I take a deep breath and turn, annoyed to see that Reece looks well rested, perfectly calm, and not the least bit frazzled about the fact that he’s about to move across the country.
With me.
He’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, both of which should be boring, but instead look incredibly good on him. He’s gotten bigger since he was nineteen and I mean that in the best way possible.
Reece has always been fit, courtesy of high school sports he’d never cared about but always been good at.
But he’s filled out even more in all the right places: shoulders broad, hips and waist narrow, arms tanned and strong. There’s an unfamiliar tattoo peeking out from the sleeve of his right arm, and my fingers itch to reach out and push up the cotton to see what it is.
Once, I could have. Once when we were best friends. Once when we were a good deal more than friends. But now…now I’m pretty sure
his skin would burn me. Brimstone, and all that.
“Is that all you’re bringing?” I ask, my eyes skimming over the cross-body bag slung over his shoulder and the canvas duffel by his feet.
“A good thing too,” he says, glancing into the overstuffed trunk.
“We’re relocating,” I say, my voice just a little bit whinier than I want it to be. “We’re supposed to bring all this stuff.”
“Yeah, well not all of us that are relocating have all this stuff,” he says, a gruffness to his voice.
I instantly feel the sting, extra-sharp because I suspect Reece is speaking a simple truth rather than trying to piss me off.
My family’s not wealthy. Not even close. We’re middle-class in the most solid sense of the word, and Christmas gifts often came from secondhand stores.
Reece didn’t even get that much.
Dinner might never have been fancy the nights Reece ate with my family (which was often), but the spaghetti, or leftover chicken, or whatever out-of-the-box meal we were having was more than his dad or sister remembered to feed him back home.
“Move,” he mutters, jerking his chin to gesture me out of the way.
I don’t budge, and our gazes clash, a silent battle of wills that he wins only by physically elbowing me out of the way.
Without another word, he begins hauling out everything I’ve put in the trunk.
“Hey! I need all this,” I say, dodging the garbage bag stuffed with bedding.
“Well then, shut up and let me figure out how to fit it all in here,” he says, hauling out an enormous suitcase like it’s nothing.
The sleeve of his T-shirt rides up a little higher, distracting me, but I can’t quite see what the tattoo is.
“Why’d you agree to do this?” I ask, relenting and helping him pull the last of my haphazardly packed stuff out of the car so we can reload it.
“Agree to what?”
I roll my eyes. “The car trip.”
“Well, way I see it,” he says, resting his hands on his hips as he surveys the stuff that is now all over the driveway, “you crashed my trip. Your folks offered me the car if I could fix it up, and I needed a way to get out of here. Wasn’t counting on you.”
I bite my lip, feeling a little stab of guilt. My parents love Reece, almost like a son, but it bothers me a little that they think nothing of foisting their daughter on him. It wasn’t quite reneging on their promise to him, but it’s sort of a bum deal.
“I can back out,” I say quietly. “Get a plane ticket.”
He bends down, picking up the largest of the cardboard boxes and easily setting it into the trunk before maneuvering it toward the seats I’d folded down. “You wouldn’t get to see your boyfriend then.”
Oscar. Right.
It’s more than alarming that I’ve barely thought about him in the two days since learning that Reece and I’d be making this trip together. Heck, half the reason I wanted to do the road trip in the first place was to stop by Miami, and now I’m just…I don’t know.