The Drifter: A Valentine’s Day Short Story Read online

  The Drifter

  A Valentine’s Day Short Story

  A.M. Arthur

  Briggs-King Books

  Contents

  The Drifter

  About the Author

  The Drifter

  (c) 2018 by A.M. Arthur

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  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people is entirely coincidental. May not be distributed without permission from the author.

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  Cover Art by A.M. Arthur

  Briggs-King Books

  Created with Vellum

  The Drifter

  You never know what you’re going to find on the side of the road, or if picking it up will change the shape of your life.

  It was supposed to be a simple trip: fly to Plano, Texas, get the registration for the 1968 Charger convertible that Kyle had been left by a dead uncle, and drive it back to our place in Leesburg, Virginia. Simple in that I’d been planning to dump Kyle the day he got the bad news—no sense in suffering through Valentine’s Day if we had no future—but even I’m not a big enough prick to end a dying relationship just when someone I used to love heard his family had passed.

  I’m not entirely sure when things between me and Kyle started going bad. We met in college, but didn’t date until late senior year. The first two years were actually pretty damned good, even after the car accident that wrecked Kyle’s shoulder and destroyed his dreams of a pro-baseball career. He didn’t let it faze him at all, just kept going after life like a dog with a bone. We lived together and supported each other. We were happy and in love.

  Then on our three-year anniversary, in the middle of a crowded Halloween party, with both of us dressed up like sailors, I proposed to Kyle.

  He said no.

  After that things got…tense.

  We didn’t fight, but we also didn’t talk. We had sex, but it became more about getting off than making love. Kyle pulled deeper and deeper into himself, closing off from me, and trying to find common ground again was just too fucking exhausting. A week ago I made the decision to break up with him.

  A day later Kyle got a call from a lawyer in Plano, Texas, informing him that his Uncle Frank Swallow had died of a massive heart attack, and that Kyle had been left his car. The only thing I knew about his Uncle Frank was that he’d raised Kyle since the age of three, and Kyle had worked his ass off to get a college scholarship and get the hell out of Texas.

  And even though Kyle often said he hated his uncle, he wanted that car, so I’d help him get that car. Maybe getting away from our lives for a few days would change something. Maybe being stuck in a car with him for ten hours a day would make things worse.

  All I knew, as I boarded the plane to take us to Texas, was that things were never going to be the same. Deep down in my bones, I felt change coming.

  “Thomas, you mind switching so I can have the window seat?” and then “Thanks,” when I said okay were the last things Kyle said to me before we touched down in Air Park-Dallas Airport. Part of me wanted to believe it was grief, only he didn’t seem upset by Frank’s passing. More than anything, he seemed relieved, like his life was finally rid of some awful burden.

  A burden he’d never seen fit to share with me, even after almost four years together.

  We landed early, thanks to time zones, and we’d planned to make the first leg of the trip today, as soon as things were settled with the lawyer. A taxi took us to a small law office in a white, two-story home, and within an hour, Kyle had a folder of paperwork and a key on a ragged, rabbit’s foot key chain.

  Kyle and I barely shared a word or a look the whole time, and the lawyer didn’t seem to care who I was to Kyle. Hell, I didn’t know who I was to him anymore. Four months after a very public humiliation, I didn’t know who were to each other, but I was here with him nonetheless.

  I still loved him, even if he didn’t seem to love me.

  Another taxi took us Uncle Frank’s house, a shabby bungalow in an equally shabby neighborhood. The house and contents were being sold to pay old debts, but the car was supposed to be under a tarp, beneath an attached carport. We were free to take it and go with the promise it still ran like a dream.

  Kyle stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, with its rusty chain-link fence and weed-filled lawn. White paint tinted green and brown with age, a listing front porch, and one front window that had been repaired with packing tape. I’d known Kyle had grown up poor, but damn. Seeing it in person was a kick in the nuts I hadn’t expected, and I reached for Kyle’s hand.

  He put his hand in his pocket, and I tried not to flinch.

  “I hated this house,” Kyle said in a hollow voice I didn’t recognize. He didn’t talk about his past, and I’d learned within months of first becoming his friend not to ask. Ever. “It always smelled like Marlboros, whiskey and broken dreams.”

  Before I could wonder what exactly broken dreams smelled like, he went on, “I have no idea why he took me in. He hates kids. Hated me for sure. Never could figure it out. It’s not like he got much from my parents’ estate when they died. Maybe a few grand.”

  I had so many questions, but couldn’t make myself interrupt this stream of brand-new information spewing forth from my boyfriend. Information he’d never bothered sharing with me before, and what did that say about our relationship? He knew everything about my parents, my older sister and her family, and my upbringing in Northern Virginia…my middle-class, well-loved, nice upbringing in a nuclear family.

  Fuck me.

  I’d known his uncle raised him, but had no idea how much Kyle had apparently despised the man and his past. “You told me how hard you worked to get that baseball scholarship and get out of Texas. That you made your own way,” I said. “Why come back and take his car?”

  Kyle turned, his eyes ice cold in a way I’d never seen before. “So I can put it in our garage and dismantle it piece by piece. I won’t let it carry its evil to another family.”

  “Evil?” This wasn’t a Stephen King novel. Cars weren’t evil. Human beings could be evil, not inanimate objects like cars. But I couldn’t discount Kyle’s words, or the ferocity with which he’d uttered them. I finally saw a depth of anger and grief in his eyes that I’d never seen before, and something inside my chest fractured for his pain. “Baby, what did Frank do to you?”

  “Not today.”

  “Kyle—”

  “Not. Today. Thomas.”

  “Okay.” Kyle was a generous lover and a loyal friend, but he was also the most stubborn person I’d ever met. And maybe, just maybe, something in his past had influenced the big fat no my marriage proposal had been given. “Do you want me to drive?”

  “You can’t drive a stick.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  He took a step closer to the rusty fence, his fingers ghosting across the top of its waist-height links. “I can’t burn this place to the ground, but I can take that fucking car home and destroy it,” he said. “It’ll have to be enough.”

  Enough for what, babe? To erase the terrible ghosts of the past?

  I wanted to ask but knew I’d be met with silence. I also wanted to pull Kyle into a hug and reassure him that I loved him, but I wasn’t sure if I still did. A part of me always would, yes, but was that enough? Half a love, half a life?

  “Come on,” Kyle said, his voice a little less cold. “Let’s go home.”

  Home wasn’t the same place it used to be, but I was ready to hit the road. We uncovered the shiny black body of the classic car, which looked as new as the day it came off the assembly line. I walked around to the back, expecting Kyle to open the trunk for our duffel bags.

 
; “No,” he said with a frozen expression. “We aren’t using the trunk.”

  The way he said that made the hair on the back of my neck rise, and I got a little scared of the car—which was stupid. The car wasn’t haunted; it was all in Kyle’s mind.

  Still, I dumped our duffel bags into the backseat, while Kyle put the key in and gunned the ignition. The engine roared to life beautifully. The front leather seats crackled a bit with age, but the interior was clean and perfectly restored. He could probably get some good money if he sold the car, but instinct told me Kyle had very good reasons for wanting the car to become scrap, instead.

  We had a three-day drive ahead of us, and maybe at some point, I’d get more of this story.

  The plan had been fly in early and get a head start on the trip, and then stop somewhere over the Arkansas border for the night. Rest up, then drive about ten hours through Tennessee and stop in Knoxville. The last leg of the journey fell on Valentine’s Day, which was fine. Like I said, there probably wouldn’t have been a romantic evening for us, anyway.

  We could have done the drive in shifts and gone straight through, but we both had personal time at work. Kyle was a third-grade teacher who never used his sick days, and I was an insurance salesman who made my own hours, so we’d agreed to a longer trip. Silently acknowledging that if our relationship was going to be saved, we needed this time together to save it.

  And I wanted to save it. I loved Kyle to bits. He’d been there when my dad had quadruple bypass surgery last Christmas, and he’d held my hand before and after an emergency appendectomy when I was twenty-one. For four -plus years, he’d been an integral part of my life, and I simply couldn’t see a future without Kyle in it.

  Maybe by the time we got home, I’d have Uncle Frank and his convertible to thank for saving my relationship.

  It was warm for February, even in Texas, so we agreed to put the top down, which surprised me. Kyle was fussy about his dark blond hair, liking it neatly styled and held in place with expensive product that smelled like aloe and mint. It was yet another difference between us that shouldn’t work, but it did. His put-together appearance, while I was lucky to tie my tie correctly before an appointment, and I had a cow-lick in my mud brown hair I’d been battling since I was a kid.

  I fiddled with the radio while he set us on a course for the interstate. Once we were out the city, we’d take I-30 out of Texas and catch I-40 around Little Rock. I-40 took us all the way to Knoxville, and then we’d head north on I-81. Pretty much a straight shot of highway the whole time, but on routes known for being well-traveled, so we wouldn’t want for pit stop locations.

  The neat thing about I-40 is a lot of it runs parallel to the old Route 66, with its historic, tourist traps, but that was mostly heading west, and we were going east.

  As we burned miles with the wind blowing through our hair, I realized I’d forgotten how to initiate a conversation with my boyfriend. When had all our silences become awkward instead of easygoing? Even before we started dating, when we were simply good friends, we’d always been able to talk about anything. Now, I simply had no idea what to say.

  In some desolate, dusty stretch of the interstate, a figure appeared on the side of the road, thumb out, holding up a cardboard sign. I never gave much thought to hitchhikers, but Kyle shocked the shit out of me by slowing. Not a lot but enough that I noticed, and he was looking at the hitchhiker.

  “You aren’t thinking of stopping, are you?” I asked.

  “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Kyle replied. “The next town isn’t for miles.”

  “Dude, you’re the one who wanted to rent The Hitcher, so maybe let’s not?”

  Kyle tossed me an exasperated look, but didn’t slow any further. As we passed the hitchhiker, I caught a young face, blond, male, and the sign said Need to go North. He wore long-sleeve clothes, no jacket, and carried a canvas bag on one shoulder, and his expression was so forlorn, I mentally kicked myself for arguing against stopping.

  But that kid could be dangerous as easily as he was innocent, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. Kyle, on the other hand, looked strange. Haunted. And he kept glancing into the rearview, as if contemplating finding a turnaround and going back for the kid. But he didn’t. A few miles up, I spotted a sign for a Love’s Travel Stop and asked for a pit stop. We’d been driving for a few hours, so a pee break and a late lunch was definitely on the agenda.

  Kyle took the exit to a busy parking lot and familiar-looking building. Love’s was a popular convenience store chain, especially on the east coast and along I-40, and I remembered them from childhood vacations down in Tennessee and North Carolina. This one had a Subway and a Chester’s inside. As yummy as some friend chicken strips sounded, I didn’t want to get grease in Kyle’s car—pending deconstruction or not.

  The car definitely turned a few heads as we parked, and I had to admit, the car was gorgeous. Seemed a shame to turn her into parts and scrap, but Kyle owned it, not me. He had a purpose for this trip, and I loved him too much to argue against it. We headed for the bathrooms, and then by silent agreement, both ended up in the Subway line. Ordered our usual choices with chips and a soda, and Kyle swiped his card to pay.

  With the weather so nice, we ate in the car with the top down. Doing something as familiar as sharing a meal erased some of the awkward tension between us. Hell, it felt downright normal, like all the other meals we’d shared in the past. The meals before my proposal, anyway.

  “Dudes, killer car,” a teenage boy said as he passed, on his way inside the store.

  Kyle gave him a silent thumbs up, but didn’t smile. Instead, he looked a bit sick.

  Killer car.

  As much as I wanted to ask, a truck stop was not the place. When we settled into a motel for the night, I’d push for more about the damned car and Kyle’s history with it.

  Once we’d eaten and tossed our trash, Kyle pulled the car to a pump to top off the gas, which had only been about half-full when we got it. I went back inside to get a few more bags of chips, and a few bottles of water for the road.

  I was halfway across the parking lot, heading back to the car, when I realized Kyle wasn’t alone. He stood with his hand on the gas pump, while the kid from the side of the road spoke to him with broad hand gestures.

  Kyle noticed me first and actually smiled. “Hey, Thomas, this is Eric.”

  Up close, Eric was older than I’d first guessed, maybe in his early twenties, rather than a teenager. He was fresh-faced, if a tad dusty, and he had an impish smile that, oddly, reminded me of Kyle’s. “Hey, man, it’s nice to meet you,” Eric said. He offered his hand, and I shook it.

  “Hi,” I replied a bit dumbly.

  “You won’t believe the coincidence,” Kyle said, “but Eric’s trying to get to some family up in our area.”

  Eric nodded eagerly. “Yeah, I have some cousins who live out in Lovettsville, but they didn’t have any money to send for me to take a bus or anything, so I’ve been hitching my way from Texas.”

  “If your family is up north, why are you down here?” I asked. I didn’t like coincidences, but Kyle seemed wholly unbothered by it.

  “I had family here.” Eric’s smile dimmed. “My folks kicked me out, and I don’t have anyone else down here to help me. My cousins up north said I could live with them if I could get there, so this is me getting there.”

  “Why’d they kick you out?”

  “Thomas,” Kyle said harshly. “Is that our business?”

  I started to cross my arms, but the grocery bag in my hand made that posture difficult. “He’s a perfect stranger asking for a ride, Kyle. What if he’s an addict?”

  “Dude, right here,” Eric said. “I don’t do drugs. I don’t even drink. It was nothing like that, I swear.”

  Like an addict would admit to being an addict.

  But something about Eric seemed genuine and earnest, two qualities that had drawn me to Kyle all those years ago. He looked a bit like Kyle, too, with his blond
hair and wide, brown eyes.

  Just because he could be Kyle’s double doesn’t mean this is a good idea.

  Plus, a stranger in the car meant no chance of really getting to the bottom of Kyle’s recent behavior.

  “Listen, man, let’s call it a trial run,” Eric said. “Just take me to wherever you’re stopping for the night and we can go our separate ways. Get me a few hours closer and then I’m gone.”

  “Okay,” Kyle replied before I could. He flashed me a it’s my car, my call look that kept me from contradicting him.

  “Awesome! You’ve got a sick ride, and I’ve never been in the backseat of a convertible before.”

  Kyle’s expression flickered. “This is the first time I’ve ever driven this car.”

  “Yeah, you just buy it?”

  “Something like that.”

  Kyle finished pumping the gas, while I shoved our duffels to the driver’s side, giving Eric a spot to sit with his own canvas bag. He held it in his lap, and I couldn’t help thinking his entire life was in that bag. Sympathy hit me hard as I climbed into the front passenger seat. Growing up, I hadn’t wanted for anything—well, other than some semblance of athleticism, but we can’t have everything—and I had no idea what Eric was feeling as a homeless drifter, trying to make his way north to the only family who wanted him.

  My family would help me in a heartbeat.

  Kyle had grown up poor, but now he had a good life, a partner, and a house—all the things Eric probably wanted one day. Yeah, giving him a ride was the right thing to do. As Kyle slid inside, I reached over to squeeze his thigh. He met my eyes, curious, so I smiled. Tilted my head a few degrees in Eric’s direction, and then nodded.

  Kyle grinned back and warmth rippled across my skin, the way it used to back before it all went south. That was the Kyle I’d been missing since Halloween.