Page 7 of Road Trip

CHAPTER

SEVEN

JACOB

1809 miles to go

Memphis, TN

I knew Matt was in deep shit when Mom said, “I need to speak to Matthew,” because she never used his full name like. Ever.

The way he went pale when I held out the phone confirmed it. He took it gingerly, like it was a land mine that was seconds from exploding, and honestly, given the frosty tone my mom had used, he was right to be afraid. Mom had a hell of a long fuse, but when she was done with your shit, you heard about it—and I had a feeling Matt was about to hear all about it.

I gathered up the wrappers from our lunch and carried them over to the trash can so it didn’t look like I was eavesdropping—not that Matt was getting to say much anyway. He was biting his bottom lip and glancing at me, and he looked about a second away from shitting himself. I went and sat back down just in time to hear, “No, Jacob didn’t know, I swear.” A pause. “Yes, ma’am. I understand. I will.”

I could hear Mom’s voice again, and as she spoke Matt’s expression went from cowed to pissed in the blink of an eye. “I said I’ll call her, not that I’m coming back. I’m sorry, Mrs. Mercer, but if it took her this long to notice I was gone, do you really think she’s going to miss me?”

What?

Matt listened again for a minute and said, “I will,” before handing the phone to me with a grimace. “She wants to talk to you.”

Gut churning, I said, “Mom?”

“Tell me you didn’t know what Matt was planning,” she said, and I swear I could hear the hand on her hip.

“I still don’t know what Matt’s planning,” I said. “I thought we were going to visit his dad.” I glanced over, but Matt’s head was bent over his drawing as he pretended to be absorbed in finishing his sketch of the squirrel.

He’d always been a shitty liar. Although it looked like maybe he’d gotten better at it over the years because the next thing Mom said was, “So you didn’t know he plans on staying in California? Or that he didn’t even tell his mother he was leaving?”

“What? No, he’s been calling her,” I said—right before I realized I only had Matt’s word for that, and it turned out Matt’s word wasn’t worth shit.

My mom sighed. “Jacob, honey, he left a note while she was staying at her boyfriend’s for the weekend saying he’s going to live with his father, and he’s not taking her calls. So she came over to see if we knew anything.”

“I—Mom, I swear I didn’t know.”

The churning in my gut intensified as I tried to process what she was telling me. Matt had left without telling his mom and he was planning on living with his dad, and he’d kept it secret from me. What the fuck was I meant to do with all of that?

Matt was moody and a little weird and his dad leaving had messed him up in a lot of ways, but I’d always thought I could trust him. Finding out I was wrong cut deep. It was almost like all the years we’d had each other’s backs counted for nothing. Confusion, hurt, and rejection welled up in me as I took in the fact that Matt had been planning to ditch me in California after using me as a cross-country Uber service, and he hadn’t even cared enough about our friendship to tell me. Hell, hurt didn’t begin to cover it.

“Jacob?” my mom said in a tone that let me know it wasn’t the first time she’d spoken.

I knew she probably had a whole laundry list of instructions for how to uncluster this particular fuck—Mom was good at that—but I couldn’t talk to her right now. “Sorry, Mom. I—I gotta go.” My voice cracked.

Her tone went soft. “Call me later, Jakey.”

She hadn’t called me that since I was five. So this was probably the wrong time to remind her that I was eighteen, right? That we were both eighteen and, like, legally we could do whatever we wanted. Honestly, it wouldn’t have made a difference to my mom. This shit wouldn’t fly if we were thirty-five either.

“Okay.” I ended the call and dropped the phone on the table and looked over at Matt.

His gaze was wary and his mouth was pressed in a thin line. I could almost see the bullshit excuses and arguments vibrating under his skin, waiting to get free, and the furrow in his brow was deeper than the Grand Canyon.

I won’t lie, I kind of wanted to storm off and drive out of there and leave him behind, but two things were stopping me. One, this was Matt , and I knew that he was probably freaking out right now. And two, that lying little bastard still had my car keys.

“You’re moving to California?” I asked him. “For good?”

He gave me a narrow-eyed, angry look, like somehow I was the one who’d screwed up here. He sneered. “Like, why wouldn’t I? You think I’m gonna stick around and go to community college in Melfa instead?”

“But it’s on the other side of the country,” I said. From home. From me . There was already so much changing this summer, all our friends—well, my friends, since Matt barely liked anyone—scattering on the wind. Matt wasn’t supposed to leave. He couldn’t leave. Except here he was already leaving, hundreds of miles from Cape Charles because I’d fucking driven him, and I was only just finding out about it.

“Yeah,” he drawled. “Gold star to Jacob for geography.”

“Now you’re just being an asshole,” I said as the betrayal twisted inside me, transforming into anger. “Not that that’s anything new.”

“If that’s how you feel, at least you won’t miss me,” he said, his eyes narrowing even further, “and Mom sure as hell won’t. Did you know today’s the first time she’s been home since we left? She’s been staying at Zeke’s.” He rolled his eyes. “So it’s not like she’ll care that I’m gone.” He stuck his chin out the way he did when he was nervous or frightened but trying to hide it.

“You didn’t answer her calls, though,” I said, not willing to let go of my anger yet. Matt had fucked up, and he didn’t get a free pass just because we’d been friends forever.

“I blocked her number,” he muttered.

The couple at the next table glanced over curiously, and I decided that if Matt and I were going to have the straight guy equivalent of a lovers’ tiff, I wasn’t doing it at the BBQ Shack.

I stood and stalked over to the car, hands shoved in my pockets, and Matt followed. He thrust the keys at me silently, and I unlocked the doors and we climbed in. I stared at the console for around thirty seconds before the heat got stifling, and I started the engine and turned the AC to high. The cold air blasted against my heated skin, and it still wasn’t as chilly as the sudden distance between us. We sat there for a minute and Matt cleared his throat. “Jacob?—”

“Save it,” I snapped and slammed the car into Drive so hard that we lurched forward out of the parking spot. It was some passive aggressive bullshit, and I knew it was, but I couldn’t help it. I was pissed. Matt was meant to be my anchor while everything else in my life was adrift, and anchors didn’t move. That was the point of them.

We drove without speaking. When the silence got too loud I flipped on the radio, and since we were in Tennessee we landed on Classic Country FM. And let me tell you, hearing Patsy Cline falling to pieces did zero for my mood.

I could see Matt just itching to put on a playlist, but he must have realized that his best friend Spotify privileges had been revoked because he didn’t even make a sound as I flipped between a few more local radio channels. Of course, everything was coming up country. I got a small glow of satisfaction from knowing just how much he was hating it, so I turned it up.

How’s that feel, huh?

He clenched his hands around his stupid sketchbook, rolling the rubber band that held it closed back and forth under his thumb. Hard. But he still didn’t say anything, so I knew I was winning.

Funny how that didn’t make me feel any less shit.

Matt was leaving me. It wasn’t even that he’d lied, although I was plenty pissed about that. It was that he didn’t think enough of me to bother letting me know so I could get used to the idea of life without him. Like, we’d just pull up at his dad’s and he’d be, Well, nice knowing you , or some shit. Peace out .

Okay, so Matt would never say Peace out to anyone, but that kind of vibe.

Suddenly his giant duffel made so much more sense.

“So,” I said, just to break the silence once we were a few more miles down the highway, and Matt flinched, “when were you going to tell me? Today? Tomorrow? Five minutes after we pulled up in your dad’s driveway?”

He mumbled something.

“What?” I asked over the song.

He glared at me. “You’re going away to college anyway.”

“And coming home on weekends!”

“Bullshit,” he said, jutting his chin out. He plucked the rubber band so loudly that he could have been playing a twanging guitar as backup for Patsy. “Like, maybe for the first few weeks, but then you wouldn’t. ”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I demanded, putting my foot on the gas to get around a slow-moving RV.

“Because you’d have a fucking life , that’s why!” He looked away so quickly I was surprised I didn’t hear his neck crack. “Pull over. I need to piss.”

I took the exit to the rest area, rolling my eyes. “Hurry up or we’ll end up behind Grampa Jed’s RV again.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Matt grumbled.

He was halfway across the parking lot when I called out, “Hey.”

He hesitated, listening.

“You’re planning on coming back, right?”

It was a low blow, and Matt jerked like he’d been shot. Then he flipped me off and stormed into the restroom. I got an uncomfortable squirming in my gut. It wasn’t in my nature to be mean, so when I said something shitty, it sat all kinds of wrong. Especially with Matt, because he wasn’t really an asshole. He acted like he was a bunch of the time, but mostly that was just his hurt and insecurity wearing a bad wig.

This one time when we were nine, he crashed his bike and skinned both his knees so bad that it shredded his jeans. I would have burst into tears, but Matt? He picked up his bike, kicked it, and called it a motherfucker. It was the first time I’d heard a kid say that word. I hadn’t known kids were able to swear. Like, biologically. I thought it was something that only kicked in when you turned into a teenager, like wisdom teeth and body odor.

Matt had laughed his ass off when I’d told him years later. Not many people could make Matt laugh, but I could. But instead of making him laugh and making the most of our time together, what was I doing now? I was acting ugly, just because I’d had my feelings hurt.

Fuck.

I slumped in my seat. We still had a few days left of this road trip, and it was up to us whether they were good days or whether they were shit days. And I’d have plenty of shit days after Matt was gone. I didn’t need to start with a negative balance. Even if I was mad at him, I needed to get over myself. Matt was finally getting to live with his dad, and as his best friend, I should be glad for him, not sulking because he hadn’t told me his plans.

The silence was broken by a loud thwap as the elastic band holding Matt’s sketchbook together snapped, sending loose papers skittering across his seat.

I hoped it wasn’t a metaphor for our friendship.

Great. Another thing for him to be pissed at me about, even though I hadn’t even touched it. I peered out the window and saw him approaching, hands shoved in his pockets and a glower on his face. I reached over and began to stack the bits of paper, napkins, leaves, and whatever fucking else he’d stashed in his book together.

He wrenched his door open. “What are you doing?”

“It broke,” I said. “I wasn’t looking at anything. I?—”

Except suddenly I was looking at something. It was the blank back of a postcard. It must have been the postcard he’d bought at that gas station at Goose Run because he was chronicling our road trip or whatever. Like calling it chronicling was somehow cooler than saying scrapbooking, which was what this basically was.

And there was just something about the look on Matt’s face—shocked, maybe even scared—that made me turn the postcard over and look at the front. It was a big white cartoon goose giving a thumbs-up—a wings-up?—and across the top it said, “Goose Run—a honking good spot!” but that wasn’t what caught my attention. It was the scrawl underneath.

434-555-7890. DANNY. XXX

There was a smudged, oily thumbprint next to it, as if his name wasn’t enough of a signature.

What the fuck?

Matt snatched the card from me, his cheeks flushed. “Don’t touch my stuff! ”

I thought about the way the guy had been super friendly and the way Matt had laughed at his jokes, and I knew he hadn’t bought the card. “But…you’re straight?”

Matt didn’t say anything for a few seconds, busy stuffing the loose papers back into his sketchbook. He was concentrating on the task like he was disarming a bomb or something, his jaw clenched and his face red.

“Matt?” I asked, and he didn’t look up. My stomach swooped and my voice shook when I said, “Matty?”

His head snapped up. “What if I wasn’t?”

“What?”

“What if I wasn’t straight?”

It took a second for what he was saying to sink in, and my first thought was that I absolutely could not afford to fuck this up. “So what if you weren’t?” I said, my heart racing for reasons I couldn’t explain. I met his gaze and held it. “I wouldn’t care.”

Matt’s shoulders, which had been hunched up around his ears, eased down a scant half inch. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Relief flitted over his face, there and gone again. I gestured at the postcard. “Are you gonna call the guy?”

Matt still didn’t meet my gaze. He just shook his head. “What’s the point?”

Right. Because he wasn’t coming home with me. He was staying in California.

That hurt.

The gay thing hurt too, and not because Matt was gay but because he hadn’t told me. And I didn’t want to make it about me, because it wasn’t, but I was allowed to feel hurt, wasn’t I? Matt knew all my secrets. So why hadn’t he trusted me enough to share his with me?

I knew coming out was different. I knew it had nothing to do with me.

I hated how it still hurt.

I hated how selfish that hurt made me feel .

“So, um, I guess you’ve got game after all,” I said. It was supposed to be a joke, but my tone was too cautious. I wasn’t sure if he’d think it was funny.

The corner of his mouth twitched, and his gaze met mine briefly before he dropped it again. “Don’t make it weird.”

“ You’re weird,” I said automatically, then blanched. “Shit. Fuck. I?—”

Matt snorted. “It’s fine. Are we going, or should I pitch the tent here while I wait for you to get your shit together?”

He got in the car and looked at me expectantly, making a hurry up gesture like he wasn’t the reason we’d stopped in the first place. Well, joke was on him.

“Nah,” I said. “I need to take a leak now. And while I’m in there, you better call your mom or you’ll have my mom on your ass, and you don’t want that, trust me.”

Matt pulled a face but he dragged his phone out of his pocket, and as I walked away I heard, “Hey, Mom? Yeah. It’s me.”