Chapter 4
Practice was a shitshow.
Coach had us running contact drills, and my hip had other ideas. Third rotation, I went in for a check on Santos and my left leg buckled at the wrong moment. One second I was upright, the next I was on my ass with Santos on top of me and the ice cold through my jersey.
"Shit, Pipes, you okay?" Santos rolled off me and offered a hand.
"Yeah." I grabbed it and let him haul me up, skating a slow circle, testing the joint. "Just lost my edge."
Coach pulled me to the bench. The team doc did his thing, pressing on the joint, asking the same questions he always asked. I downplayed how bad it hurt because I didn’t want to get benched for the game on Friday and he cleared me.
I stuck to passing drills for the rest of practice, and by the time we wrapped I was tired but not wrecked. Progress.
The guys wanted to hit Boxcar after, but I said I had a thing. Santos gave me shit about it, but he let me go.
I sat in my truck in the parking lot for a while, watching my breath fog up the windshield.
The clock on the dash said 9:47. Derek would have Dad in bed by now, or at least settled in front of the TV with the volume low.
I could go home. I could sleep for once.
I could be a normal person for one night and not drive forty minutes to a bar where nobody knew my name and nobody asked me questions I didn't want to answer.
I put the truck in drive.
The highway was empty, just me, the occasional semi, and the yellow lines disappearing under my headlights.
I rolled the windows down and let the cold air tear at my face, trying to wake myself up.
I'd been going since five in the morning.
That was almost seventeen hours now. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and I should have been in bed.
I wasn't going to bed.
About twenty minutes out, I caught myself drifting. The rumble strip growled under my tires, and I jerked the wheel, pulse kicking hard. I pulled into the right lane and gripped the wheel harder, knuckles going white.
It happened again ten minutes later. This time I actually hit the shoulder, gravel spraying up against the underside of my truck, before I yanked it back onto the road.
I pulled over.
Semis blew past me, shaking the cab every time they passed. I sat there with the engine running and my hands still locked on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the dark highway and the distant glow of Albuquerque on the horizon.
There was a thought in my head, a bad one, the kind of thought that showed up when you were this tired and this empty, and it would be so easy to just not jerk the wheel next time.
Just let it happen. Just let the truck drift off the road and into the ditch or the median or whatever was waiting out there in the dark.
I sat with it for a second. Not because I wanted to do it, but because I wanted to look at it clearly. Acknowledge it. Let it know I saw it.
Then I reached into the center console and grabbed the warm Red Bull I'd been saving for emergencies. I cracked it open and chugged the whole thing in three long swallows, and it tasted like ass, but I didn't care.
"Get it together," I said out loud. My voice sounded weird in the empty cab. "You're not doing that. You're just tired and your brain is being an asshole."
I turned the radio up loud enough to hurt and pulled back onto the highway.
Alibi was tucked into a strip mall between a laundromat and a nail salon, the kind of place you'd drive right past if you didn't know what you were looking for.
No sign out front, just a black door with a small rainbow flag sticker peeling off the corner.
I'd been coming here every Tuesday I could manage, and my stomach still clenched every time I pulled into the lot.
I parked in the back corner, away from the streetlights, and scanned the other cars out of habit, looking for trucks I recognized, bumper stickers for teams I'd played against, anything that might mean someone in there knew who I was.
The lot was mostly clear, just a handful of sedans and a couple of beaters that looked like they belonged to the staff.
I sat there for a minute with the engine off, watching the door. A guy came out, lit a cigarette, and scrolled through his phone. He was maybe fifty, wearing a denim jacket and boots that had seen better days. He didn't look up. He didn't know me. Nobody here knew me.
That was the whole point.
I got out of the truck and walked across the lot, and the bass reached me before I even opened the door, something with a heavy beat that vibrated in my chest. Inside, the air was warm and smelled like beer and cologne and sweat, and the lights were low enough that everyone looked better than they probably did in daylight.
The bar ran along one wall, sticky with spilled drinks. A few guys were playing pool in the back corner. The dance floor was half-full, bodies moving against each other in the dim light, and I let myself look for a second before I headed for the bar.
"Whiskey," I told the bartender. "Neat."
He poured it without asking what kind, which meant he remembered me. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
I found a spot at the end of the bar where I could see the door and nursed my drink.
The whiskey was cheap and burned going down, but it took the edge off the tightness in my chest. I let myself breathe, let myself be here in this place where nobody expected anything from me except maybe a good time.
A guy at the pool table was watching me. He was tall, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that looked like it had been designed in a lab. When I caught him looking, he didn't glance away, just held my gaze and let the corner of his mouth turn up.
I finished my whiskey and walked over.
"You play?" he asked, nodding at the table.
"Not really."
"Me neither." He set down his cue and leaned against the wall, looking me over in a way that made my skin prickle. "I'm Nate."
"Red."
"That your real name?"
"It's what people call me."
He smiled at that, like I'd said something clever. "Can I buy you a drink, Red?"
He bought me two. I bought him one back.
We talked about nothing because the music was too loud for anything real, and that was fine.
I didn't want real. I wanted his hand on my arm and his eyes on my mouth and the way he leaned in close to hear me, close enough that I could smell his cologne, something expensive that I couldn't name.
We ended up on the dance floor. His hands found my hips and pulled me in, and I let him because it was easier than thinking.
The bass shook through my ribs and the lights smeared at the edges and for a little while I was just a body pressed against another body, nobody's son and nobody's caretaker, just a guy in a bar letting a stranger grind against him in the dark.
His mouth found my ear. "You want to get out of here?"
I wanted to stay in this warm, dark place where nothing was complicated and nobody needed anything from me. But I also wanted what he was offering, or at least I wanted to want it, which was close enough.
"Bathroom," I said.
He took my hand and pulled me toward the back hallway.
The stall was cramped, and the lock was busted, so I had to hold the door shut with one hand while he pressed me against the wall. He kissed me slow at first, careful, like he was waiting for permission.
I bit his lip hard enough to make him grunt.
"Harder," I said against his mouth.
He tried. He got his hands on my hips and shoved me back against the tile, and his grip was firm enough that I'd probably have bruises tomorrow. But there was still something tentative in the way he touched me, like he was afraid of hurting me, like he thought I might break.
I didn't want to be handled like something fragile.
I spent my whole life being careful. Careful with my dad, careful with my words, careful with everything I did and said so that nobody would ever find out the truth about me.
I wanted someone who'd just take what they wanted without asking, without worrying about whether I could handle it.
I turned around and braced my hands on the wall. "Come on."
He fumbled with a condom, with his belt, with the angle, until I reached back and helped him line up. Then he pushed inside me.
He set a steady rhythm, and his hands stayed on my hips, and it felt good, the stretch and the pressure and the way my brain finally went quiet for a few seconds.
But his touch was still too gentle. He kept kissing my shoulder, my neck, the spot behind my ear, soft little kisses that were probably meant to be sweet. I didn't want sweet.
I closed my eyes and let my brain go somewhere else, to the figure skater from that morning and the way he'd looked at me like I was dirt on his ice.
I could still hear that cold voice saying you're on my ice, like he owned the whole rink, like he owned everything and I was just something in his way.
I wondered what his hands would feel like. They wouldn't be gentle. They wouldn't be careful. He'd looked at me and clocked my hip in about two seconds, filing my weakness away. He'd probably fuck the same way he skated, all that terrifying control, knowing exactly what he was doing every second.
I thought about making him lose that control, about what it would take to crack that composure and make him want something badly enough that he stopped being careful.
I thought about him shoving me against the wall, not tentatively like Nate, but like he meant it, like he'd decided I was worth the effort and he was going to take me apart piece by piece until I forgot my own name.
My brain gave me his voice, low and cold and right against my ear, telling me to hold still, telling me he wasn't done with me yet.
I came with my forehead pressed against the tile and my teeth sunk into my own arm to keep from making too much noise.