“I’m sorry!” Mike shouts, but he doesn’t sound very sorry.
“Are you laughing?!”
“I’m sorry!” Mike yells again, this time laughing in earnest.
I’m about to spin around and save this serpentine storm the trouble of murdering him, when the forest suddenly clears enough for me spot it—a set of old wooden stairs leading up to an old wooden porch attached to an old wooden cabin.
“Thank God!” I shout, doing a final mad dash through twisting sheets of rain. My boots slap one-two-three up the porch stairs, and I throw myself into the door, twisting the knob and practically tumbling inside. I double over with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. And when I finally do catch it, I find Mike in the same position. Doubled over, hands on his knees.
Only, he’s laughing. His entire body shakes with it, and when he peeks up at me and sees the indignant expression on my face, he laughs even harder.
“I should have left you out there,” I say through a sternly suppressed smile, and any last sense of composure leaves him as he laughs hysterically.
“I never swam with a manatee!” Mike laugh-shouts, making fun of the frantic things I cried as I ran through the monsoon, watching my life flash before my eyes. “I never learned to water-ski! I never hugged a koala!”
The sounds he’s making no longer even sound like laughter. He’s howling, coughing, crying, and I can’t help laughing too.
“Stop making fun of me!”
I playfully chuck his hat at him, and he stands upright to catch it. “I never ate pizza in Italy!” he teases.
“Pizza in New York!” I correct, and Mike grins with streams of rain trickling down his happy face. He’s soaked, from the ends of his hair to the laces of his boots, and I’m not in better shape.
“We’re going to catch pneumonia,” I warn, but Mike just shakes his head and chuckles.
“You’re going to live to cuddle a koala someday, Hailey, I promise.”
He takes off his drenched hoodie and hangs it on a wall hook to dry, revealing the black T-shirt he has on underneath, and then he sits on the floor and stretches out his long legs, watching the rain pummel the forest outside.
The cabin is empty, save for about ten years’ worth of dirt and dust. I swipe my shoe over a filthy spot on the wooden floor, and then I sit down too. “How long do you think it’s going to rain?”
Mike pulls his phone out of his pocket like it’s going to tell him the answer. “No idea.”
“No service?”
“None.” He leans back on the palms of his hands, and I crisscross my legs.
“Do you think everybody else is getting soaked too?” I ask, and Mike chuckles.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if Rowan had a popup tent and a space heater in that backpack of hers.”
If she doesn’t, I’d bet good money that Danica is not going to be happy when we get back, but I keep that little prophecy to myself. I’m sure Mike is well aware.
“You’ve really never had New York pizza?” he asks, glancing over at me. Rain pounds against the roof and batters the dusty windows, but Mike sits near the open door of the cabin, content to cross one ankle over the other and talk to me about pizza.
“I’ve never been to New York at all,” I confess. I’ve been to, like, three states. Indiana, where I’m from. Virginia, where I am now. Delaware, where my family vacationed sometimes when I was a kid. And if you want to count the drive-through states, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, I guess you could call that six, even though they all looked the same to me—long highways and wooded rest stops.
“You’re not missing much,” Mike says. “The state is okay, but . . .” He cups his hand over his mouth and whispers, “Minnesota has better pizza.”
“Minnesota?” I laugh, and Mike sits up and begins messing with his phone.
“Look,” he says, holding it out for me to see a picture of a slice of pizza. I take the phone from him, and he says, “This is the best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life. This place has all sorts of toppings, like, you can even get potato chips, Hailey. On your pizza. But this prosciutto . . .” He closes his eyes. “This is why I won’t do U.S. tours unless we do a show near Minneapolis.”
Laughing, I ask, “Are you serious?”
His brown eyes pop back open, amused at my skepticism. “Dead serious. I’m pretty sure Shawn even put it in our contract with Mosh Records.”
I hand his phone back and say, “I’d have to get the potato chips. I don’t eat prosciutto.”
“You don’t eat prosciutto?” he gasps, like he’s offended on its behalf.
“I don’t eat meat. I’m a vegetarian.”
Mike’s brows slam together, his jaw hanging open and his eyes drilled into mine. “You . . .”
“Don’t eat meat.”
“You don’t . . .”
“Eat meat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” I assure him, trying not to laugh.
“But you’re a farmer!”
“My parents are farmers,” I correct, and Mike stares back out the doorway of the cabin, clearly disturbed.
“I’ve been friends with all kinds of people, but . . .” He looks over at me with exaggerated disgust on his face. “A vegetarian?”
I laugh, and he has the decency to pretend to be pushed when I bump my fist into his shoulder. “And here I thought we were BFFs.”