Page 140 of Knot my First Rodeo

"It is not."

"Autumn."

"There's beef jerky." I cock my head and raise my brows.

"That doesn't help your argument."

I point at the package. "Protein."

Briggs snorts, and the sound catches me so off guard, I stare at him, and his expression immediately goes blank again.

Too late. I saw it.

The corner of my mouth lifts before I can stop it.

"You're both impossible," I sigh.

"Yet, here you are," Clint says.

Unfortunately, he's got a point.

A few minutes later, we're all standing in line at the register with our various bad decisions. Tripp somehow added two more candy bars to his pile while nobody was paying attention. Clint grabbed a bottle of water to balance out the gas station hot dog currently in his hand. Briggs only has coffee and pretzels.

The cashier looks from Tripp's mountain of junk food to mine.

"Road trip?"

"Headed home," Clint answers.

"Well, you’ll be good and energized when you get there."

"Don’t help their cause," Clint groans.

The woman laughs while handing over our receipt.

Outside, the sun feels warmer than it did when we pulled in. Everybody climbs back into the truck, carrying snacks and drinks like we're preparing for a cross-country expedition instead of an hour-long drive.

The second we're moving again, Tripp tears into a bag of chips. The sound fills the cab.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

I last almost two minutes.

"Can you not?"

"What?"

"The chewing."

He stares at me before deliberately eating another chip.

I throw a sour gummy at his head, he catches it and eats that, too.

"Joke's on you."

"You're insufferable."

The conversation drifts after that. Clint eventually falls asleep against the passenger window, his baseball cap tipped low enough to cover his eyes. Tripp dozes off beside me, and the truck settles into silence.