“Charlotte, I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Jacob yelled to me over the sound of wind rushing past our ears.
“Isn’t it incredible?” I screamed back, “I feel such a rush!”
“A good high!” He replied, grinning to me with the smile that melted my heart. “Turn up the music!” I did so, turning the knob as far to the right as I could. “John Mayer!” he yelled. “Perfect!” I smiled at him, but his eyes were on the road.
“HERE WE COME!” I screamed into the wind. “Wherever we’re going. You don’t think your parents put like a chip in the car, right?”
“Char, you’re totally crazy!” He laughed, “My parents aren’t that insane.”
“I guess you’re right.” I replied with a laugh. We’d been driving about 20 minutes now. We told our parents we were driving up to New York for the gay pride parade. We weren’t. We didn’t know where we were going. We were just driving. No maps, no GPS, no compass. Just our iPods, the road, and us.
“Grab me a fruit roll-up.” Jacob instructed. I grabbed one from the back seat and unwrapped it. He opened his mouth and I stuck it in. “I remember pretending I was a lizard with these…” he said with his mouth full; he whipped his head around the fruit roll-up smacked my shoulder.
“Ew, Jacob!” I laughed. I turned to the back seat to grab one of my own. “GUSHERS!” I screamed, “YOU GOT GUSHERS!” I tore open a pack and stuffed six of them in my mouth. “You’re a genius!” I said, with red goo dripping down my lip. Jacob threw his head back and laughed. I caught a quick glimpse of his blue-green eyes behind his Ray Ban sunglasses.
I could have sworn we were driving for five minutes before the sky began to turn navy with pink spots and orange stripes. “Let’s keep going until it’s dark.” I said to Jacob. He nodded, taking off his sunglasses. We drove for five more “minutes” until the sky was black. Our play list had repeated four times now. We had switched drivers twice.
“It’s two ante meridian.” Jacob said, yawning. There was no way… we’d been driving for a couple hours at most. I looked at my phone, which read 2:03 AM. “I wanna pull over.”
“Alright.” I said. “Let’s look at the stars. There’s no one on the road to tell us to find somewhere else to pull off.” Jacob turned off the car and popped the trunk. I slung it open and crawled in. I lay down with my head just before the bumper, and Jacob did the same.
“This was the best decision of my life.” He said, looking over at me. I just smiled. He took in a deep breath. “I love you.” It was simple, the words. It didn’t take as much breath as he had sucked in. The words vaporized into the warm summer air, like water evaporating from a puddle in noon heat. I took in a short breath of the warm air.
“I love you too.” I whispered. My words were cool; they created a cube of ice suspended between us… he was waiting for something. “I always have.” And it melted.