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

  We made it a whopping half-mile on the interstate before Eric asked, “So how do you guys know each other?”

  I cast Kyle a beseeching look. Texas wasn’t a great state to be queer in, but Eric didn’t seem dangerous. Then again, I didn’t know what he had in that canvas bag. Could be a switchblade as much as a change of underwear. Kyle gave me a half-shrug, then said, “We know each other from college.”

  “Oh, cool. Roommates?”

  “Yup.”

  I bit back a grin. Roommates who share the same bed, sure.

  “So are you guys, like, taking a road trip or something?”

  “Basically, yes.” Kyle adjusted the rearview, ostensibly to see Eric better in the mirror. “My uncle died recently and left me this car. Cheapest way to get it north was to fly down and drive it.”

  “Oh, wow, sorry to hear about your uncle.”

  “Don’t be. We weren’t close.” The chill was back, and I actually shivered.

  “Okay. But at least you got a sick car out of the deal.”

  Kyle squinted at the highway and didn’t respond. It was definitely a sick car, but not in the slang way Eric meant. And said car was on its way to its own funeral.

  “So what do you guys do for a living?” Eric asked. He had an eagerness about him that was more endearing than annoying, like a cute puppy who kept dropping a stick at your feet, begging for attention.

  “I’m an insurance salesman,” I replied. “It’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills.”

  “Sounds boring.”

  Kyle chuckled. “That’s what I always say, but Thomas loves it. I’m a third-grade public school teacher.”

  “Dude, that’s brave. Around little kids all day?”

  “Kyle’s a big kid himself, so he’s right at home,” I said. Kyle flipped me off with an easy grin. “Did you have a job before this, Eric?”

  “Not really. I mean, I lived at home so I worked part-time and did community college part-time.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. You having to quit school, I mean.”

  “Whatever.” I couldn’t see Eric’s face, but his voice had a sad, wistfulness to it now. “It was all gen-ed credits anyway.”

  Eric’s past definitely seemed to be an upsetting topic, so I switched gears. “Tell us your hopes for the future, Eric. Once you get to Virginia, what do you hope to do?”

  “I’m not sure. I never really knew what I’d do with my life, other than work some sort of job. Maybe have a family one day. It’s just hard. College is expensive, and even people with degrees can’t find a decent job. Sometimes I think I should just resign myself to being a Walmart clerk for the next forty years.”

  “Hey, no,” Kyle said, the teacher in him taking over. “You’re still young. You’re what? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “See? You have plenty of time to figure out your life plan and find your path. First, concentrate on getting to your family and getting a support system in place. Small steps, one foot in front of the other.” Kyle cast me a sly look. “Sometimes looking at the big picture too long gets overwhelming and scary.”

  A double-meaning rested in those words, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Marrying me was overwhelming and scary? We already lived together, had a life together. How was a piece of paper making it official that huge of a deal?

  We’d had this argument once, on the Thanksgiving after the proposal. We’d eaten dinner at my parents house, and I hadn’t told them about Halloween. My little sister Lydia asked when me and Kyle were getting married, and I’d gone cold. Kyle had replied with “We’ll see,” which lit a fire of anger in my belly that I kept to myself until we got home.

  “We’ll see?” I had retorted before our scarves were off or our coats hung. “Seriously?”

  “What?” Kyle jammed his coat onto a hook. “Did you want me to tell the truth?”

  “The truth that you don’t want to marry me? Yeah, I can see how we didn’t want to lob that bomb into the middle of dinner.”

  “I never said I don’t want to marry you, Thomas.”

  “Except you kind of did when you said no to my proposal.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “It’s been three and a half years. How is that too soon?”

  “I love you, but I’m not ready.”

  And we’d had variations of that argument every few weeks since, but Kyle wouldn’t say why he wasn’t ready. Why he said he loved me, but day after day, week after week, he shrank further and further away. Why easy conversations were now fraught with tension. Why even the sex we occasionally had lacked any real spark, despite me still being incredibly attracted to him. Kyle was gorgeous, a brown-eyed Paul Walker, right down to the dimples.

  But sexual attraction wasn’t enough when we were both pulling away emotionally.

  “That makes sense,” Eric said, and it took me a frantic moment to realize he was referring to Kyle’s bigger picture comment, not my own tangled thoughts. “I guess I should stop worrying so much about next year and just really focus on this week, you know?”

  “Get through one day at a time,” Kyle replied. “One hour at a time, if you have to.”

  Conversation dwindled a bit for a while, so I turned up the radio and watched east Texas bleed into southwestern Arkansas. The sun started dipping low behind us, so about fifty miles over the border, we found a roadside motel with plenty of vacant rooms and a diner across the street.

  The air had chilled enough that we put the top up on the convertible for the night, and then each gathered our bags. I stood awkwardly by the fender of the car, feeling like a heel for sending a nice kid off to fend for himself, but a car ride was one thing. Sharing a room with him? Not a chance.

  “You gonna be okay?” Kyle asked Eric.

  “Sure.” Eric shouldered his bag. He wasn’t smiling, but he also didn’t look scared. “I’ll just pitch a tent somewhere for the night. No worries.”

  I knew Kyle, though, and he’d worry. And I couldn’t help wondering, what with the Eric’s good looks, if “pitch a tent” was a euphemism for working his way into someone’s bed for the night. Kyle, unsurprisingly, pulled out his wallet and offered Eric some cash. Eric turned him down at first, until Kyle stuffed it down the front of Eric’s shirt.

  “I’ve got a steady paycheck,” Kyle said. “Buy yourself dinner and stay warm.”

  “Thank you.” Eric shook both of our hands in a firm grip. “Good luck, you guys. Take care of each other.” He turned and sauntered away—not toward the diner or motel office, but toward the road.

  Kyle looked miserable over sending Eric away, so I checked us in while he waited. The room had two full beds, a boxy old TV, and outdated bedding, but it was clean. I kicked up the heat to take the chill out of the air, while Kyle went into the bathroom. It must have had a window, because Kyle was claustrophobic, and if a hotel bathroom didn’t have a window, he usually left the door open. He stayed in there for a while, so I knocked. “You want to go across the street for dinner when you’re done?”

  “Can we get it to go? Not feeling a crowd right now.”

  The place hadn’t looked especially crowded, but, “Yeah, okay.”

  When Kyle finally emerged, his eyes were red, but his expression clear. The lack of odor told me hadn’t been dropping a log, but pulling himself together. But why? The car? The hitchhiker? And why couldn’t I open my big mouth and ask him?

  Because Kyle used to tell me stuff. I never had to pry it out of him.

  So we silently crossed the street, looked at menus, and ordered dinner to go. It took less than ten minutes to get, time we both spent looking at our phones instead of talking. Not much different than half the people eating in the red vinyl booths that lined the narrow space. A waitress brought over a plastic bag and two foam cups of soda, and I left a small tip.

  The room didn’t have a sitting area, so we picnicked in the middle of one bed. My tuna melt was cheesy and hot, and the fries were nice and crispy. Kyle had o
rdered a turkey club, which he ate with little enthusiasm. I had no idea if it was the car bothering him, the trip, or Eric, so I decided to start with the most obvious choice.

  “You’re worried about Eric, aren’t you?” I asked.

  Kyle nearly fumbled his club, head snapping up, eyes wide. “Of course I am. Aren’t you? He’s a twenty-one-year-old kid out here on his own. If he gets into the wrong car, he could be killed or worse.”

  “There are worse things than being killed?”

  His glare said yes, there were. “He just…he reminds me of someone I used to know, and I feel like I could have helped him more.”

  “Babe, you gave him a ride. You gave him money. That’s pretty generous for a perfect stranger.”

  “That’s the thing, though, he doesn’t feel like a stranger.” Kyle put his half-eaten sandwich down. “It’s impossible to explain and what’s the point?”

  I blinked. “What’s the point of talking to me about what’s bothering you?”

  “Yes, because you don’t ever seem to hear me.”

  “I can only hear what you’re willing to tell me.” My own temper was piquing to match his, but a fight wasn’t going to solve things. “I want to know when things bother you. Isn’t that part of being a couple?”

  “A couple? And here I thought you were all geared up to dump me.”

  I reared back as shock punched me in the gut. “What?” How the hell had he known that?

  Kyle’s eyes went liquid, sad. “You didn’t clear your browser history, Thomas. I saw the sights on lawyers and how to divide assets after a split.”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t deny looking at those sites, because I had, and we both knew it. All I could do was be honest. “Things have been off ever since Halloween,” I said. “Some days, I feel like I’m living with a roommate, not a lover. You say it isn’t that you don’t want to marry me, but that it’s too soon, but you never try to explain what that means. We have a house, we both have careers, we have a savings account with money in it. How is marriage too soon?”

  “It’s too soon for me!” Kyle launched himself off the bed and stormed toward the door. For an instant, I thought he was going to leave. Instead, he pivoted and leaned against it, arms crossed protectively over his chest.

  I stood, as well, but kept my distance. “But why, Kyle? Help me understand why?”

  “I can’t. I have to destroy that fucking car first.”

  “Why? What’s so special about that goddamn car that it’s more important than marrying me?”

  “That’s not…” Kyle threw his hands into the air. “That’s not what I mean. Look, there’s still something I haven’t told you about my past.”

  “I’m sure there’s plenty you haven’t told me about your past, because you don’t talk about living in Texas. Like, at all. Ever. I didn’t even know the name of the uncle who raised you until last week.”

  “Because I hated my life here. I didn’t want to remember it, so I tried to bury, but evil doesn’t stay buried.”

  “Babe, the car isn’t haunted.”

  Kyle glared at me with a dark look that said I was clearly an idiot. And maybe I was, because I didn’t understand any of this. Only that Kyle hated that car, but he was willing to drive it halfway across the country to dismantle it, when selling it long-distance would have been so much easier.

  “Why did you come on this trip if you’re going to dump me?” Kyle asked in a wide conversational runaround.

  “Because I still love you, Kyle, and I want to help you get through this.” I couldn’t even deny the dumping him part, because it was true. A week ago, I’d been willing to walk away from Kyle and all the years we’d been together—until that fateful phone call about Frank. Something brand-new had sparked in Kyle after that. A deep-down anger and fear that lingered over him like invisible cobwebs, and I had to know why.

  I had to see this through, because I loved him, and I needed to know he would be all right going forward, even if it wasn’t with me.

  “I still love you, too,” Kyle said. “And yeah, I own my part in us growing distant, but I need you to claim yours, too. You keep pushing and pushing, Thomas, and when I tell you I need time and space you don’t give it to me, so avoiding you is better than feeling all that fucking pressure. I need you to stop.”

  “Me wanting a real answer about why you won’t marry me is pressuring you?”

  “Yes.”

  I sank onto the mattress, exhausted by the circular argument that was going nowhere. “Fine. I concede I’ve been pushy. I guess it hurts that you won’t confide in me about this the way you used to confide in me about everything. I don’t understand how a proposal means you suddenly can’t trust me.”

  “Thomas, no, that’s not what this is about.” Kyle knelt in front of me and squeezed my hands together. “I do trust you, with my heart and my life. But this wasn’t a secret I could tell anyone until recently, and on the road like this…I can’t.”

  It didn’t take a genius to deduce, “It’s a secret about Frank.”

  Kyle nodded, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Yes. Can you wait two more days until we’re home? Please? Then we’ll really talk, I promise.”

  I’d hoped to use this trip to get him to talk, but this was more than I’d honestly expected. If Kyle needed two more days to tell me what was really ripping us apart, I could wait. It would be two torturous days of me wondering and imagining, but I’d wait. “Okay, when we’re home, we’ll talk,” I replied.

  “Thank you.” Kyle pulled me down and into the first kiss we’d shared in days. His warm mouth quested over mine, sampling without deepening it into more. “I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  We went to bed not long after, both of us exhausted after the long day and time zone changes. The small bed made it impossible not to brush legs or elbows, and I loved it after practically sleeping with a dividing line down the center of the our bed at home. I lay awake listening to Kyle’s familiar, rhythmic snoring for a long time, until I finally drifted.

  I had strange dreams about Eric in our room, watching us sleep from the foot of the bed, and then woke to the blare of Kyle’s phone alarm. We took turns showering and shaving, packed up, and then went across the street for breakfast. The diner made a mean plate of pancakes, and in thirty minutes, we were trundling up the on-ramp to the interstate once more.

  A familiar figure stood at the shoulder of the road a few dozen feet up, thumb out to passing vehicles, and instead of annoyance, relief flooded over me. Not only that Eric had survived the night, but that Kyle could see Eric had survived.

  “Pick him up,” I said before Kyle could ask. “We can at least get him to Knoxville.”

  Kyle flashed him a bright smile, then coasted up to Eric on the shoulder. Eric waved. I got out so I could lean the seat up and let the kid in.

  “You sleep okay?” Kyle asked as he eased back into morning traffic.

  “Yeah, it’s cool,” Eric replied.

  I twisted to look at him, but he was smiling, no bruises or marks on his face. “You eat?” Eric shrugged, so I handed him a bag of chips and bottled water from the snack bag. “Here, eat.”

  “Thank you.” Eric ripped into the chips and downed the water, giving us a respite from conversation for a while. And when he did speak, he startled the shit out of me with, “So are you guys married?”

  “Excuse me?” I replied.

  “I mean, tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, and you’ll still be on the road. Wasn’t sure if you’d get in trouble at home for road-tripping on the biggest romance day of the year.”

  “Oh, right. Um, no, no one is waiting for me at home.”

  Kyle cut his eyes at me. “Same.”

  “Gotcha. Enjoying the single life, huh?” Eric asked.

  Jesus, the kid’s nosy.

  “Not exactly,” I said cautiously. I looked at Kyle, and he met my eyes with a shrug that seemed to say, Tell
him if you want to tell him.

  At this point, I’d defaulted Eric to Not-A-Threat, and if he was spending the next ten-plus hours in the car with us, we might as well be honest. “Kyle and I aren’t single,” I said, angling to see him in the backseat. “We’re together.”

  “Well, obviously you’re together, but—” Eric’s eyebrows winged up as he got it. “Oh. Oh! That’s cool. So together, but not married. Nice.”

  I sank into my seat with a grunt. Yeah, not married.

  “Do your families, you know, accept you?” Eric asked, much more hesitant now.

  “I don’t have any living family left,” Kyle replied, using the rearview to see Eric. “But Thomas’s family is amazing and completely supportive.”

  “I’m glad. You both seem like really decent guys, and you’re doing me a huge solid right now. Wish everyone was that cool.”

  Something in his tone caught my attention, and I turned again. Eric was twisting his fingers together in his lap, clearly unhappy. “Eric, why did your folks kick you out?” I asked.

  Eric shrugged and spoke to his lap. “They thought I was queer.”

  “Fuck.” I’d never met Eric’s parents, but in that moment, I wanted to wring both of their necks. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Worst part is I’m not. Queer, I mean.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Eric finally looked up, his dark eyes glimmering with tears. “To help pay for college, I did some gay-for-pay webcam stuff with other guys for extra cash. Somehow my little brother found it, and my parents judged me on it. Didn’t believe me when I said I wasn’t gay, because they had what they claimed was proof the devil was in their son.”

  I cast a helpless look at Kyle, who seemed to waffle between righteous fury and the need to burst into tears on Eric’s behalf.

  “When I explained it all to my cousins, they were super sympathetic,” Eric continued. “Said their branch of the family got out because of all the bat-shit religious craziness down there in the south, and I was welcome, queer or not. So I just need to get there.”

  “We’ll get you there,” I said before I’d considered the words. “To Virginia. Promise.”