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Riley, Maya, Farkle, and Lucas are all packed into a car Farkle’s borrowed from his dad. They’re taking a road trip upstate to the Minkus’ cabin for the weekend as a final celebration before they start their freshman year of college in a few weeks. Right now, their only definite plan for the weekend is to celebrate youth, summer, and each other.
Farkle looks at his friends in the car and wishes Zay was with them, but he had already moved out of state weeks ago for school. A twinge of guilt hits Farkle when he remembers that Isadora’s not with them, but he reminds himself that after they broke up, she grew distant. That’s not what he’s here to think about, though. He wants to feel free, not held down by past memories and regret.
Riley’s riding shotgun, mostly because she warned everyone before they started driving that she gets car sick on long rides. Farkle doesn’t complain, because that means he gets to be close to her for the entire ride. Maya and Lucas definitely don’t mind. They’ll nonchalantly hold hands the whole time. Farkle’s been waiting for some kind of official announcement from them about the state of the “not quite relationship, but definitely not just friendship” thing they have going on.
Farkle’s focusing on the winding road ahead when he hears Riley gasp.
“I love this song! Farkle, turn it up!” she yells excitedly. Farkle turns it up so it’s near blasting.
Maya and Riley both belt out the lyrics “my youth, my youth is yours” at the top of their lungs as the boys laugh along. Farkle listens as Riley continues singing the chorus, and he glances to the side where she’s sitting. It’s only a split second that he looks over at her, but what he sees is perfection. The wind forcing its way in through the open window is blowing Riley’s hair behind her. Her eyes are closed, there’s a slight pink tint to her cheeks, and her smile goes on for miles, almost as if it’s the road that’s leading them to the cabin.
Farkle whips his head back forward with the feeling of self-pity, knowing that this is the fight he’s never been able to win. This eternal struggle of having feelings for his best friend, yet never acting on them like a coward. And the feelings have had years, oh so many years, to deepen. He’s quite impressed with himself that he could even keep them somewhat at bay for this long. But now, something needs to be done.
He figures there are only two ways this trip can end.
One, nothing will happen between them, and he’ll let his feelings for her go. He’ll bury them deep in the ground and swear to never let them resurface. If they so much as dare to, he’ll smother them before they can even claw their way back up.
Or two, she gives him just the smallest sign that she has the same type of feelings for him, and he’ll have no choice but to finally take the ultimate plunge toward falling completely, helplessly, and recklessly in love with her.
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They finally arrive at the cabin around noon and can’t help but admire the lush, green trees and soft grass that surround it. The cabin isn’t as grandiose as Farkle’s place in the city, but its old-fashioned wood appearance and A-frame window in the front give off a certain charm that Riley, Maya, and Lucas can’t shake.
Before they even walk in, Riley’s eyes are drawn to a butterfly passing by the house and flying toward the small, open field behind the cabin. She chases after it without a care in the world, and as it lands on the grass, Riley creeps up to it and kneels down on the ground. Farkle follows quietly behind her, and she shushes him even though he doesn’t say anything, making Farkle roll his eyes before leaning on her back and looking over her shoulder at the butterfly. It’s light blue, delicate, and radiant, but when it takes flight again, it seems to immediately disappear into the sky. They both look up, following it with their eyes until they can’t see it anymore.
Riley turns her head back toward Farkle and quickly throws her arms behind her. She grabs him from behind and leans forward so they fall to the grass. Her wild, booming laughter fills the entire field.
“Don’t surprise me like that! You almost gave me a heart attack!” Farkle shouts with a smile.
“Life is full of surprises, Farkle. Get used to it,” she replies in a lighthearted voice.
He only has a minute to daydream about the surprises his life would contain if he shared it with her before Maya and Lucas come running over to tackle them.
They eventually stop goofing off so they can unpack all of their things. Farkle, being the most efficient packer, gets done first, so he decides to visit the library, a part of the cabin he loved when he was younger. It’s tucked away in a corner room, and Farkle likes to think it was a sort of safe haven for him years ago. Right after he picks up an old, dusty copy of The Catcher in the Rye, Riley walks into the room with a happy sigh.
“Here you are! We were trying to find you,” she says.
“Sorry, I wanted to see if this place still looked the same as I remembered it. Everything seems sort of abandoned and left forgotten. Once I got older, we didn’t come here as much. Family vacations weren’t top priority in my family.”
“I know,” she says with a sympathetic smile. “It’s too bad, because it seems like the perfect place for a family. Wouldn’t you want to live in a house like this in the future?”
Farkle is a little caught off guard by how in awe she is of the quaint cabin and replies, “I honestly haven’t thought about it much.”
“Really? I’ve pretty much planned out exactly how I want my future house to be.”
“Purple?” Farkle jokes.
“Well, of course,” she laughs. “Lavender walls and violet accent pillows on the couches. The smell of lilacs coming from the kitchen and a bay window in the living room. There has to be a bay window. But those are just small details. That’s not what’s most important to me. It’s the feeling, it’s the warmth of the home and the people I’ll share it with that will matter the most.”
“And I assume you have that part all planned out as well? The people, I mean,” he says as he runs his hands over some of the books on the shelf. Dust sticks to his fingers, and he unconsciously wipes it off on his sleeve.
Riley looks at him with a puzzled expression, as if the answer should already be obvious, and says, “No. That’s the only part I haven’t figured out yet. That’s the only missing piece.”
Farkle can’t deny the relief that washes over him at that moment, but he doesn’t let it show. Riley moves closer to him and takes his sleeve in her hand, patting at the dust. The particles disperse into the air and make them both cough, but then they let out a laugh at the same time.
When Riley stops laughing, she stays standing in front of him for a minute, just looking into his eyes. Farkle feels like she’s searching for something, but she must not find whatever it is because she turns back toward the bookshelf with a serious face.
He wants to know so badly what’s going on in that head of hers.
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That night, as the moon hangs high over their heads, the four of them claim the field behind the cabin as their own. Lucas gets a campfire going, and its light travels up into the clear night sky. Riley passes around a bag of marshmallows as they all huddle together in front of the fire. Maya throws out a line about s’mores being totally cliché, but she’s the first one to attempt shoving six of the marshmallows into her mouth. Lucas keeps poking at her cheeks to set the marshmallows free, but she finally ends up spitting them all out when he screams “hahurr” right in her face.
Riley, who’s actually trying to toast her marshmallow, yelps when it catches on fire, and Farkle ends up giving his perfectly gooey one to her. He experimentally takes a bite out of Riley’s burnt one and scrunches his face at the taste while Riley laughs at him and takes a bite out of the one he gave her. It leaves a trail of white on the side of her mouth, and Farkle thinks if anything is cliché, it’s that. He tries so hard to let it go and assume that she’ll figure out it’s there sooner or later, but he can’t help it. He needs to reach out. He needs to touch her. So he brushes his thumb affectionately against her lip to get it, and Riley’s body shudders slightly from the unexpected action.
His hand hovers in the air, not really sure what to do with it now. He scolds himself in his head for making the situation awkward, but then Riley’s finger is suddenly swiping the marshmallow off of his. She eats it off of her finger like it’s no big deal, and Farkle watches the whole scene, miraculously, in his opinion, without making any kind of noise that would indicate how much he wishes it was still his finger. He thinks that maybe being cliché is not such a bad thing.
Lucas’s voice brings Farkle back to reality when he yells, “Hey, I totally forgot that I brought my speakers with me!” He runs inside, and when he comes back out, he’s holding two small speakers that he hooks up by the side of the cabin.
Lucas presses play on his phone, and Maya immediately grabs Riley’s hand and starts swaying them both back and forth to the music as the beat kicks in. Farkle absentmindedly picks a piece of grass from the ground and twirls it between his fingers as he watches Maya try to wrestle Riley to the ground.
“This is going to be a great weekend,” Lucas says, sitting down next to Farkle.
“Yeah, it definitely will be,” he replies, keeping his eyes on Riley as he speaks.
“It’s summer! Why is it so cold?” Riley yells into the field. All of the sudden, she’s running toward Farkle. He watches her, slightly bewildered at first, but then he sees her grab the sweatshirt that’s beside him. “Can I borrow this?” Riley asks, and she doesn’t wait for his answer, because she’s not really expecting him to refuse.
She runs right back to Maya while pulling the sweatshirt over her head. It’s a little baggy on her, stopping just above where her shorts end. It’s Farkle’s favorite galaxy print sweatshirt, and he doesn’t get how she can look so good in it. He bites his bottom lip as he watches her start to dance again. Farkle makes a mental note to definitely let her borrow his clothes more often.
It looks like the stars are dancing when she moves right in front of the fire. He’s completely mystified by how her body glows in the light of it and how luminescent her eyes are. The loose curls in her hair fall across her shoulders as she throws her hands up above her head and twirls around. He can just barely hear it, but he knows she’s humming to the music.
He almost doesn't even notice when Lucas gets up off the ground and runs toward Maya. Lucas steals the flower she was holding right out of her hands and runs away with it, forcing her to chase after him. Lucas slows down so Maya can catch up to him, and he puts the flower in her hair right above her ear before flicking it lovingly. Farkle smiles as he watches them, knowing that they have something special and they’re not afraid to show it. The thought draws his attention back to Riley, but when he looks at her, her eyes are already on him, giving him a knowing smile. She runs over and grabs his hand, propelling him up off the ground. As he’s being pulled closer to the fire, he laughs to himself, thinking they must all be drunk off of the fiery embers and glimmering stars.
Farkle can hear Maya and Lucas playfully arguing in the background as they run around in the field, but when the music slows down and Riley presses her body up against his, it seems as if everything else around him goes silent. His arms hug her waist, and hers wrap around his neck. Riley lets her head fall to his, and she’s so close that Farkle can hear her sing softly in his ear, “You make my hear shake, bend and break. But I can't turn away and it’s driving me wild. You’re driving me wild.”
He shivers, but he knows he can’t blame the cool night air. And in that exact moment he thinks, oh no, because maybe this is the sign he’s been waiting for. He wants this to be the sign so badly. He comes to the realization that no matter how hard he’d try, he could never truly let go of these feelings for her.
The thought makes him hug Riley tighter, and even though it’s only the first day of their trip, he’s already made his decision. Farkle feels like he’s already been all figured out by her. His whole being has already been enveloped by the enchantment that is his best friend, Riley Matthews.