Nicotine (Eremin)

Chapter 21

March

Eren's POV

The weather for this weekend was predicted to be wonderful, so Mikasa made me come on a camping trip with her and her friends. I've never been camping, so I'm sure I'll have fun, but there's one problem.

I won't have any cell service for two days.

Not being able to contact Armin is going to be difficult, but I was going to try my best to not let it bring me down, so I could try to have a good time, and tell Armin all about it when I got back.

Still, as Mikasa, her friends Annie, Connie, and I walked further into the woods, I felt more and more guilty for not being there if Armin needed me.

I didn't want to be held back by overthinking, though. Apparently, I had fallen behind when Mikasa yelled at me to 'get my ass up there'.

We had stopped by a river because Connie insisted on throwing rocks into it, but stopped after he fell into the river.

"Should we just camp here?" Annie said, throwing her stuff down next to a tree.

"Sure. Why not?" Connie said, throwing his shirt back onto land. He started taking off his pants to reveal swimming trunks under.

"Connie, you can't swim in a river. It's too shallow. We can try to find a lake or something tomorrow." Mikasa said, pulling the tent out of one of her bags.

"Just try and stop me." he said, running out into the river. I walked over to Mikasa to help her with the tent.

"How you holding up?" she asked me.

"What?"

"Well, I know you don't have any service, and I know how much talking to Armin means to you." she said, handing me a pole.

"Oh, uh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just trying to keep my mind off of him, you know." easier said than done.

"Thank you for coming. It means a lot to me." she dropped a pole and stepped closer to me. I pulled the pole closer to my body when I figured out she was going to hug me. I'm pretty awkward and I didn't know if I should drop the pole and hug her back, or just stand there.

Before I knew it, it was too late to do anything, and she was back to setting up the tent.

"Hey, Mikasa, when can we make the fire for the hot dogs?" Connie shouted from the river.

"Dude, we just got here. It's only 3." she replied. He shrugged and turned back to his conversation with Annie.

Mikasa and her friends were already in college, and I was still in high school. They usually discussed some pretty heated topics, and it was hard for me to keep up with them, so I usually didn't say much, but I took this as my chance to make some friends.

When me and Mikasa finished with the first tent, we walked over to meet the others by the river. Connie was still waist-deep in freezing water, and Annie was sitting on a rock throwing sticks at Connie.

"Annie, stop, that's mean." Connie said, just as she threw another stick that hit him in the shoulder. Mikasa laughed and threw a stick herself. It missed by at least 8 feet, but she looked like she was having fun.

Still, I couldn't help but think how much more fun I could be having if Armin was here with me.