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“Me and the guys were a little like conmen,” he admitted. “Always getting into trouble. Wild.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “But things changed.”
“I don’t know if I can picture that.”
“What about you? What was it like growing up a Coleton?”
I sank back in my seat, blowing out a long breath. “Kind of like being an overfed prisoner. I know so many people had it worse than me, so I honestly hate complaining. I just know I needed to get out for my sanity. I wanted a chance to be my own person, you know?”
“You don’t need to qualify your pain.”
“What?” I asked, tilting my head.
“You said you know people had it worse. But that doesn’t really matter. You feel what you feel. It’s not a zero-sum game—suffering—I mean. There’s enough to go around and your suffering doesn’t make anybody’s better or worse. It’s like pain tolerance. What does it matter if the same experience causes someone else less pain than it causes you? You still feel what you feel.”
“I’d never really thought of it like that. I guess I just picture you rolling your eyes if I complain.”
“You can talk to me, Jules.” Adrian gave my leg a squeeze, then took his eyes from the road long enough to make my stomach flutter. “Just not about work for the rest of today,” he added with a warm smile.
I smiled and wrapped both my hands around his. The rest of our drive made me feel like I was getting a taste of the type of family road trips I always saw on movies and shows. We weren’t flying in private jets, riding quietly in different cars because everyone’s schedule was too hectic to travel together. It was just me and Adrian, and I even convinced him to stop at a few gas stations so we could eat junk food.
My stomach hurt a little from the entire bag of Sour Patch Kids I’d eaten by the time we arrived. Adrian had been tight lipped about where we were going.
We parked in a wooded area with signs advertising a nearby campground.
“Camping?” I asked, laughing. “I have to admit, this is the last thing I pictured you bringing me to do.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked.
“No. I’ve never camped, but I’ve always been curious. But I do think you’re supposed to bring supplies.” I noted the top of the car was empty and there didn’t appear to be anything in his trunk.
“I cheated. I called ahead and had someone from an outdoors store bring out the things we’d need. Hopefully that doesn’t ruin the spirit.”
“I’m just happy we’re doing this.”
We were in the wilderness of New York, which surprised a lot of people. People thought New York and they pictured concrete and skyscrapers, but outside the city, the state was beautiful.
I walked down a dirt trail with Adrian and entered a campground. It was an elongated loop of dirt trail with individual plots for campers and RVs to park. There were a few campers scattered among the campsites, but more people had opted to park their cars and set up a tent instead.
There was a relatively isolated camping spot at the back of the group and a young teenage guy in a retail uniform waiting in front of it. There was a pile of brand-new looking camping gear in a pile behind him.
“You sure you didn’t want me to help you set up this tent, sir?” he asked once we got close.
“No,” Adrian said. “It’s a tent. How hard could it be?”
28
Adrian
Fucking tent. I’d initially tried to brute force the thing. It had unfolded aggressively and somehow managed to invert itself. It took me a few minutes of struggling to fix that, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get the final compartment to unfold. I was grunting when Jules walked up with a set of directions in her hands.
“I’ve taken a look at these and concluded you’re doing almost everything completely wrong.”
I grinned. “Believe it or not, I used to go camping all the time as a kid. All this survival stuff was kind of a hobby, actually. Feels like another life.”
“Didn’t use tents much?” she asked, grinning.
“Not like this,” I admitted. “We always had simpler stuff back then. The cheaper ones weren’t so complicated.”
“Well,” Jules said, glancing at the directions and then reaching past me. Her chest pressed into my arm as she reached for something by my ankle. She tugged and there was a metallic click. The last section of the tent popped open. “There,” she said. “You were missing a latch.”
“What next?” I asked.
“Oh?” Jules raised an eyebrow. “Is the caveman ready to consult the directions full time now?”
I glared. “I didn’t think I’d need directions for a tent. You just unfold it and stick it into the ground. Now that it's not inverted, I’m sure I can figure the rest out.”
