Naira: Naira’s driving right now, but she wants me to tell you that we’re 10 minutes away - Vic
Dad: Okay, thanks for the heads up. I’ll be waiting for you guys.

Naira’s POV

“Okay, last stop before we arrive,” Vic announced as we pulled up to a gas station on the side of the highway, “go to the bathroom now or pee in a bottle later.”

As soon as the car came to a halt at one of the pumps, I jumped out of the car, taking full advantage of the warning Vic had given. I had already decided to scramble out before it was even said that this was going to be our last stop. Well, Vic said it was our last stop, but that didn’t mean it actually would have been. I was going to drive the last few hours we had left, so technically I could just pull over whenever I pleased.

But, still, that was a stupid idea.

So, I rushed off to the bathrooms like I had done during most of the sections with no stops for a while. They weren’t the most hygienic things around, but they were better than nothing. I was just glad the stalls where open. So, I did what I had to do and went to wash my hands.

“Naira, you still there?” Maya asked from one of the other stalls I noticed was now locked.

“Yeah…” I shook my hands to dry them a little and turned around to face where her voice was coming from. “Is there something you need? I can run back to the car or get something from the store.”

“No, no, I just want you to wait up for me,” she said, a few seconds later the sound of a toilet flushing filling the room.

I waited for her, leaning against the counter before deciding it probably wasn’t the cleanest thing to touch. Instead, I decided to awkwardly stand in the middle of the room and crossed my arms. Not all too long later, the stall door unlocked and she popped out, giving me a big grin as she saw me.

“I do not know how you manage to have to run to the bathroom so often,” she giggled as she washed her hands.

“Because I like to stay hydrated unlike everybody else.” I pouted back. By now, the whole bathroom break thing had turned into a joke to everybody else. I was the one who asked to stop at the next rest stop the most, rarely did anybody else ask. Not that they had to since there was a high chance I would already notify before they needed to.

“You and Vic would be even better together if he had a piss-kink,” Maya started laughing louder, turning off the water and shaking her hands like I had done before.

“Oh my god, ew, gross, Maya!” I exclaimed and hit her arm. After a while, I started to tolerate all the jokes, even the ones from Vic, but this one just went too far.

Maya just continued to laugh and sprayed me with the leftover water on her hands before wiping them on her jeans. She started to walk up to me so we could both go outside. However, as we stepped into the sun again, I remembered something and slowed us down.

“I actually wanted to talk about something,” I told her, decreasing the pace I was walking at, causing her to slow down as well.

“What’s up?” She questioned, looking around the gas station to see if she could find Vic and Mike or the car anywhere since it was no longer at the pump.

“Well, it’s about the sleeping arrangements…” I started and clapped my hands together, giving her a short look to see if she already had a reaction, but she was just looking back at me. “So, there’s two rooms. Mine, with the queen sized bed, and the guest room with the king-sized pullout. I was thinking that--”

“That we share a room?!” She clapped excitedly before letting my finish.

“No, actually--”

“I’m so excited!” she squealed overdramatically, not letting me contradict her at all.

I actually wanted to convince her to share a room with Mike so I could share with Vic. I had it all planned. If she wasn’t going to jump at the chance of staying with Mike, then I could tell her this could maybe progress her relationship. If none of that worked, then I would suggest one of them sleep on the couch, which would almost certainly be Mike. She knew exactly what I was implying but acted like she didn’t, playing like she was super excited so I would feel too guilty to shut her down.

“Yay…” I let out weekly and gave her a forced big smile. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share a room with her. We hadn’t had many sleepovers ever since I moved out, I had had many more with Vic. But this was like a mini vacation. It only made sense that I wanted to sleep with Vic by my side, even if it was in my dad’s house.

However, if Maya really didn’t feel comfortable sharing a bed with Mike, then I’d deal with it. Vic and Mike could take the larger bed. They were brothers, so they had no reason to feel uncomfortable. I knew that if I had been the one in her situation, she would have done the same for me.

We found the guys in the parking lot, the sun beaming down and reflecting off the car. Despite the weather not being overly humid and hot, the tarmac was still radiating the heat like it would only any normal sunny day. Even if the weather had been gloomy, it wouldn’t have ruined my enthusiasm, nothing could. My hometown was quite a mellow place, but that was exactly it: it was my hometown. It was where I grew up, where my family lived.

As we approached the Fuentes brothers, Vic held up the car keys. I straightened my arm and opened my hand, letting him drop the keys into it.

“Be careful with my baby,” he warned me with a stern look, glancing at his keys like he was second guessing giving me control of the car. He had driven all the way and was now starting to get separation anxiety.

“Oh, I was actually planning on crashing as soon as possible,” I rolled my eyes, pointing at a car parked not too far away from us. “That one in particular. The black paint will definitely ruin both… paint-- jobs…”

“Paint jobs?” Mike snorted, laughing at my careful wording.

“Oh, shut up, all the words sound the same to me,” I sighed, shaking my head. All I did was try not to mess up my wording, but that made it just as bad.

“Well, I got a ‘paint job’ last night,” Vic joked with a wink.

“Grow up.” I shook my head and flicked his arm before walking up to the driver’s side. “Oh, and that means something completely different than you’re implying right now, which is also not true.”

“What?” Mike’s eyes went wide as he looked at me, curiosity sparking in them. “What does it mean?”

I shrugged and started making my way to the driver’s side of the car. Vic had already unlocked it, so I easily hopped in and started to adjust the seat and mirrors. I only had to move the seat one click forward and the rearview mirror a tiny bit down to adjust to my height. It was barely anything, yet it still caused Vic to groan softly to himself as he got in on the passenger’s side.

“I forgot you had to do that,” he complained, obviously not looking forward to having to figure out how he had set it before. Everybody had a way they liked everything to be set up in their car, and it was always a pain to get it there.

“Well, you told me you didn’t want me to crash,” I shrugged, not feeling sorry for him.

Instead, I took his phone out of the stand he had kept it in despite the fact that we had all just left the car for a couple of minutes. I handed it back to Vic, which he took as a sign for him to unlock it and continue the navigation route.

However, I pushed it away and shook my head, “I know where I’m going, that thing’s going to drive me insane.”

“I didn’t know you had road rage,” Maya commented as she leaned forward to get into the conversation, “you’re always pretty calm whenever you drive my car. But then again, I am often too drunk to really notice things like that…”

“I don’t have road rage, the navigation just takes you somewhere that isn’t exactly my dad’s house. It brings you like a block away, but it’s a oneway road and you’ll have to go all the way around. Google just thinks the house number is somewhere else than it actually is,” I replied and started to slowly back out of the parking spot, causing Vic to tense up while he tried to mask his fear.

I ignored all the comments and looks I was receiving and got on the highway. For some reason, my friends didn’t think I was good at driving. I knew how to drive just fine, I just didn’t have the money for my own car. Proof was that I always managed to take myself and Maya home safely. Vic’s car was just a little bigger than I was used to, but that wasn’t anything a little extra caution and leaving more room couldn’t fix.

Eventually, they all did notice that they were in good hands. Maya and Mike started playing their usual games in the back and Vic was in his own world listening to the music we had on. It still made me wonder why Mike and Maya hadn’t gotten together yet and why they weren’t using this trip as an opportunity to at least ‘explore’ their options. And no, I didn’t just think that for my own selfish reasons, I really did think they could end up being something. It was like they were just trying to find reasons why they had to hold back.

Once I took the exit off the highway, I started to get excited again. It had died down after spending hours in the car, but that only made sense. Road trips were fun and all, but they were also very tiring. Sitting in a moving vehicle just made you exhausted because you weren’t doing anything. But being so close to my hometown just made me excited.

“Hey, Vic, can you message my dad that we’ll be there in fifteen minutes?” I asked, not wanting to take my eyes off the road.

He nodded and got my phone out of my bag before typing out the message to my dad.

“Fifteen minutes?” Mike sprung excitedly, looking around the place. “Already?”

“I could have made it five minutes,” I responded honestly, “but that would feel like I’m rushing him. You’re getting the scenic route now.”

“Scenic?” Vic looked up with amusement as we started approaching the small town.

“Well, there isn’t really much here to see or do other than go out into the nature--it’s the only reason tourists occasionally stay here--but let’s say you’ll get to see how small of a town this place really is. You don’t even see it on maps until you zoom in super far.”

And so we started driving through the town. Like I said, it wasn’t much, but I liked the vibe. It wasn’t anything like San Diego. Although it wasn’t LA over there either, this was even further removed. There was no busy stressed out feeling of big cities. It was laid back, the old buildings still as beautiful as when they were built. In SD, the old buildings were quite sketchy. Here, it wasn’t like that at all. And the parks actually felt like they belonged, not like they were forced in between buildings because the city needed to put in some nature.

Then, we briefly drove through the ‘fancier’ neighborhood, or at least my favorite neighborhood. You had the houses worth a million dollars, but these weren’t valued as high just still way out of anything I could afford. I often went through it when I went to the center or back home from the center since my dad’s house was on the edge of the town limits (meaning that I could have indeed taken a later exit on the highway and made it in five minutes, but that wasn't as fun). The houses here were the perfect size for a nice family home. They had two stories, a nice wood paneling, and white trimmed windows. Many had front and back porches while the yards were full of trees. I didn’t grow up in a house like that myself, but I used to have friend who had. As a kid, those houses seemed like castles to me.

“When I was younger my goal was to eventually live in one of these houses,” I told them, still marveling at how nice these houses were to me while also laughing a little at young me always having believed I would have never left the small town, “but I quickly found out just how expensive they were.”

“You’ve gotta buy a house here now, Vic,” Mike commented, hitting his older brother on the shoulder from behind.

Of course that put Vic in an uncomfortable situation. There was no reason he would rent a house here, let alone buy it. Yet, he also wasn’t in the position to call out how stupid of an idea it was and to hurt me. Mike just liked messing a little with our relationship by making jokes that could be harmless but could also put one of us in quite some trouble.

“Don’t be stupid,” I laughed off. Vic and I hadn’t been long enough together to even think about that, but I wasn’t going to mention that either. “That would be quite a bad investment. Why buy a house if you’re not going to live in it and can’t sell it on? Most people are trying to get out of here, not come here.”

And just like that, that situation was also no longer sticky. We all knew that our relationship wasn’t at that stage yet, not even close to it. It just seemed wrong to use that as a reason. At least I could think of another good excuse.

When we finally arrived at my dad’s house (the houses here were a lot less nice. They still had the wood paneling, but weren’t as upkept and were way smaller along with gardens that weren’t as fresh-looking) it didn’t take long for my dad to come out and greet us. The only person he never met before was Mike, but the introduction was an easy one.

He helped us with getting our bags out of the back and carrying them down the dry dusty path to the house. You could literally see every room from the living room, but my dad still decided to give a quick tour to show where everybody where the bedrooms and bathroom was.

“That’s the creepy wall, ignore the creepy wall,” I instructed, pointing at the wall opposite of the one where the TV was.

There were a shitload of pictures. And as you can probably guess, many of them had me in them. One row on the wall had 23 pictures just of me, one for each year I was alive. It was silly and always embarrassed me, but it was also unavoidable. We just didn’t have the staircase and the multiple dressers most families had to put up pictures, we just had that one dresser and that one piece of wall. It wasn’t that we had more pictures, they were just grouped together.

Although the house was too small for an equal spread of photographs, there were still enough bedrooms for us all to fit in. Although they were quite a tight squeeze, everything needed still fit in. Most space was saved through the kitchen, living room, and dining room, literally being one rectangle. And, of course, there was only one bathroom. But we never needed more.

“So, this is Naira’s bedroom,” my dad said, opening the door to the room furthest to the left.

The walls were a light purple, my metal-framed bed pressed against the left wall and a single shelf above it displaying a few pictures and memorabilia. Across the bed were my desk and wardrobe, leaving just a few feet to walk to the other side of my bed and the window looking out of the backyard. The only thing I ever really got to spend money on was that queen sized bed. It wasn’t exactly my taste anymore with its twisted metal, but teenage me was delighted.

“Here’s the guest bedroom.” My dad moved to the next bedroom in the middle. “It’s also the office, so ignore the files.”

This bed wasn’t as fancy since it was a pull-out couch, but it worked just fine. The nice thing about this room, though, was the large sliding door that led to the back porch. As a child, I always wanted this as my bedroom cause I could play outside easier, but that was the one thing my dad didn’t allow.

“That door’s great for sneaking out,” I stated and pointed at it. “It opens and closes quite silently, so you guys are lucky.”

Maybe it was better that I never did get that room, because as what I said suggested, it was the door I always used to sneak out as a teenager. The front door creaked, but I could always rely on the sliding doors to help me be stealthy.

Luckily for me, before anybody could make a crude joke, my dad also showed where the bathroom was, which was across from his bedroom, which was all the way to the right. Technically you could say the bathroom was next to the kitchen, only the door was in the ‘hallway’ to the bedrooms.

“Time to get moved in,” Mike said as a way to imply we should probably move our bags into our respective bedrooms.

It set Maya off, however. She sped to pick up her bag and run into my bedroom before letting herself fall onto my bed. “I finally get the sleepover I always wanted as a teenager with you!”

And that was how she made it clear that she was going to share a room with me. Not Vic, especially not Mike, no it was going to be me. And although Vic seemed a little confused and a tad upset, he kept quiet and dealt with the fact that he was going to have to share the pull-out couch with his brother.

I quickly whispered to him, “Maya insisted. She didn’t want to even think about sharing a room with Mike. It’s like they’re afraid of each other.”

Notes

This time the delay is all on me. I blame the finals demotivating me and using up all my time. But we're back again!!!