He doesn’t know what he can do except blast the heat and drive, so that’s what he does. He brought the old truck without thinking, even though the new dually handles a little better in the snow. The dually is five years old, not really “new” at this point, but everything is new compared to the Chevrolet.
Anyway, the stock trailer was still hooked up to the dually, and Robbie had been in such a hurry after getting off the phone with Danny, he hadn’t been willing to take the time to unhitch it.
That was just a few hours ago. Then, the snow had just been forming a powdery layer that totally covered the grass and soil. Now, it’s almost noon, and the wind is beginning to build the snow into banks along the road. He has to focus to keep the truck where it should be, and still they occasionally lose traction and fishtail, but it’s all in slow motion, devoid of a real sense of danger.
Robbie is glad he has something to focus on instead of the young man sitting silently beside him, his long, white fingers toying with the oversized buttons on Robbie’s jacket, which seems huge and shapeless on his slighter body.
He has so many questions, but he knows better than to fire any of them off. Even if Lance weren’t giving off a steady nonverbal message of “Don’t ask,” Robbie would remember how Lance was as a child. Secretive, so guarded about any pain. That secretiveness used to make Robbie crazy, worrying that something horrible would happen or was happening in Lance’s life, and that Lance would refuse to ask for help. Robbie had done all he’d felt he could do, under the circumstances—he’d made sure there was always an extra pillow and blanket on Danny’s bed and an extra plate at the table in case Lance showed up. Caring about Lance had been like taking a shine to a lone wolf, even back then. He was never going to let you take care of him the way you wanted, but he’d occasionally appear for a small dose of kindness before disappearing back out into the dark.
“Is this really okay? Me staying with you?”
“Yes,” Robbie says with a quiet vehemence. It bothers him that Lance feels the need to ask, or could ever think Robbie wouldn’t welcome him.
“Megan won’t care?” he presses.
For a second, Robbie doesn’t understand the question. Then, he huffs out a laugh and rubs his jaw. “No. Megan won’t care.” Well, she probably will have opinions, but they aren’t relevant in the way Lance means. “We broke up a couple of years ago.” And because he and Megan were famously on-again-off-again from the ages of fifteen to thirty-two, he clarifies, “For good, this time.”
If Lance is surprised by the revelation, it doesn’t register on his face. He nods a couple of times and looks out the window, and the cab falls silent again.
Robbie continues to hold back the questions burning in his mind. What happened yesterday? Why were you in Dell? Why were you in jail?
He has other questions, too. What happened six summers ago? Where did you disappear to? Why didn’t you call? Danny had been outright miserable for the rest of that school year.
In fact, Danny still winces whenever Lance’s name comes up. Robbie has never been able to get Lance out of his head, either. That sweet, shy kid. That lovely boy, who bared his heart and soul to Robbie so bravely on that last, awful day….
It’s hard to reconcile that Lance—a painfully thin slip of a thing, all wild brown hair and big blue eyes, his head barely coming to Robbie’s chest—with this Lance. The eyes are the same, even if the open expression has been replaced by something unfocused and distant. But otherwise, Lance is transformed. He’s still slender, but no one would call him scrawny; he has the long limbs and elegant proportions of a dancer. He’s probably six feet tall or even just a hair over, based on how close he seems to stand to Robbie’s six-foot-two. And, though his clothes are wrinkled and his jacket has a big tear in the sleeve, even Robbie can tell they’re designer quality.
But though the outward changes in Lance are stark, Robbie can plainly sense there’s more to it than Lance having simply grown up. The more glances Robbie steals across the cab, the easier it is to see the physical traits of the boy he knew, now grown into a young man.
But the boy from across the creek had a warm energy that filled a space, a smile that could endear the coldest heart, and a basic sweetness that Robbie had never seen rivaled before or since. There’s only been the merest glimpse of him today, when Robbie pulled Lance into his lap after he collapsed in the hallway in the courthouse. As his fluttering lashes lifted, on the verge of unconsciousness, he had the same look on his face that Robbie remembers from the very last time they saw one another—like Robbie could see straight into Lance’s when he looked him in the eye, every feeling and hope boldly on display.
There’s hardly an echo of that boy’s bright presence in the shuttered young man presently sitting in Robbie’s truck.
The truck’s rear tires suddenly lose their grip on the snow and veer sideways, so that for a second the truck is coasting down almost perfectly perpendicular to the road. The entire view out the windshield is the slope of the ditch and the old barbed wire fence stretched between hedge posts, frosted with snow like Christmas tree garland.
Lance makes a low, alarmed noise. Without thinking, Robbie takes his hand off the gear shift to give Lance’s shoulder a quick, reassuring squeeze before putting both his hands on the wheel, guiding the steering column slowly back to the right while gently massaging the brakes.
The brief touch fills him with a buzzing energy, even though all Robbie felt was his own coat under his palm and the suggestion of a hard curve beneath. Still, he’s strangely aware that all of the warmth emanating through the fabric came from Lance.
When the truck eases back to forward-facing on the road, Robbie looks over. “Okay?”
Lance is semi-plastered against the door, one hand braced on the dash. He slowly relaxes his limbs, giving Robbie a flustered smile. “I forgot what these roads are like in the snow,” he admits.
Robbie blinks, a little taken aback by the sudden light of his grin. He rubs his beard and smiles wanly in reply, looking straight ahead while he gives himself a moment to gather his thoughts. “Should be about two days of this,” he says eventually, wondering how obvious his uneasiness is—if Lance will know, like a horse would, that his calmness is a facade.
“Forecast said no more than a day,” Lance says.
Robbie glances at him with a raised brow. “You’ve been watching the weather?” His tone is light, but the implication isn’t. There likely wasn’t a television in the one-cell jail on the third floor of the courthouse.
Lance shakes his head. “No,” he says, drawing out the word in a “duh” tone that makes Robbie smile. “Tim had an app on his phone. We have nothing in common, and talked all night, anyway, so the weather came up more than once.”
Robbie’s smile vanishes and his eyes narrow. “Why was he with you all night?” He gives Lance a sharp look. “He didn’t—was he bothering you?”
Lance’s hand slips over his mouth before Robbie can see his expression. His fingers are long, his palms narrow, and the backs of his hands are smooth-knuckled and hairless. Robbie can’t remember ever noticing someone’s hands like this before. But the long-lost boy-next-door has never reappeared in his life on the wrong side of a jailhouse door. Maybe strange and random reactions are par for this unfamiliar course.
“No,” Lance says eventually, turning to stare out the window. “I was about to freak out—no, I was freaking out—over spending the night in the cell, and he could tell. Must have been the fact that I was pacing around and almost hyperventilating. So, he stayed with me; made small talk. He’s a pretty good guy, actually.”
“I’m so sorry that you had to be there all night.” Robbie said it before, but it bears repeating.
Lance makes a little, dismissive gesture, and then his hand falls heavily into his lap like his arms are too tired to stay raised. Maybe they are, after the night he’s had.
“So,” Lance says more brightly, “what makes you disagree with the weatherman?”
Of all the things they should be talking about, Robbie thinks with mystification, they’re really going to discuss the weather. Though, it’s more of an immediate concern than usual, he supposes. The truck dives through a low place on the road where the snow is particularly thick and sends up a billowing cloud that reaches the windows.
“It’s an old farmer’s almanac thing,” Robbie says, shrugging and feeling oddly shy. “My dad used to say it. ‘Three months after a heavy fog, you’ll get rain or snow.’ And we had three days of fog, three months back.”
Lance glances at him. “Your dad,” he murmurs. “I guess you remember him, huh? Danny and Johnny never talked about him, but they were pretty little, when…?”
The flash of pain at the thought of that time is duller than it used to be, but still there, never gone completely. “Yeah,” Robbie says, “Johnny was eight, and Danny was four.”
A tractor had pulled onto the highway off of a gravel road, not seeing Robbie’s dad coming, and it had been too late for the truck to get stopped. Robbie’s dad had wound up in the ditch. At least it had been quick. The tractor hadn’t even needed major repairs.
Robbie had been at school when the wreck happened; by the time he knew, the scene had been cleaned up. But later, he’d found the zigzagging tracks left by the truck’s tires, and in the ditch they’d pulled the truck out of, there’d still been a pool of crushed window-glass like a thousand worthless diamonds.
Robbie pushes the thoughts aside with a swallow. “I don’t think Danny remembers him at all. Johnny remembers some, but he’s not one to think about what can hurt him, you know?” He doesn’t know why, but instead of steering the conversation somewhere else, Robbie admits, “I think about him all the time, though.”
He can feel the weight of Lance’s eyes on the side of his face, but he doesn’t turn. Before Lance can say anything, they round the curve an eighth of a mile from Robbie’s driveway and four cows appear, standing in the middle of the road in the drifting snow.
Robbie swears, hits the brakes as hard as he dares, and holds the wheel in a double-vice grip. The truck slows abruptly, its brakes vibrating as the tires skid on the packed snow, and then they slide a solid four feet even with the brakes locked. The closest cow, a big, black creature with a band of white around her midsection, stares at them placidly like she’s well-versed in the laws of physics and knows she’s safe, but Robbie’s heart is in his throat until the moment the truck is still.
His hand is back on Lance’s shoulder. Robbie realizes it, then looks over without taking it away. This time, his forefinger extends past the collar of the coat, and the pad of his fingertip just brushes the warm, smooth skin of Lance’s neck. Lance is looking back at him, his lakewater eyes wide, and his lips are parted. Robbie doesn’t remember his lips being such a delicate, deep pink, but now his gaze is fixed there, where he can also see small white teeth, one slightly crooked lower incisor, and the tip of a red tongue.
The cow moos loudly at them and Robbie jumps, taking his hand off Lance and pushing the heel of his palm hard into the middle of the steering wheel, all in one motion. The horn blares, and the cows hike up their tails and scatter. Robbie tests the gas, and is pleasantly surprised when the truck inches forward. Not stuck, then. He reaches into his jeans pocket for his phone.
“I don’t remember anyone having cattle around here.” Lance’s voice sounds steady, but maybe a little quieter than it was before, like he feels the charge in the air from moments ago as keenly as Robbie. Robbie hopes not. He hopes he’s alone in this strange awkwardness, which he ascribes mostly to how he’s tripped all over Megan’s old rules where Lance was concerned: Don’t touch him too much. Don’t spend too much time alone with him.
Don’t encourage his delicate young feelings—that had been the spirit of the rules. But the rules seemed silly back then, and they seem even sillier now. Then, he capitulated mostly because he wanted to appease Megan. Robbie himself always knew that Lance would outgrow his crush on his own, and he’d been right. Look at Lance now. Though Robbie hesitates to say it, even in the relative safety of his own head, Lance is objectively beautiful. ‘Handsome’ isn’t quite the right word, though that works, too. Anyway, he’s not at all the sort of person who needs to pine for anyone; instead, he’s the sort of person who only has to crook his finger to bring anyone he wants running.
Robbie eases the truck to a stop and puts it in park. He doesn’t expect any traffic on this road even in good weather, but just to be safe he flips on the hazard lights.
“The old Cane place changed hands a few years ago, and the new owner runs some cows.” Robbie gives the careful, political answer, and then, considering how long he’s known Lance, relaxes enough to add, “If you want to call it that. He’s kept them alive, and they’re in the pasture slightly more often than they’re out.” With a sigh, he rubs his palms on his thighs. “Can I borrow my coat?”
“Oh, sure,” Lance says, cheeks going a little pink. He leans forward and struggles to get his long arms out of the sleeves in the cramped cab, like he’s no more accustomed to being tall and lanky than Robbie is to seeing him that way. When he hands over the coat, Robbie is careful not to let their hands touch, and then he ignores the fact that the lining is warm from Lance’s body when he puts it on himself and gets out of the truck.
He’s more than a little baffled by his physical reaction to Lance. That’s as new to him as Lance’s short hair and sudden height, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
You’re just lonely, he assures himself, and feels better for about a half-second before an inner voice adds snidely, and sex-deprived. He trips a little and blames it on the snow, catching himself with one hand on the hood of the Chevy. Then, pushing all thoughts of the young man waiting for him in the truck from his mind, he focuses on guiding the cows that are lingering in the ditch toward the low place in the ancient barbed wire that they stepped over to get out.