"Trust me. I've got everything I need. You're the one I'm concerned about."
He finally turns to me. "I didn't know what we were doing."
"I gave you a chance to get more stuff. You chose not to."
"That's cause the van has everything I need."
"Does it?" I say ominously, knowing full well that I haven't removed anything.
I gesture toward the door. "Last chance."
Tek faces forward again, crosses his arms, and doesn't move. "Pass."
In a huff, I lean back over him to close the door. "You're a fucking child."
"I hate you."
With my fingers still wrapped around the handle, I turn my face towards him. I make a point of dragging my eyes down his face to his lips where I let them linger for several seconds before looking at him again. "Lie better next time." I smirk, then settle into the driver's seat before pulling back onto the road.
The radio is low. Every now and then I flick through to another channel when we’re out of range. Tek doesn’t comment or ask to pick the station, he doesn’t take out his phone, he just watches the snowy coastline pass us by in silence.
About ninety minutes later I veer off onto a small exit, and after following that road for five minutes, I pull up at a roadside general store. There’s one gas pump and the exterior paint is peeling, but the signs say they have beer and food, and that’s what we need.
“Pit stop, old man,” I say as I unbuckle my seat belt. When I’m out of the van I look back to see Tek hasn’t moved. “This is your last chance to piss in a toilet,” I tell him, then close the door and walk inside.
I head straight to the liquor section and contemplate my options. I put my chosen cases of beer on the register and tell them I’ll be back. When I turn around I see Tek in the snacks aisle already holding a pack of Skittles. “Get whatever you want. Just add it to the pile on the counter. My treat.”
I prowl the aisles gathering supplies for the days to come.
At the register I see Tek added graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows, and it takes everything for me to not tell him how cute he is.
I’m carded for the beer, and all told were in and out of the store in fifteen minutes. No sales tax—cheers Oregon.
Back in the van I pause to check the directions and take a screenshot on my phone because google maps will be no help to me for much longer.
I don’t pull back onto the highway, instead following a long stretch of road that narrows until it’s flanked on both sides by seemingly endless rows of pine, fir, and spruce. The branch tips are loaded with snow, and it feels like everything is compressing around us like we’re in a tunnel to a secret world nobody else knows about.
Another twenty minutes passes without us seeing a single house or car, and I stop in the center of the single laned road to check my phone again, fearing I missed the turnoff.
Five minutes further on, I’ve slowed considerably, my eyes more focused on the tree line to the right of the van instead of the pavement in front of me. Then I spot it, a break in the trees that no one would notice unless they were trying to find it.
I steer onto the gravel, the van instantly jittering on the loose stones.
The dirt road carves through the woods for a good mile. The trees crowd in, forming a corridor where only sporadic rays of full sunlight cut through. In the rearview mirror it looks like we’ve been swallowed whole by nature, and none of the real life bullshit can find us here.
Eventually the trees crack open and the tires crunch onto a patch of more tightly packed gravel.
Beyond the van there’s nothing but wet stone and driftwood for a hundred yards, then the ocean picks up the slack.
I pull to the side of the small clearing only just big enough for the van and a tent beside it.
I jump out, needing to be amongst it as quickly as possible.
There’s no sign that anyone has even been here before. Not a dent or a fire pit, or tire tracks other than the ones I just made. Logically I know we aren’t the first ones here because it looks just like the pictures I found on the ‘Hidden Beach’ forum, but I’m happy to buy into the delusion.
I step off the gravel onto the pebbles, and see that the shore slopes down towards the water ever so slightly.
Out in the surf, two giant boulders—bigger than houses—squat amongst the waves. And on either side, cliffs gate the beach off from the rest of the world.
