Chapter 27 - Reid
An hour after leaving the rest stop the prairie quits being flat.
The land splits open on both sides of the highway, falling away into canyons.
Bands of rust red, grey, and pale yellow stripe the canyon walls.
Hoodoos stand in loose clusters out on the floor of the valley, some capped with a wide flat stone balanced on a narrow neck of stone.
Nothing out here belongs in the same province as the wheat fields and grasslands we drove through today. It’s stunning.
Jules is driving with one wrist hooked over the top of the wheel and his other hand tapping an unknown rhythm restlessly against his thigh.
Elenor claimed a seat in the motorhome right before we rolled out and took Briar with her so lucky Gage has them both talking at him for the rest of the run.
Kara made a last second jump into Torrin's truck so he'd have somebody keeping him awake so it’s just me and Jules in the Escalade.
My head is quiet. Whatever lives out in this country is spread thin across a lot of ground. The little that reaches me comes in faint, and it’s easy to ignore. I let my shoulder settle into the door and watch the badlands go by, and for a good long while that is all there is.
The first vehicle we pass is a grey pickup running the other direction.
Its driver lifts two fingers off the top of his wheel at us, the way rural people out here have done forever.
Two more cars come after him, then a minivan with a mattress strapped to the roof, then four in a row off a side road.
Every kilometre closer to Drumheller puts more of them on the pavement.
"People," I say.
Jules glances over. "People."
"I was starting to think it was only us." I keep my eyes on the oncoming lane. "Like the whole province got swallowed and nobody thought to mention it."
"Not swallowed." His hand goes still on his thigh. "Just hunkering down."
We take the bypass around the outside of town, which puts us up on the high side looking down into it.
Fire has been through part of it. There's a black scar four or five blocks wide on the north end that looks to have been hit bad, and fairly recently.
Most of the roofs are caved in and there is still smoke sitting over the wreckage from smoldering hot spots that no-one is bothering to put out.
Everything else is standing. I can see a water tower with the town name painted on the side, a church steeple, the arena, block after block of houses with their yards still green.
There are also dinosaurs everywhere.
They're on street corners and in front of gas stations, cartoon ones painted in colours no animal has ever been. One green fellow wears a bow tie. A purple one has its arm up, waving at traffic. The Royal Tyrrell museum out here pulls people in from all over the world to look at real dinosaur fossils. In answer to that, the town decorated itself with the goofiest possible version of the same idea. It’s cheesy and corny but I like the it.
"Are you smiling at the dinosaurs?" Jules asks.
"They're cute."
"If they weren’t extinct, you’d absolutely be trying to have a conversation with one, wouldn’t you?"
"Yes. I’d start by asking how much they got paid for the Jurassic Park movies. Then I’d ask if they all hate that purple Barney asshole."
A commercial strip comes up on our right as we swing wide around the last of the town.
There's a big box hardware store with its lot half full of contractor trucks that nobody has moved in a week.
Next to it sits a sprawling Save Mart. Past that runs a whole row of RV dealerships, lot after lot of trailers and motorhomes parked in rows behind chain link.
I sit up straighter and twist in my seat to keep them in view as they slide past. "Jules. Look at that."
"I see it." He takes his eyes off Torrin's tailgate long enough to look. "Lumber, groceries, and whatever else we can carry, all within a short drive of where we're going to be living. That’ll help a lot."
Drumheller drops behind us and the road goes empty again. My eyes catch on the dash clock, and I stare at it long enough that the numbers start blurring. It’s only three in the afternoon. This day feels like it’s been four days long and it isn't finished with us yet.
What I really want is a couch. It would be soft and deep, with a movie on that nobody has to pay attention to.
Luna would be tucked up against my side, her cold feet shoved under my leg the way she does when she thinks I won't notice.
Being bored with her for two hours is the entire fantasy.
Not one piece of it is happening tonight or any night soon.
The thought segues into the other one I've been avoiding since we left the farm.
"Can I ask you something," I say. "About that thing you said to Luna and Gage?"
Jules's lips curve in a faint smile. "You may."
"Was it a good idea?" I turn in the seat to face him. "Not because it isn't true. I just worry that if we come at her with all of it at once we'll scare her off, and then we've lost the thing we were trying to keep."
He takes his eyes off the road for a second to look at me, then shakes his head and puts them back on Torrin's truck ahead of us.
"No. I don't think we'll scare her off." His thumb starts tapping the wheel again. "This has been coming for a long time, Reid, and our girl isn't oblivious. She knows how we feel about her. She's known for a while, and she's been very carefully not looking directly at it."
"That's not the same as her wanting us back."
"It isn't," he agrees. "We made a promise, though.
Treading water in the middle of downtown Vancouver, half drowned, absolutely certain we were about to die out there, we swore that if we got home we would tell her.
We've been home for days and neither one of us has had a serious conversation about it with her yet. "
My stomach drops, because he's right, and because I remember exactly what the water felt like when I said it.
"Things have been insane since we got back," I say. "I'd love it if we had more than two minutes between running to the next emergency. She deserves better than getting told or asked something like that in a hallway in between our to-do lists."
Jules scoffs at that. "Good luck. The way this is going we won't get one minute, let alone two, for the next week.
Probably longer." His jaw sets and determination fills his face.
"I'm done waiting. We’ve loved that girl from a distance long enough, and we're about to start a whole new life with forty other people living on top of us.
I intend to start it the way I plan on finishing it, which is with her.
Before we close our eyes tonight, Luna is going to know exactly how we feel and exactly what we want. "
Nerves come up through me fast enough that my hands go cold in my lap.
Women have never been simple for me. Somebody gets close, or interested, or just stands nearer than I'm ready for, and my chest locks down while my brain walks out of the room.
Our therapist spent a long time helping me understand why my body does that.
What my mother and her friend did to me is not something I carry shame about anymore, but the aftereffects are still there.
Understanding it helps but knowing the reason has still never once stopped it from happening.
Except for Luna. Being close to Luna has never done that to me, not one single time.
The first time I ever laid eyes on her, she read the panic on my face from twenty feet away and walked straight into it.
She lied to a girl's face, hooked her arm through mine, and got me out of there. There was not one question out of her the whole way. Two soft pats on my back, and then she left me with the guys and kept walking like none of it had happened. She has been doing her version of that ever since and she has never once asked me for anything back. Being near her has never made me feel anxiety or panic like other women do. He’s the only one I’ve ever wanted. It was always going to be her.
The part that scares me is not that she'd laugh.
Luna would never laugh. She'd be kind about it, and I would have to stand there and watch her be kind while she told me no.
That promise in the water was real, though.
Every word of it was true, and I'm not letting what somebody else did to me make this decision too.
"There's a problem with your timeline," I tell him. "You know Gage isn't on board with any of this. You proved that today. He was furious."
Jules scowls at the road, then lifts one shoulder.
"I'm not worried about Gage. He wants her as badly as the rest of us do, he just needs the right leverage applied before he'll admit it out loud. Out of all of us, it’ll be the toughest for him to change his mindset. Ultimately though, he wants her to be happy just like we do. And it’s not like we’re strangers at a keg party looking for a gang bang, he knows we all have her best interests at heart.
Torrin will be the easiest sign up of the whole group.
That man will join my little sexual pyramid scheme with his hand already raised. "
A laugh blasts out of me then dies just as fast. "It's not only about sex, Jules."
"I know that, Reid."
"No, I need you to actually hear it." I tell him seriously. "With her, with all of us, it's so much more than that."
He's quiet for a second, and when he answers, everything sharp has gone out of his face.
"Yeah. It's all of her, and it's all of us together, the way it's supposed to be." He clears his throat and the smooth slides back over him. "Also the sex. Let's not pretend."
"And Mars?" I ask, because that could be a major complication. "Where does he fit into this?"
The tapping stops again. Jules blows out a long breath through his nose.