Our Little Love Story *NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON KINDLE!!*

chapter thirteen

I settled into my seat in the middle of the van and stared at the text Jared had sent me for several minutes. I felt the van shift onto the entrance ramp to the interstate and then into the traffic headed down Interstate fifty-seven. Sighing, I stuck my phone back in the wind breaker jacket Jared had loaned me and settled in for our several hour ride to Wisconsin. 

“Your friend seems very nice,” Nancy said, turning around in her seat. I looked away from the window, where I had been lost in thought.

Smiling, I said, “Yeah, he’s pretty nice.”

“Does he live by you?” she asked.

“Yeah. He lives on the other side of the park, which is really only about four blocks or so away,” I answered.

“Oh, I see,” Nancy replied, smiling. She turned back around in her seat. I guess she could tell I wasn’t really in the mood for chatting. 

We drove on for a few hours when Pastor announced, “Well, it’s about lunchtime. Is anyone hungry?” Several hands shot up in the air with random “Me!” shouts coming from all around me. Laughing, Pastor took the next exit into a small town I’d never heard of. We found a local Pizza Hut and pulled he pulled our huge van into the parking lot, taking up two spaces. 

“Pizza sound good for everyone?” he asked, looking at the passengers through the rearview mirror. 

A uniformed “Yes” came from the backend of the van, and then my fellow youth group members started moving around, getting ready to exit the van.

“Come on, Tiff. Some nice hot pizza will make you forget all about your boyfriend,” Garret said, smiling and patting me on the back as he made his way to the side door of the van, filing out with the others. I smiled back at him, and rose up from my seat, but said nothing in return. I don’t know that pizza would make me forget about Jared entirely, but my stomach was grumbling, and I was pretty hungry.

****

After lunch, we filed back into the van, resuming our previous seats. I pulled out my Ipod and my book, and tried to block Jared from my mind, at least temporarily. After skimming through three chapters of my book, I shut it and rested my hands on top of it on my lap. My Ipod still playing, I went back to staring out of the window, not really seeing anything at all; except random scenes of Jared and I replaying in front of my eyes like a movie, invisible to everyone else but me.

****

One stop for gas and bathroom breaks, and several hours later, we pulled into the biggest church parking lot I think I had ever seen. 

“We’re here!” Pastor announced. Stretching and yawning, everyone prepared to exit the van, grabbing the few things they had brought with them for the trip here. “Everyone,” Pastor said once we were all standing outside in the warm breeze, “Leave your luggage in the van for now. We’ll go inside for awhile, and then we’ll break up into groups, and once we figure out who our host families are, we’ll meet back here before going to our new ‘homes’ for the week.”