Little Do We Know(21)

“See? Neither will I.”

His words were perfect. He was perfect. Aside from Hannah, I couldn’t think of anyone else in my life who got me the way he did.

“Say that again. I need an entry for today.” Day 278 was still blank.

“I will never regret this.” He gave me a small kiss. And then he said, “I know your problem.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“Sure you do. There are all these events coming up, but each one marks the end of something, right? Prom. Graduation. Your mom’s wedding. We need something to look forward to. Something that’s just for us.”

“Like what?”

He got this weird look in his eyes. “You’ve never been camping.”

I crinkled my nose. “God, no.”

“See, that’s a problem. You know how much I love camping. I’m going to make that my parting gift to you: I’ll turn you into a camper.”

“Parting gift? Dude, you’re not helping.”

“We’ll pack up the Jetta and take off. We can drive along the coast—take the slow route.” He traced his fingertip in the air like he was visualizing the map. “We’ll camp on the beach and hike in the woods. We can sleep under the stars.”

Those summer trips to Guatemala with Hannah’s church youth group had been my only experience with “roughing it,” but at least we had clean floors and bunk beds with actual mattresses. Camping was totally different.

“No, you’ll love this. Wait.” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a nearly empty roll of Mentos. He handed one to me and popped the last one into his mouth, and then he peeled open the empty wrapper. He used the side of his hand to flatten it against his jeans. “Do you have a pen?”

“Um. No. Maybe ask the garden gnome.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He went into the diner and returned with a pen. He drew a jagged line down the long end of the wrapper and then made a little dot. “We’re here in Orange County. All we have to do is drive straight west and pick up PCH.” He drew a line from the dot to the Pacific Coast Highway. He drew little waves to indicate the ocean, and then drew another dot on the coast.

“We’ll stop here first. There’s this great beach in Santa Barbara and you can camp right on the sand. And then from there, we’ll head to Big Sur.” He made another dot. “It’s about a ten-mile hike in, but there are these great hot springs back in the woods.”

That actually sounded pretty cool. Maybe even cool enough to make me forget about bugs crawling over us at night and snakes slithering outside the tent.

“And then we’ll go to Santa Cruz. We can stop at the boardwalk and ride the roller coasters and play Skee-Ball, and then we’ll camp a few miles down the coast in this town called Capitola. I haven’t been there since I was a kid, but I’ve been dying to see it again. My mom has pictures. I’ll show you when you come over for dinner next week. There are these little cabins on the beach painted blue and orange and yellow. You’ll love it.”

“When are we doing this?” I laughed like this was all a big joke, a fun dream, but he looked at me in all seriousness and said, “I don’t know. How about the week after your mom’s wedding?”

“You’re not kidding?”

His eyebrows pinched together. “I don’t kid about camping, Em.” And then he went right back to his sketch.

I watched him, realizing, maybe for the first time, just how much he loved me. He must, because he somehow knew how much I’d need him next summer, and that I was going to need to disappear after the wedding, without me even telling him why.

He kept going, creating little dots and lines, until he drew a star and wrote SF underneath. “And if we’re not ready to head home once we hit San Francisco, we’ll keep going all the way to the Oregon border. We can stretch our little road trip out for at least two weeks or more.”

“You’re insane.”

“Yep.” He looked at me. “Prom. Graduation. Road trip.” I liked the way he looked at the whole thing: little moments adding up to something bigger, rather than a series of events counting down to the end. “And the best part? It’ll just be us. No one else.”

I saw the image so clearly in my mind: The two of us driving along the coast with the windows down and the music blaring, my hand resting on his leg and my feet on the dashboard, tapping along with the beat.

I turned my head, taking in the view on the other side of the window. His friends. My friends. We were always surrounded by people, except when Luke climbed a ladder and slipped into my room in the middle of the night.

It reminded me of what Charlotte heard D-bag say in my room earlier. I’d forgotten all about it, but now I felt my whole face come to life.

“What’s that look for?” Luke asked.

“My mom has that big catering gig in the city on Friday. It’s going to go late. So late that D-bag happened to mention that she’s planning to crash at his apartment afterward.”

He smiled. “Really?”

“Really.” I pictured Luke walking through the front door. “You won’t have to sneak in through the window. And you don’t have to leave until morning.”

“Can we make pancakes?” he asked.