Oh Boy! (BL)

24 - Just A Simple Favor (3/3)

On the comfortable passenger seat of a black Chevrolet, I went to Portland for the first time in my life. Cooper had planned the trip from A to Z, so all I had to do was ask Matt for a day off and fight my nervousness. We aimed to take off at ten AM, which should give us enough time to arrive before the finale at two PM. Matt almost made my ear fall off when he cheered a Hallelujah and told me to have fun...and to get him a souvenir.

And me? Well, I was nervous, excited, a bit more nervous. It was the longest trip I had made since moving to Seattle.

Cooper turned out to be a first-class driver...and karaoke star, apparently. He knew the lyrics to every song on the radio; old ones and new ones, songs everyone would remember and some I honestly never wanted to hear again in my life. His chanting was...well...let's call it odd. Then again, I chuckled so many times that my belly hurt after only one hour on the road.

When we hit the first traffic jam, we were still positive. Proudly, Cooper announced that this was the very reason why he'd included a one-hour buffer in our travel plan. The second traffic jam collided with the first semi finale. Muttering curses that would've taken truckers to their knees, Cooper held out his phone to me. "Get on Maple Leaf's Facebook page, will ya?"

"Huh?"

"They post regular updates about the matches."

Oh. "I see." Clumsily, I tried to navigate on the social network and frowned. "The Crimson Tigers just won their semi finale," I announced with little enthusiasm.

Cooper snorted. "Yeah, well their semi finale was over at 1 PM. There's gotta be more."

Oops.

When I found the post about the Thunderbird's match, my heart pounded rapidly. "We're in the lead."

"We, huh?"

I blushed, and for the next hour, I became Cooper's personal sports-news broadcaster.

"Finale," I breathed when the referee called off the match at ninety-two minutes. He made it.

Cooper chuckled about my sudden sports enthusiasm but kept on cursing about the cow transporter that was the cause of jet another delay. "Close that goddamn door and your animals stay inside...Easy as that."

He growled while glaring at the black and white cow staring at us through the windshield. The police had asked us all to stay inside the vehicles while they tried to catch all run-away cows.

"Oh, f*ck it!" Half an hour later, we left the interstate at the next exit we reached. "Boss, I hope you're in the mood for a little trip through the countryside. Because there is a lot of...nature where we're going."

If I was up to it or not, didn't matter. We passed through villages I'd never heard about before; cute ones that were spitting images of Wisteria Lane, and others...well, I guess Jason Vorhees would've really liked them. But, hey, at least they had a McDonald's.

Another ninety minutes later, Cooper scanned the surroundings while half a fry was hanging out of his mouth. Though, honestly, there was not much more to see than trees and...more trees. Traffic had been okay on the landlines but we were still far too late. "The entrance has gotta be somewhere around here."

I nibbled at my cheeseburger when I saw the sign. "Mhm!" I pointed to our right. "There! Maple Leaf High, next...RIIIIIIGHT."

Cooper took a sharp right that basically imprinted my shape into the passenger seat.

Almost there!

Almost there.

Almost...

A hilarious number of cars were parked at the side of the road - miles away from the school grounds! When I rolled down my window, I could hear the bleach chorus play, the excited chanting of visitors. But I was afraid that, until we reached the sports ground, the finale would've already started.