He shrugs. “I might have been there before.”
I frown. “When?”
I picture him being invited there with another girl. I don’t know why the idea makes me feel so flustered. It’s not like I have anything to be jealous about if whoever she was is part of the past. Even so, I don’t want to be there in that cabin imagining everywhere that Oliver might have had sex with her. I have Tina to thank for putting that sort of thought in my mind last weekend.
“It’s been ages,” Oliver says. “Ryan and I spent the summer there one year in high school, and we went up a couple times in college.”
I guess it’s been long enough that it doesn’t really matter who he went there with.
“Did you guys go with your girlfriends?” I hear myself ask. I hate how jealous I sound.
“Just the guys,” Ryan says.
“I have a feeling that if we invited any girls out on a four-hour trip to a cabin in the middle of the woods, they’d probably think we were going to hide their bodies out there,” Oliver says.
Tina looks over her shoulder at Oliver. Even with her sunglasses on, I can tell that she’s frowning. Then she looks at Ryan. “Why did we invite him?” she asks. “I feel like I should be scared.”
Ryan pushes his own sunglasses down his nose to look at her, and in a deeper than normal voice, says, “It’s not him you need to be afraid of, baby.”
Tina laughs. “You’re a creep.”
“But you love me,” Ryan says. He reaches across the center console to hold her hand.
“You’remycreep,” she says.
I almost forget that Oliver is still holding my hand until I feel his fingers squeeze mine. I look down at our hands, then up at him. He’s watching me, a smile hiding behind his serious expression.
“Did you bring snacks?” he asks. “I hope you brought snacks.”
“Of course I did.” I let go of his hand to grab my backpack. I take out a bag of chips and pull it open. “It’s not a road trip without snacks.”
“It’s kind of weird that you didn’t know she brought them,” Tina says over her shoulder. “Didn’t you guys pack together?”
I exchange a glance with Oliver. He wrinkles his brow. It’s clear he doesn’t know what to say here.
“I packed last night before I came over,” I explain. “I wanted the chips to be a surprise.”
“You’re so sweet,” Oliver says. He leans across the seat to kiss me.
Even though I know that it’s just for show, I still feel a jolt of electricity when his lips meet mine. It starts as a peck on the lips, but he stops before pulling away completely. Our lips reconnect, and then I feel his hand in my hair and I’m brought back to that moment in his bathroom before we were interrupted.
“Let’s keep it PG back there, okay?” Tina says.
I pull away and look at the front of the car. Tina watches us through the mirror on her visor. I stick my tongue out at her. “Okay, mom,” I say in my brattiest voice.
We listen to loud music the rest of the way to the cabin. About halfway there, Oliver gets tired and lies down across the backseat, resting his head in my lap. My hand ends up on the side of his head. Without really thinking about it, I run my fingers through his short brown hair. When I notice what I’m doing, I pause. Oliver reaches up to take the hand that was in his hair and holds it against his chest. I can feel the beat of his heart. The steady rhythm relaxes me. I keep my hand there for the rest of the drive.
“We’re here!” Tina squeals.
I’m roused out of a half-asleep state. Oliver shoots up into a sitting position. We both look out the window as the car turns off the main road and onto a dirt road that seems to lead into a dark forest.
“This is it?” I ask. I lean closer to the window to try to get a glimpse of the cabin.
“It’s another half mile up this road,” Ryan says.
I turn away from the window to look at Tina. “Are you sure they’re not luring us here to kill us?” I ask her. “This seems like the kind of place where no one will hear us screaming.”
“The bedroom walls are pretty thin, so try to keep the screaming to a minimum,” Ryan says.