Epilogue
DOMINIC
The line at the tollbooth moves slow. I tap the wheel, window down, elbow out. Ryan has his bare feet up on the dash and a gas station coffee balanced on his knee.
When I pull up to the booth, Gloria looks up from her little tray and squints at me over her glasses. Then she tilts her head, and a slow grin spreads across her face. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
“You remember me?”
“A handsome face like yours is hard to forget. You were having a month, as I recall.” She winks at Ryan. “He tried to pay with a button.”
Ryan snorts, coffee sloshing onto the floor mats. “No shit.”
I hand Gloria a five. She counts out the change, slides it across the tray, then leans forward on both elbows. “So, handsome, did you find what you were looking for?”
I look over at Ryan, who’s wiping coffee off his knee with the back of his hand. He’s got a smudge of grease on his cheek from the engine trouble we had this morning and two days of stubble on his chin. He looks ridiculously hot.
We stayed at the motel for three days. Extended the room twice.
Eating takeout in bed. Fucking on every surface.
Talking about everything and nothing. Megan, the yoga asshole, the apartment...
it all felt a thousand miles away. Well, it was.
I told him things I’ve never told anyone.
Ryan listened. And he told me things, too.
Things that made him seem less like this unbreakable force and more like a guy dealing with his own shit.
After we dropped Ryan’s truck off at his place, we took mine on a road trip.
Nothing crazy. Just a couple of weeks. Driving through the mountains and stopping in little towns.
Fucking in the back seat at overlooks with the windows fogged.
Getting breakfast at roadside diners with sticky tabletops, our voices still hoarse from the night before.
He took me to this bar, and I beat him at pool, and he swore he let me win. I kissed him right there. In front of everyone. He turned bright red. The guy who begged me to spit in his face, blushing over a kiss.
Gloria is still waiting for an answer. “Well?”
“Yeah,” I say, squeezing Ryan’s knee. “Yeah, I did.”
“Good for you, hon.” Gloria beams, tapping her electric blue nails on the ledge. “Good for you. Now, you boys have yourselves a safe trip.”
“Thanks.”
The arm lifts, and I pull away from the booth. Ryan turns in his seat to look at me.
“‘Handsome face like yours is hard to forget,’” he says, doing a passable impression of her.
“Shut up.” I’m grinning like an idiot.
“Well, she’s not wrong.” He leans over and kisses the corner of my mouth. His lips are warm, taste like cheap coffee. Then he settles back in his seat, props his bare feet on the dash again, and cranks up the radio.
The road stretches out in front of us. Same highway. Same dashed yellow line. But everything’s different.
The anger is gone. The bitterness. It feels like I left it all in that cheap motel room, along with three days’ worth of cum and my straightness.
I’m not looking back. I’m looking at the guy next to me.
The guy with the silver-blue eyes, the filthy mouth, and the surprisingly romantic soul, who’s trying to sing along to some ’90s rock song completely off-key.
Funny how a quick pit stop can change your whole goddamn life.
The End