I try to choose my words carefully. It seems cruel to complain about my moms to someone who doesn’t have one anymore. Wes fidgets uneasily, then looks right at me and admits there’s something he’s been keeping from me. What if being with me isn’t what he imagined it would be? What if he’s here to tell me that he just wants to be friends? I suddenly feel like my heart is going through a juicer. Freshly squeezed heartbreak.

“My dad’s been talking about us getting out of town for a while.”

“Like, going on vacation?” I ask, confused.

Wes shakes his head. Not a vacation, he says. Something more permanent, at least until there’s a vaccine. I try to act normal as he explains that his dad wants a change of scenery and thinks it could be good for Wes and his sister. Mr. Bowen’s family lives on the East Coast, and his parents want time with their grandkids, too. The plan, if it happens, would be to get in an RV and spend a week or two driving east.

“My parents met in New York, and when they decided to move back to the Bay where my mom grew up, they drove cross-country together. My dad thinks it would be fun to take the same trip and show us some of their favorite haunts.”

“In a pandemic?”

“We’d be safe, I guess. He thinks it’s the best time to go, you know, with him working from home and us doing remote learning.”

“Do you… want to go?”

Wes clears his throat. “I don’t know.”

We are not old enough for me to ask Wes to stay. It would be a pointless overture anyway. We both know that all major life decisions are out of your hands when you’re still living at home. It doesn’t matter that Wes is already eighteen and that I’ll be the same age in a couple of weeks. Adulthood is within grasp, but until any of us can actually grab hold of it, we are still at the mercy of our parents’ decisions. If Wes’s dad wants to get away, then his kids can argue and state their case, but in the end, they’re not the ones who get to decide.

“I know that what we’re doing isn’t, like, normal dating, but I would really miss you,” I admit. He makes it easy to be vulnerable, even when that’s rarely my go-to.

“Why couldn’t you have decided you liked me four years ago?” Wes asks sheepishly.

“Why couldn’t you have been this cool four years ago?” I joke.