AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s not just you, Miller. It’s my brother, too. It’s not all bad, but sometimes I need a break from it. I try not to let it affect me, but it’s hard. Lily and I want some time away, get perspective and stuff.”
Lily isn’t my biggest fan. I’m sure she worked hard to get Sunny to agree to go. “Well, where are you going? I could meet you up there afterward. Can I drive?”
“It’s called Chapleau. It’s about eight hours by car, I think.”
“What about flying? Can I do that instead?”
“There isn’t an airport nearby. We could plan another visit for a few weeks from now, before my fall semester starts.”
No way am I leaving it that long. I need to see more of Sunny, not less. “I’ll drive out there after I’m done at the camp. We can spend a few days doing whatever. Then we can drive back together. I just need to know where it is.”
I’ll take whatever time I can get with Sunny, even if it means having to deal with her bitchy bestie. That chick isn’t going away, so I’ll have to find a way to get her to like me.
“That might be an issue, too. We won’t have an actual campsite or anything. It’s, like, out in the wilderness. I’m not sure how great my reception will be while I’m there.”
“Everywhere has reception. Even the rain forest.” Okay, so that’s not true, but this is Canada. Everyone should be able to use a cell phone, even in the damn forest.
“It’s really far north. People don’t do the cell phone thing out there. It’s all real landlines and stuff. That’s the whole point of getting back to nature, Miller. We’re going to put up tents in the middle of nowhere.”
Having no line of communication with Sunny isn’t ideal. I was without a phone for less than twenty-four hours and look how that blew up in my face. Sunny alone with Lily for a week could undo the last twenty-four hours.
“So how will I let you know when I’m on my way?”
“We’ll probably go into town for food and stuff every few days. There’s one about half an hour away, I think. Maybe we can touch base then? I’m sorry, Miller. I’ve been thinking about backing out since I woke up this morning, but Lily thinks it’ll be good for my soul, and so does Alex. I kinda have to agree with them.” She’s doing that thing with her hair again, wrapping it around her finger and brushing it over her lips.
Fucking Waters and Lily. They must be colluding. This is obviously a sabotage. Where the hell is Vi in all of this? She’s supposed to be backing me up. I need to have a chat with her. It occurs to me that Sunny’s directionally challenged. Driving out into the middle of the Canadian wilderness to go commune with nature is all well and good, as long as she has someone else to navigate. I have no clue how adept Lily is when it comes to this kind of thing.
“So it’s you and Lily going? Who’s going to drive? What car are you taking? Does she go camping a lot?”
“Lily goes camping all the time with her boyfriend. She was in Girl Guides all the way to Pathfinders.”
I have no idea what that is, but it sounds like it might be like Boy Scouts for girls in Canada. “So her boyfriend’s coming, too?”
Sunny traces a vein in my forearm to my wrist, then follows the line from the center of my palm to the space between my thumb and index finger. “There’s a group of us.”
“That’s good. You can all take turns driving. Who else is going?” Lily is the only friend of Sunny’s I’ve met so far.
“Lily’s boyfriend, Benji. You haven’t met him yet, and then there’s Kale.”
Benji sounds like it should be a dog’s name. “Kale? Is that a guy or a girl?”
“Kale’s a guy.”
“And his name is Kale? Like the vegetable?”
“Short for Kaleb. He’s nice.”
Like that makes his name less weird. It’s bad enough that Lily is going to have the week I wanted Sunny to be with me. But now she’s going on a road trip with another guy? “He’s a friend of yours?”
“We’ve all known each other since high school.”
Something about the way she won’t look at me makes the time-out buzzer go off in my head. “Did you date him or something?” I mean it to come out sounding more like a joke than an inquisition.
Her eyes stay focused on her wiggling toes. “It was a long time ago.”
Sunny’s only twenty. High school ended for her two years ago. “How long is a long time?”
“We broke up senior year. It was forever ago. He’s over it.”
There are so many things I want to say right now that I can’t. I need to call Violet. I can’t see the appeal in going on a trip with my best friend and her boyfriend and a goddamn ex. It would be insanely awkward.
