“Where are we heading?”Mason has a

“Where are we heading?”
Mason has a small map on the seat between us. He hands it to me. “Pick a place,” he says.
“Seriously?”
He shrugs, then pops a few Junior Mints into his mouth. “Sure,” he says. “Why not?”
I smile. This is so crazy. I’m used to over-planned trips without much room for freedom. After all the drama and worry of the past week, I feel free and daring and happy.
I spread the map open and start looking.
“What’s the general plan?” I ask. “Are we camping out tonight? Because we’d need to stop somewhere early enough that it’s still light outside, right?”
“Well, we can’t drive all the way to Mexico today, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says, laughing.
I roll my eyes. “I know that,” I say. “I’m just trying to get an idea of how far we should go. And when we get there, then what? Do we just plant ourselves somewhere for a week? Or are we going to drive every day?”
“Whatever we want to do,” he says. “That’s the beauty of this.”
“I’m not used to having so much choice,” I say.
“You realize how crazy that sounds, right?”
“What do you mean?”
He turns the radio down and keeps one hand casually on the steering wheel. “Think about it. You come from one of the wealthiest families in the South. You could have just about anything in the world you want. You could afford to go anywhere in the world you’ve ever wanted to go. And you just told me you’re not used to having so much choice?”
I lay the map down across my legs. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, but I want you to really think about it,” he says. “This is the kind of thing that’s been on my mind a lot lately. Why would a girl who could literally have anything she wanted be limited on choices?”
I shrug. I’ve never really thought about this before. “I guess because I don’t always feel like my choices are my own.”
“Exactly.” He adjusts his weight and sits up straighter. “See, money doesn’t always open the world up to you. Money can be a straight-jacket sometimes, too. This is something people don’t always realize. They think that because we have money, we’re lucky and free. But sometimes the money is what ties us down. Let’s say I wanted to work on a construction site. Say I like working with my hands and working outdoors, so I want a job where I can be outside in the sun and build things. If my dad wasn’t Nathan Trent, do you think anyone would give a shit? No, it would be normal. It would be an honest way to make a living and that would be that. But because my dad is rich, I have to consider how it looks for me to have a job like that. People suddenly judge me, like I’m only working that job to make a point or stick it to my dad. Or they assume my parents are going broke. It can’t just be something I wanted to do.”
I lean back. I think about school and how my mom wanted me to be pre-law because she was. I never really felt like I had a choice.
“If Penny Wright didn’t want to finish college, it would be a scandal, right? That’s such bullshit,” he says. “Our lives are dictated by how things look, and I’m so tired of it.”
“What brought this on?” I ask. “Why has this been on your mind so much? I mean, it’s not like you actually want to work construction, right?”
“No,” he says. “But if I did, I want to be free to make that choice without being judged for it.”
“So, what then?”
He licks his lips. “Honestly?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I want to know what made you start thinking about this.”
“My parents have been having some financial problems,” he says. He glances over at me, watching for a reaction. “It’s been going on for a while, and all they ever do is fight about it. Mom keeps trying to convince Dad to put the house on the market and look for a smaller place. It’s not like they’d have to move into a studio apartment. She’s talking about downgrading to a five-bedroom house or something, but Dad acts like it would be the end of his reputation in the community. He thinks it will draw all this attention to our family. So instead of making a change that would take away some of the financial stress, they put themselves deeper in the hole just to keep up appearances.”
I frown and stare at the map, not knowing what to say.
“There’s more to it than that,” he says. “But that’s really what got it started for me. Then, the more I started looking around at all our friends and the things people do to one-up each other or show off, the more I started thinking about just getting away from it all for a while.”
“I didn’t know your parents were having a hard time,” I say.
“No one does,” he says. “And I didn’t want to bring it up to you, because your dad’s the one who pays mine. It’s awkward.”
I shrug. “Still, I’d rather you felt like you could talk to me instead of keeping it to yourself and dealing with the stress of it yourself.”
“It’s hard to complain to you or Preston about money,” he says. “I was afraid if I said something, you’d want to do something to fix it.”
I bite my lower lip. “It’s my first instinct,” I say. “I can’t help it. When someone needs money, I feel like it’s one of the few things I can do that will really make a difference.”
“I know you don’t mean it as an insult, but you can’t throw money at every problem and expect that to be enough,” he says. “Anyway, my point was that it’s not the money that’s the problem. It’s the fact that my parents are willing to sacrifice everything we have to try keep up the appearance of having money.”
I nod. “And in response, you decided to strike out and do the opposite,” I say. “Drive to a place where no one knows you in a truck that pretty much guarantees no one will think you have money. Then what? What’s the goal?”
He leans back against the seat. “To just live,” he says. “To experience a simpler kind of life where the only thing that matters to people is what kind of person you are. Not how much money you have or what kind of house you live in.”
It seems like such a foreign concept to me, I can hardly wrap my mind around it. “I’ve lived my entire life opposite of that. I’ve made friends by inviting people to parties on the yacht. Trips to Europe. I’ve always worn expensive clothes and driven fast cars. People flock to me because of those things, I think. I’ve always been scared that if I took all that away, maybe there wouldn’t be much left to like about me.”
He shakes his head and reaches across the seat to grab my hand. “You’re so much more than all those things, Pen.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” I say with a laugh.
“Let’s pick a place and settle in for a while, then,” he says. “We’ll be Penny and Mason, drifters with no money, looking for a good time. Maybe without all those other things to hide behind, we’ll learn all kinds of new things about ourselves.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You have no idea how scary that sounds.”
“Yes I do,” he says. “But it’ll be fun, too. I promise.”
I let go of his hand and lift the map up, studying all the possibilities.
My eyes land on the beach. I’ve always loved the ocean more than anything, so why not, right? “Can we camp on the beach?”
He smiles. “Maybe not directly on the beach, depending on where we go, but I bet we could find a few campgrounds that are close to beaches,” he says. “Look around the gulf. Alabama, maybe? If you look, camp sites should be marked on the map.”
I run my index finger along the gulf coast, then see a little tree icon. “What about Gulf State Park?” I ask.
“Sounds like a great place for a new start,” he says. He takes my hand again and I get butterflies in my stomach at his touch.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I say, then scoot across the seat and turn the radio back up.