[FREE STORY WITH EXCLUSIVE CHAPTERS]
When George Shaw tries to find a plan for the last fifteen days to spend with his best friend, who he's had a crush on for as long as he can remember, all he needs is a map to plot out a road trip and his daily h...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
ON OUR WAY TO FARMERSVILLE, ABBY WAS TALKING ABOUT HOW COMFY THE BED WAS.
"I really slept like a log," she said, scrolling down her Instagram feed. "The bed was like heaven." She was back to checking her phone as if our promises were long forgotten. Since she broke hers, I thought I could break mine—I smoked a cig last night but she didn't know that—and told her to hand me cigs from my hoodie's pocket in the backseat.
"Huh?" She said, looking at me. "You promised not to smoke."
"You promised not to check your phone," I retorted, shrugging.
"If I remember, our promises weren't correlated at all."
Tearing my gaze from the road shortly, I turned at her. She looked at me in disbelief that I didn't understand if she was really talking about the kiss part or if she was ready to do anything to prevent me from smoking. "I didn't know you were so eager to kiss me." Her reply came in the form of a snort and that made me laugh.
My answer rendered us speechless for a while so I turned the radio on to color the tension into something softer. The weather was pretty okay today, not too hot and a bit windy. Perfect. As soon as the radio was on, a pop song started playing and as I was about to change, Abby swatted my hand away. "I love this song," she said. The lyrics were like I know you want it but you're a good girl kind of thing. She didn't seem to mind the meaning but the tone by the way she was shaking her body. Her dance sort of amused me so I let her be, focusing back on the road. We were quite close to our next stop: Sugar Creek Covered Bridge. Abby read somewhere near the bridge, we could go on a picnic.
"Glad you slept well because tonight we are crashing in the car."
"No way," she said.
"If you didn't make me spend a fortune last night, we could get sound sleep and even eat burgers for dinner but...tough luck."
Abby didn't like the idea but we didn't really have many options considering our budget. Once we arrived in Glenarm, my eyes were looking for a market to buy stuff for a picnic. "There's a small one there," Abby said, pointing at a really small market. It was still something. Parking the car, we stepped in and bought stuff—I convinced Abby not to buy half of the stuff she put into the basket—and paid the least amount possible. This trip was challenging us to care more about money since it had never been a problem for any of us before. I wasn't complaining since I liked to stand on my feet by myself but Abby seemed to struggle.
"That one was high-quality wine," Abby complained since I went for a cheaper one. "Shame on you, Arthur. Can't believe you have a fake ID and your fake name is Arthur. What the fuck."
"If it wasn't for Arthur, you wouldn't be getting alcohol so shut up." I carried the bag to the car and put them in the trunk. "Also, I'm a party guy," I said, shutting the truck. "unlike you, geek."
