Chapter 30 - Gage
The third dealership on the strip has its front doors standing open and not one vehicle missing off the lot.
Tanner walks in ahead of me and hits the lights out of habit.
The whole showroom stays dark and empty.
There's a coffee cup on the sales desk with mold growing across the top of it.
Somebody left a sweater on the back of a chair.
Whoever worked here walked out some time ago and never came back, and they didn't bother locking the door behind them on the way out.
"Office," Tanner points.
I find the key cabinet inside four minutes. It's a grey steel box mounted on the wall behind the parts counter, not even locked, every set of keys tagged with a stock number in somebody's neat handwriting.
"Oh, that's beautiful. Makes this so much easier." Gord says behind me.
What's out back is even better. Two dealership trucks sit along the fence with fifth wheel hitches already bolted into the boxes, fueled and built for exactly one job.
I do the math out loud because it's easier than thinking about anything else. "Two of your trucks that can pull a travel trailer. Two of these. Gramps, Gord, Stu. That's seven trucks and drivers."
"Seven going, seven coming back." Anders is already walking the row. "Two runs, and then we're done with this place tonight."
"Fourteen campers." Tanner spits to one side and nods. "That'll house a lot of people."
We spread out. I take one of the dealership trucks because it means I'm hitched to a fifth wheel the size of a small house and nobody is riding with me.
Reid and Jules don’t know anything about hooking up trailers so they start looking through the accessory store in the show room. I pick a trailer that’s on the lot furthest from them and get backed in to hook up.
I wish I could shut my brain off with the work to be done but no, what I saw keeps circling round and round.
Those few seconds from behind the motorhome just keep playing over and over again.
Luna against the side of the motorhome with Reid's hands on her face and his mouth on hers.
After that come her fingers fisted in the front of Jules's shirt.
The sound she made, which I heard from ten feet away, and which is going to be haunting me for the rest of my life.
Just over a week ago I was telling myself I had time. Guess I was wrong.
"Gage?" Gramps is standing at my back bumper with his arms crossed. "You don’t have that pin all the way in."
I look down. He's right about that. I pull it, turn it, drop it into place, and don't say anything.
He watches me for a second longer than I want him to.
"Should have light left for another couple trips," he says finally, and walks off toward his own rig.
The convoy back out to the mine looks like a parade on the way to an RV show.
Seven trucks running in a line with an assortment of shiny new trailers.
We went with bigger units for more comfort to live in and some of the trucks are punching above their weight class, so we take it slow and easy on the way back to the mine.
Having a wreck is not something there’s time to deal with right now.
The bay doors are rolled all the way up when we come in off the service road, light spilling out across the apron.
They've been busy here. There are spaces marked out for parking the RV’s and I can see Kara working her way through the stack of supplies making lists and writing numbers on boxes.
Luna comes out of the visitor center doors before I have the parking brake set.
She's got her sleeves pushed up and dust on one cheek, and she stops about six feet from my door with her hands twisting together in front of her.
"Gage, can I talk to you?"
"Can't right now." I don't shut the truck off. I go straight past her to the hitch and start cranking the jack down, because if I stand still I'm going to say something I can't take back. "Second run's waiting. We've got maybe ninety minutes before it's black out here."
"I know. I just wanted to say..."
"I have to go, Luna."
The crank handle goes around four more times before I hear her walk away. That's when it hits me properly. I have never brushed that girl off, not once.
I stand there with my hand on a cold piece of steel and hate myself for about ten seconds before I get in the truck and head back towards town.
I’m backed up to my second RV of the night when Reid finds me.
"Hey." He pulls his hands out of his pockets, then puts them back. "You want me to ride back with you? Two sets of eyes on that mirror isn't the worst idea."
"No." It’s short and curt.
He goes still. I can feel him standing there trying to work out what he did wrong. The worst part is that he honestly doesn't know. I’ve always looked out for him and made sure he’s comfortable. Maybe not like the way Jules does but still.
"Okay," he says quietly and walks back over to Stu’s truck while I pretend my full concentration is on getting my trailer hooked up.
I wait until everyone else has left for the trip back before I pull out of the lot and stay far enough back to feel like I’m on my own with my thoughts.
Jules told me. On the deck during the BBQ party, he looked me dead in the face and told me to get on board or miss the train.
Then the smug son of a bitch made a train noise at me.
That night, I looked up what he meant on my phone and decided it was a fantasy women write books about.
Real people don't do that. That was the whole decision I made sitting on my bed at midnight, and then I went back to waiting for the right time with her.
Every one of them has kissed her. Jules did, Reid did, Torrin did, even Mars.
I'm the only one who never has. I’ve spent more time than I can count thinking about it, but that’s it. While I was thinking about it everybody else stopped waiting.
The crews that went to hit all the stores must have just gotten back because when I pull onto the apron the bay is full of people unloading and hauling supplies.
I see some of the bus people grab bedframes and start heading toward the offices, followed by a couple of other guys carrying a mattress.
Milton and Elenor are directing traffic, pointing out which way to go as people walk by with boxes or bags.
Torrin spots me when I get out of the truck and makes his way over. "You look like someone just pissed in your cereal bowl. What’s eating you?"
"I’m fine."
He doesn't let go. His eyes go over my face slow and patient, and whatever he finds there makes his jaw shift.
"That’s a load of shit, Gage."
"I said I'm fine."
I pull my arm back and keep walking, and I feel him watching me the whole way to the doors.
The last thing I want to do right now is talk. What I want right now is to claim one of those trailers or find and an office where someone has dropped off a mattress with a blanket and a pillow and go pass out for about ten hours. By myself.
Gramps finds me though before I can make it inside.
"You ain’t done yet, son." He's got a can of sealant and a headlamp in his hand.
"The poly sheeting is here to put over the end of the livestock shelter. You, Mars and Jules are with me. I figure Jules and Mars can blow on it with their air shadows or whatever to get in place and then you can seal up the edges. I’ll grab some of the furnace filters to plug the ventilation holes.
We need to get that livestock pen covered over before anybody sleeps in case the ash shows up overnight. "
Of course I have to work with those two. The universe hates me right now.
It’s dark out now but Gramps somehow organized getting a few work lights set up so we could see.
It’s tricky work, trying to coordinate Mars’ shadows to roll out the poly while Jules uses air pressure to hold it in place so I can paint the edges to secure it.
It doesn’t help that Jules has a bit going about starting a business, Stillwell and Friends Apocalypse Construction, free estimates, ask about our volcano package.
Mars laughs at some of it. Gramps tells him to save his air for useful things.
I say nothing.
Every joke he makes adds another layer of anger inside me. He’s standing there being funny four hours after putting his mouth on her, and he doesn't even have the decency to look guilty about it.
It takes us an hour before Gramps declares it satisfactory and heads inside to find somewhere to sleep. By then I’ve had enough of being anywhere near these guys.
"That," Jules announces, "is a grade A deluxe Stillwell and Friends window. When I got up this morning I did not picture myself being on a construction crew. Just goes to show the depth of my talents is limitless."
He turns to me with his hand up for a high five, expression filled with pride at doing something out of his skill set, and something in me finally breaks loose.
I turn my back on him and start walking.
"Okay, enough," His voice follows me. "What the fuck is up your ass tonight?"
I keep going.
The air hits me square between the shoulder blades then, a short hard gust that shoves me forward a step, and that is the last thing my temper needed to blow.
I spin around and heave.
The ground goes out from under him. I don't think about it, I just pull, and a three foot wide piece of sod kicks up under Julian's feet and dumps him flat on his ass in the dirt.
"What the fuck, man!"
Mars is three steps off and already moving, shadows spilling down around his hands, head swinging between us because he has no idea what he's looking at.
I walk over and stand over Julian.
"Congratulations," I tell him sounding angry but also defeated. "You fucking win."
He gets up onto one elbow, and for once in his life he looks completely blank. "Win? Win what? Did I forget we made a bet about something?"
"I saw you." I jab a finger back toward the bay. "Behind the motorhome. You and Reid. With Luna."
Mars's head whips around so fast I hear it.
Julian shoves to his feet, and every bit of easygoing Jules is gone. He's furious now.
"It's not a competition you asshat!" He gets right up in my face.
"It never was, Gage. You're just too stubborn to see it.
We all love her. She loves all of us, every one of us, and she has for a while.
The only way this works, the only way anybody wins, is if she's happy. That means we all make her happy."
"Fuck off with that harem shit." I say it low and mean. "It works in books because books are fiction. That's the only reason. Real life doesn't work like that, and I want no part of it."
"Real life, huh?" Julian laughs at me, one hard ugly note, and throws his arm up at the sky. "Look up. Go on, look. What exactly is your definition of real life now that you can practically reach out to touch the moon, earth and stone does what you tell it to, there’s a large naked wolf-man running around out there and we’re about to move into mine for safety from the impending ash cloud of doom? "
I don't want to, but I look up anyway.
The moon hangs over the coulees, cracked open, filling half the sky the way it has since the night everything ended. There's a film across it tonight that wasn't there yesterday, thin and brown, dulling the light coming off it.
"Does any of that look or sound like real life to you?
" His voice cracks on it. "Every single one of us could be dead by Thursday.
I love that girl enough to want her to have everything she wants.
All of it. Four men keeping her safe, four men making her happy, every good thing she's got coming to her after what this world has already taken.
" He shoves a finger into my chest. "I guess you just don't love her the same way the rest of us do. "
"Don't. Don’t you dare say that."
"Then go." He steps back and opens his arms wide. "Go on. Go break her heart, and then be miserable all by yourself, because you're too small minded and too selfish to give her what she actually needs."
I stand there with my jaw locked hard enough to hurt.
The problem is that half of what he said is true.
I can feel which half, and I still can’t get the pieces to sit flat next to each other.
She loves all of us. I’m not stupid, I know that.
It just never meant anything to me except that one day I'd watch her pick somebody, so I made sure I would still be standing there when she did.
Part of me hears the truth in what he says, and I can nearly picture it but every time I get close, my brain slams a door on it.
I turn around and walk away, past the work lights and out into the darkness. I’m not sure where I’m going but I know I can’t stand here and I’m definitely not ready to go back inside and be around people.
Behind me, Mars finally finds his voice. "All of you?"
Nobody answers him.