For a second, we just looked at each other—me sitting there with my heart doing something unreasonable, him with thateasy confidence that always made it hard to tell if he knew exactly what effect he had on people.
Then he closed the door, walked around to the driver’s side, and slid in.
As he started the car, I looked out the window, trying to focus on the familiar shapes of the campus instead of the fact that everything about this weekend suddenly felt… charged. Maybe he was right about this being like a romantic getaway after all.
What a terrifying thought.
In minutes, the campus disappeared behind us in a blur of stone and iron gates, the familiar buildings shrinking until Hartwell was nothing more than a shape in the distance. Tino drove with one hand on the wheel, relaxed in a way that felt almost unfair given how many rules it felt like we were breaking by going on a weekend away together. It made me wonder exactly how he felt about this trip—if he’d been thinking that it was falling dangerously into “real couple” territory too or if this all felt so natural to him. Was I making it weirder than I should be?
I stared out the window, chewing on my lip to stop myself from blurting out something I would regret by asking him his feelings. I wasn’t sure why I cared so much. I was the one who was supposed to be so calm and casual about all of this. I was the matchmaker for my friends, the one who could take one look at a boy and tell them if they were meant to be together. And yet when it came to myself, I was practically melting into a puddle trying to figure out what was going on with Tino and me—when I’d spent years insisting there could be nothing.
“So,” he said, after a few minutes. “If we want to survive this trip without murdering each other, there are some decisions we need to make.”
“Such as?”
“Who controls the music, for one,” he said. I drew in a deep breath, ready to fight for why I should be the one to choose the playlist, then deflated as he said, “I figure you should.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You hate my playlists,” he said. “And I don’t feel like listening to you sigh aggressively every time a song comes on.”
“Well, yeah, because your taste in music is terrible. I just thought you’d insist on playing it anyway.”
“The music I listen to is experimental,” he sniffed. “You just don’t understand.”
“It was a man whisper-singing about a pigeon.”
Tino grinned. “Art is subjective.”
“I’m really not sure it could be considered art.”
“That’s like saying a hot dog isn’t a sandwich.”
My mind spun trying to keep up with how his mind had gone from point A to point B there, but I absentmindedly responded, “Good, because it’s not.”
Tino looked at me with such a flabbergasted expression that you would have thought I said the earth was flat.
“What?” he asked.
“Look at the road!” I snapped.
He did as I asked but repeated, “You don’t think a hot dog is a sandwich?”
“So?”
He sighed and shook his head. “It’s like I’m looking at a stranger.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. I usually tried to hold back my smiles at Tino’s jokes, knowing that I was only encouraging him whenever I laughed, but he just sounded so serious about this that I couldn’t help myself.
“I’m very sorry,” I said. “But hey, at least I think water is wet. You must agree, right?”
He hit the steering wheel with his palm. “Finally, someone agrees with me! Tell that to the guys next time you see them, okay? We’ve been arguing about it for months.”
We passed the time with ridiculous debates—whether cereal was soup (it wasn’t), whether pineapple belonged on pizza (it did), whether calling shotgun actually meant anything (it absolutely did). Somewhere along the way, I curled my legs up under me, tucking my feet against the seat, and realized I was completely, stupidly comfortable—in this car, on this trip, and, most shockingly of all, with Tino.
I leaned my head back against the seat and sighed contentedly.
“What?” Tino asked.
