the hang of driving on the highway, and when Jacob pointed to a sign advertising Memphis barbecue that said Wanna Stop? I was almost sad that we were pulling over.

I did, though, because come on. This was barbecue. I took the off-ramp and followed the signs to BBQ Shack. The restaurant itself was small and well-weathered and there was a line that reached out the door, but I didn’t care because it smelled amazing. Jacob grinned at me and I grinned back as it struck me that we were really doing this, traveling across the country and stopping at roadside diners like we were Guy Fieri, if Guy Fieri was two kids from Virginia in a trench coat.

The line moved pretty quickly, and when we got to the front, we ordered two pulled pork sandwiches with fries and drinks. Then we took our tray outside and claimed a spot at one of the wooden picnic tables that were set up under the shade of an oak tree. My stomach growled as I unwrapped my sandwich and I took a bite, groaning at the combination of tender pork, rich barbecue sauce, and tangy coleslaw. Sauce dripped down my chin and I flicked my tongue out to catch it.

“This is fucking amazing,” I said around another mouthful of sandwich.

“Mmmm.” Jacob took a bite and moaned, and when I glanced over he had his head tipped back and his eyes closed like he was having some sort of religious experience—or possibly a sexual one. I grabbed my soda and sucked on the straw, my throat suddenly dry.

The last thing I needed right now was to imagine what Jacob looked like having sex. It would be all too easy for that to turn into imagining him having sex with me . Which was never happening, because Jacob was straight. It didn’t stop me wanting it, though. Wanting him . And like, it wasn’t just because of how he looked and sounded when he was eating a pulled pork sandwich. It was because I loved him. I’d loved him from the moment we first became friends, and nothing had ever changed that. Nothing could . But it would never be the right sort of love because he was straight and I wasn’t a girl. That was just the way it was. Wishing my sad gay little heart out wouldn’t change a thing. Jacob would still be straight and the sky would still be blue.

“You okay?” he asked me, wiping sauce off his chin with his hand. “You’re being extra weird today.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, which was probably a defensive enough response that he could just add it to the list of weirdness charges he was building against me. I set my sandwich aside, wiped my hands on a napkin, and grabbed the BBQ Shack menu and a sharpie from my pocket. I started sketching a cartoon of a squirrel that was hanging around the tables, just so I wouldn’t have to look Jacob in the eye.

“You are.” He pointed a barbecue-sauce-covered finger at the squirrel and then at me. “You’re more squirrelly than Sandy Cheeks.”

“A SpongeBob reference, really? We’re not ten. This is juvenile.”

“No, this is Patrick.” And then he howled with laughter.

Like, fuck him. Not only was I in love with my straight best friend, but I couldn’t even be pissed at him for it because the asshole was hilarious. I flicked a piece of pulled pork at him. It landed on the table between us and he ate it anyway, because he was gross.

“Seriously, though,” he said as we finished our sandwiches. “Are you okay? You’re not having second thoughts about this trip, are you?”

“What? No! Jesus, we just graduated, man. It’s our last summer, and we already wasted most of it doing what we do every summer. We’re supposed to do something amazing to celebrate finishing high school, and staying in Cape Charles sure as hell wasn’t it.”

“Eh, bumming around and going swimming every day is fun,” he said. “It’s not epic, but it’s nice. Oh! And we could have laughed at Charlie’s lame dating moves. I wonder if Tanner’s called him yet.”

“He seemed pretty excited to get his number.”

“You think Charlie’s messed it up yet? He’s shy as hell and he has zero game. He has even less game than you.”

“I have game,” I said. I didn’t, but I must have had something because that guy at the gas station back in Goose Run had given me a postcard with his number on it and said to call him if I was ever back in town. “I have?—”

And then I snapped my mouth shut because that wasn’t something I wanted to share with Jacob.

“You have what?” Jacob asked, showing me his familiar teasing smile. He teased and he trash-talked and easily gave as good as he got, but he was never mean about it. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body .

And all of a sudden, I wondered what was stopping me from telling him. I’d figured out I was gay when I was twelve, but it hadn’t been the right time then. I hadn’t been ready. And the older I got, the bigger the secret got in my mind, you know? But this was our last summer, and he was my best friend. Didn’t he deserve to know this thing about me before the rest of the world found out first? And, more importantly, didn’t I deserve to be who I was when I was around him?

I opened my mouth to tell him the most terrifying secret I’d ever had, and his phone blasted out “At The Risk of Feeling Dumb.”

He rolled his eyes and took the call. “Hey, Mom. What’s—” His eyes got bigger and bigger and his jaw dropped, and then he said, “Okay.” He held the phone out to me. “It’s Mom. She wants to talk to you, and she sounds mad .”

Oh shit.