58. Chapter 58
Joyce’s diner had never been so loud, every table in the center of the room stacked with tin containers of food, coolers littered around the black and white linoleum floors, speakers James had dragged in blaring from the window into the kitchen.
Sitting on the back of one of the red-vinyl booths, Colt watched James and Frankie—the bus boy Colt had temporarily replaced—playing flip-cup next to the register.
Xavier snagged Colt around the neck for the third time in an hour and kissed his cheek, big and sloppy and reeking of Tito’s. “I can’t believe you’re leaving us, man. I’m so proud of you.”
“Xavier, oh my God.” Jamie grabbed his arm and hauled him off of Colt, smiling and shaking her head as Xavier stumbled. “I think he might have a crush on you, Colt.”
Gasping, Xavier threw his arm around Jamie’s shoulders and pulled her close. “No, no. There’s only one girl for me. And there’s only one guy for—”
A hand slapped over Xavier’s mouth, and Liam popped his head over the taller man’s shoulder to grin at Colt. “Sorry. Camila’s dad gave him, like, three shots before I could get to them and tell him Xavier is a fucking lightweight.”
Colt grinned. “Yeah, Mateo will get you. Had me throwing up all over their backyard for my twenty-first birthday. Marisol made me sleep on the hammock outside.”
The woman in question sidled up next to him and pinched his cheek. “Well, Mateo had to sleep on the lawn chair. So, you got the better end of the deal.”
“I like your hammock,” Colt told her as he took the beer she held out to him. “Think I spent more time in it than my own bed that summer.”
“Well, you were half in love with Mila at the time.” Mateo came up on Colt’s other side and nudged him with his elbow. “Following her around like a lost puppy. It was cute.”
“Prettiest girl I’d ever seen,” Colt agreed. “All greasy and mean and dressed like—”
“Finish that sentence, and I’ll end you before your name even gets on your new car.” Camila grinned at him and clinked her bottle against his. “And you were never in love with anyone in your life. Just a horny little shit who knew how to charm people.”
Colt’s heart slammed against his ribs, and he took a drink to cover it. Never in love with anyone in your life. She was right. But not anymore.
Eyes sliding across the room, Colt looked for Beau like he’d been doing every five minutes for the past hour.
He’d been talking to Joyce last time Colt had checked, standing by the bathrooms with a glass of whiskey and nodding while she chattered.
Colt didn’t see him anywhere now. Joyce was talking to Terry, the linecook, and she smiled at Colt when he caught her eye.
She waved, and Colt waved back before he drained his beer.
“Here.” Mateo took Colt’s empty and handed him a new one he’d had under his arm. “It’s not a going away party if you aren’t throwing up on the plane tomorrow.”
Laughing again, Colt took the bottle and sipped. Absolutely no way in holy hell was he getting on that plane hungover. But as he looked around again for Beau and didn’t find him, he thought that maybe he could use a better buzz.
An hour later, still no Beau.
“He’s in the garage,” Camila said as she took a long drink of her seltzer.
“I know.” No point in pretending. Colt had spent the past three nights in Camila’s bed doing nothing but half-crying about how Beau had told Liberty no the day after they’d gotten back. She knew.
Gently, Camila took his bottle. “Go on. Everyone’s too drunk to notice you left your own party anyway.”
Colt had already been planning his exit, but Camila’s smile kind of made him want to cry. He wrapped an arm around her and grabbed the side of her head so he could kiss her hair. “I’m gonna miss you.”
“You’ll fly me out with your rich boy money.” She slid her arm around his waist and squeezed. “Gotta find my NASCAR husband, you know. You owe it to me at this point.”
“Everyone I’ve met so far is real queer, babe, I’m sorry.” Colt pressed his cheek against the side of her head. “But, I mean, Vic is hot. I’m sure she’s got a good strap game. You could—”
Camila pulled back and punched him in the arm, and he laughed as he rubbed the ache and hurried away before she could get him again.
***
Sweat dribbled down Beau’s neck and into the collar of his Pantera shirt, the one Colt had been wearing the last time he’d been sleeping in Beau’s bed. Over a week ago now. Toast was pissed. Not even sleeping in Beau’s room anymore, like it was his fault.
He swiped sweat from his brow with his shoulder and turned the wrench again.
It was his fault.
Of course it was.
Even the goddamn cat knew it.
There hadn’t been much time the last two months to work on the Camaro. The grease under his nails had been from Colt’s car, but it was all washed now, replaced.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel outside the bay doors, and the crickets went silent as the floodlights kicked on. He knew it was Colt without having to look up.
“Hey, Beau.”
Beau’s hands paused what they were doing for just a second before he kept going. “You’re s’posed to be at your party.”
“Yeah,” Colt agreed as he kept walking. “But you’re not there.”
“I was.” Beau pulled the part he’d been working on out and wiped it down with a clean cloth. Turned to set it on the rolling cart next to him. “Third time Joyce pinched my ass, figured it was time to go.”
Colt was quiet for a long moment, his eyes digging into Beau’s shoulder blades. “You didn’t say goodbye.”
Closing his eyes, Beau’s heart lurched. Coward. He was a goddamn coward, and Colt deserved so much better. Colt deserved everything, and Beau could hardly give him anything. But he owed him this.
He pulled his hands out of the engine and wiped them down as he turned to find Colt standing next to the tarp-covered Jackrabbit. Beautiful, beautiful boy, with his wide, green eyes and his wild curls—looking at Beau like Beau was something worth looking at.
“I didn’t know how,” Beau admitted as he tucked the rag into his back pocket. “Or if you wanted me to. You haven’t been around. I figured…”
“Figured what?” Colt asked, stepping closer. “That I was done with you?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Are you—” Colt took a sharp breath and let it out slowly before starting again. “You can’t seriously mean that. Not after—after everything.”
“Colt, you’re leaving.” Beau shook his head and ignored the way that thought throbbed like it had every one of the thousands of times he’d thought it in the past week. “You’re moving on to where you belong, where you’ve dreamed of being your whole damn life. It’s not—you don’t have to—”
“I don’t have to do jack shit,” Colt snapped as he stepped closer. “This isn’t have to. This is want, Beau, I—I want you. I’ve wanted you since the second I saw you. And you want me too. I know you do. So why are you doing this?”
“Because you have a future, and I don’t fit in it.” Beau threw up his hands and paced away, dropped his rag in the dirty bin and paced back. “You’re goin’, I’m stayin’, so why would you—”
“Stop.” Colt’s voice was laced with restrained anger as he walked over and stopped right in front of Beau, glared up at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t make this about logistics when we both know this is about Sutton.”
Beau’s jaw clenched, and his eyes darted to the open garage door before landing back on Colt. “It’s not—”
“Yes it is.” Shaking his head, Colt pressed his hand against Beau’s arm. “It is. That’s what it’s always been about. And I understand. I do.” His grip tightened. “But that doesn’t mean I have to sit here and watch you do this to yourself.”
“Colt—”
“No, look.” Another hand joined the first on Beau’s arm, small and warm. “You don’t get to just push me away because you’re scared. You can’t make that decision for me, for us.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Beau asked, frozen there in front of Sutton’s Camaro with Colt’s hands on him.
“Come with me.”
Hell.
“I already told Liberty no. They’re gonna bring in Lou Parker, and he’s good.
He’ll be good for you. To you. Still has connections I don’t.
” Christ. Beau didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to stand in front of Colt and let him down again, but he didn’t know how to do anything else.
“I can’t do it, Colt. I can’t. I’m—it’ll kill me.
You’re askin’ me to watch you race the same tracks, watch you take the same risks.
You’re askin’ me to stand there and—and give you away to that life every day. ”
Colt shook his head. “I’m not asking you to give me away, Beau. I’m asking you to want me enough to stand with me. To hold me up, and stay. I want you on this adventure.” Colt squeezed his arm. “Don’t you miss it? Adventure?”
“There’s no more adventure for me. Don’t you see that? That life is done with me.”
Colt made a quiet, wounded sound and dropped his forehead against Beau’s chest. His voice was thick.
“Stop. Don’t fucking talk like that. You’re forty-two, baby.
You act like you’re going to die here tomorrow, like you’ll be buried under dust and engine grease in this town you fell into at your lowest.”
He moved his forehead back and forth like he was seeking something, and Beau tried to breathe.
“But I see you. I see you when we watch playbacks of my races together, the way your foot moves like it’s on a pedal, your fingers twitching like you want to switch gears.
I saw the way you looked when you hopped into that pit, like you were coming alive.
Beau, you have so much left to give. Stop acting like you’re okay with this being the rest of your life. ”
Chest rising and falling heavily, Beau looked up at the ceiling. Both hands were at his sides as they twitched for this, too, with the ache of wanting to hold this idiot boy who had no idea what he was offering or asking for. “I can’t.”
A shaky sigh, and all the fight drained out of Colt at once. He pulled back and rolled his shoulders, swiped under his eyes with the back of his hand without meeting Beau’s gaze. “Alright.”
“Alright?” Beau asked softly.
“Yeah.” Still not looking at him, Colt stepped toward the door. His pink-soled shoes crunched on the gravel, and Beau dug his nails into his palms to stop himself reaching out. Colt paused. “You said I’m like him. Like Sutton. That I reminded you of him.”
“Yeah.” Beau’s voice cracked, and he blinked his eyes to clear them.
“Then I can tell you, Beau.” Colt looked back at him with a fierce set to his eyes, his mouth, his jaw. “Sutton Tate would not have wanted his death to be the death of you, too.”
Beau listened to Colt’s footsteps fading, the faint thrum of the music filtering down the alley as he went back to his party. The crickets started again when the floodlights kicked off, and Beau was still standing in that empty garage between Colt's covered-up stock car and Sutt's half-torn Camaro.
The blue paint gleamed under the shop lights, the original red seeping through in the spots where the paint had chipped.
‘You don't change the original color, Sutt, you lose thousands in value.’
Sutton had laughed, that wild bark of laughter. ‘Well, it's a damn good thing I ain't gonna sell it then, huh?’
‘You're eighteen, jackass. You might.’
‘Then I'll be too rich to give a rat’s ass about a few thousand bucks.’Sutton wrapped his arm around Beau’s shoulders and shook him. ‘Me and my best friend living that high life, trophies out our assholes.’
The blue was nicer than the red. It matched the color of Sutton's race cars, too, that sparkly kind of night-sky blue.
Beau ran his hand along the hood and to the door, popped it open and thumbed the cigarette burn Sutton had put in it when they were twenty.
Showing off for some girl with Beau and the guy he was dating sitting in the back.
He'd burned his leg, and Beau had laughed until he'd cried.
Thousands of memories. Road trips, fights, beers by the cliffs, heartbreaks—they would have lived in this car if Ma would have let them.
Alive. They'd been so goddamn alive together, full of breath and laughter and thrill.
God.
Colt was right.
Sutton would have beat his ass if he'd seen the way Beau was living. Or not living.
Not until Colt.
Beau shut the door to the Camaro and dug out the tarp, army green and frayed at the edges.
He pulled it over the car, the long, quiet hiss of fabric echoing back at him.
Then he flipped off the lights and walked to the bay doors, stood for just a moment and looked from one covered car to the other before nodding his head, shutting the garage door, and walking off.