Road Trip [#Wattys2015]

Chapter 7

"Dude, stop smiling you look dumb." Jackson said and I hadn't realized I was still smiling till just then. But why would I stop smiling now that life was just perfect? I was in a beautiful hotel room with my two best friends, a hot receptionist was hitting on me, it was Easter vacation and I was only one day away from buying the Pleasant Wake Alarm. This day would go down in history as one of the happiest days of my life.

I took a deep breath and lied on my bed, the middle one because the Everson siblings were used to sleeping in cornered beds. The walls were pale white and the floors were worm and wooden like the ones I had at home which made the hotel room feel more like my actual bed room than a place that I just walked in a few minutes ago.

Maia had already found the Wi-Fi and was charging her phone while tweeting.

"Were did you find the charger?" I asked.

"This is my back up charger; I had left it in the storage place in the car. You know, just in case my brother was planning a road trip without me." She laughed. Even though Maia was an i-Phone person, we shared our hatred for the Selfie generation. I remember her saying "We were born in the wrong time. 'Cause now, we are without our will, both parts of the Selfie Generation. We don't read books, we read dirty fan fiction. We don't buy albums, we listen to radio hits. We don't have memories, we have Selfies."

Jackson had found a catalogue filled with telephone numbers of places with food and it was only till he asked me what I wanted to eat when I realized how hungry I was. We ordered pizza and watched some TV. Jackson got up to go to a kiosk and get us some candy bars for desert.

"In the car, when Jackson said he wanted to be a pilot like your father, you cringed. Why'd you do that?"

"Oh, that." She sighed when she remember what I was talking about. "Our father isn't exactly who Jackson thinks he is." She took a ship from her coke as if she had just said nothing important.

"What do you mean?" I sat on the chair closer to her bed.

"Well, for starters, he hasn't done one flight the last year."

"But what about the times he wasn't home?" I asked confused.

"Then, he was in a hotel room." She took a ship again.

"What was he doing?" Her short answers were not helping my confusion.

"What do you think?" She looked at me.

"No. No way." I denied her statement. Her mom and dad were one of the happiest couples. Definitely the happiest one I've ever met.

"It's true, I followed him once. He went in with a woman."

"That's still not enough proof." I don't know what I was trying to prove by denying it. It just sounded so unlike him. "There's no way he could have an affair."

"No, he doesn't have an affair." She said with certainty and I felt my muscles relax. This was all just a big misunderstanding.

"He just sleeps around." She continued and I choked on my coke.

"Do you think your mother knows?" I said after a minute, when I had let the new information sink in.

"No." she replied.

"Are you going to tell her?" Now she started to get anxious.

"I don't know." She said and bit her straw. "I mean, I want to. I think she should know but I don't want my parents to get divorced." And for the first time since I met her, I found myself not knowing what to say. I thought about Jackson and how he always said he wanted to be like his dad.