Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114211 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“We’re still animals with them,” he says back. “We just wear clothes and pretend to be civilized. Speaking of clothes, you’ve got to take off that jacket. I’m sweating just looking at you in it.”
He’s talking about my brother’s denim jacket I wear that bears a variety of patches over the back and shoulders—a military patch, US flag, even a pride patch he added the day after I came out to him. “I wear it with honor.”
“Yeah, well, it can be folded in the backseat with honor, too. Haven’t you heard of Texas heat? It’ll kill you.”
“I’m not sweating.”
“Stubborn ass.” He eyes me. “Did that chick back at the hotel give you her digits?”
That’s probably the real thing eating at him. “Yep.”
“You’re shitting me. Really? Can I have them?”
“She didn’t give them to you.”
“C’mon, Bridge, throw me a bone. I need a bone.”
“The digits are staying in my pants. If she wanted you to have her number, she would’ve given it to you.”
“Oh, she won’t know. Why you gotta be a stickler all the time? Break a rule now and then, jeez.” He eyes my pants like he can see her digits tucked away in my pocket with X-ray vision.
Whatever town we were at is long gone, and soon enough, so’s the highway. All around, the land gives way to grass and dirt and fenced acres containing clusters of animals. The sun blazes high in the sky beating down on the car as we cut through the farmlands.
Closer we get, the less heavy Pete’s foot, until he’s driving no faster than I would’ve. He fidgets in the driver’s seat like a squirrel took shelter in his pants. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s doing a pee dance, but that’s not it. Years spent in the Army by his side, I can tell he’s nervous. He’s circled the same four country roads a dozen times now, doing the world’s biggest, lamest square dance.
I figure I’ve let him waste enough of our time—and gas. “Sure you’re going the right way, buddy?”
“Fuck if I know. Never been to Spruce.”
“Feels like déjà vu every time we make a left, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the same dull-eyed horse by a tree we just passed?” I pull my phone out and thumb open the maps. “Give me the addy again.”
Pete reaches over, snatches the phone right out of my hand, and flings it into the back seat. “No maps, no apps, nothing. That’s how they roll down here. Laidback and easy-peasy everything. Just go with the flow, feel your way there …”
“You’re feeling your way to an empty gas tank. Come on, Pete, why all the stalling? You know which way to go.” He ignores me and flicks the turn signal left. “Doesn’t take a genius to figure four lefts on these square-ass roads is a circle.”
“It’s a square, not a circle. Now who’s the dumbass?”
“Cars are one of the leading contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. Your anxiety is killing the planet.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Ask the ice caps.”
“Ice caps can’t talk.”
“If only they could. Is this about that chick’s number?”
Pete stops at the intersection and doesn’t turn. Both his hands squeeze around the top of the wheel, eyes clenching. He takes an uneven breath, blows all the air out, then tap dances all over the pedals for half a minute like he’s trying unsuccessfully to evict the squirrel. He stops and grows still. “It’s been six years.”
“Since you’ve gotten laid?”
“Since he saved my life. Six … Six long years since Cody Davis saved my sorry life. And ask me how often I called to see how he is. Or what efforts I made to see him. To thank him. Couldn’t even take a leave when he got married. Couldn’t—fuck.” Pete droops his forehead onto the wheel in the narrow valley between his hills of knuckles. “How do you even begin to say how … how grateful you are? … and how sorry you are?”
“Why sorry?”
“Saving my life cost him his.” The turn signal keeps clicking away—click, click, click. “He had everything going for him in the Army. Everyone respected him. He was everything I could never be, and I took that away from him by being … well, by being me.”
“You mean a secret dork with an Indiana Jones obsession?”
“Try an oblivious coward who couldn’t protect himself and needed saving.” He sounds on the verge of tears.
I don’t know why I tried to diffuse his tension with humor. My jokes never land. “Pete … you’re not a coward.”
“I shouted at him to move, and then he puts himself in front of me like a shield, and—Look, I’m not like you guys. Brave. Diving into the fires and the danger. Handsome and gets all the girls.”
Huh? “So … this is about the chick at the hotel?”
“Life’s so easy for you guys,” he mumbles, still talking with his face buried in the steering wheel like a sulking child. “You just … stand there and … and life happens for you. Cody’s married now to the guy of his dreams. You get hit on by everyone.”