Page 61 of Boy Blue
“And not riding the rails,” I said, though I knew in my heart that if Blue and Jack were determined, Morgan and I would watch them go. To wait behind and worry.
“God, I hope not.” Morgan ran his fingers through his hair.
CHAPTER 28
blue
In the parking lot of the feed and grain, Jack and I, stood in the lee of the red truck, out of the wind, warm sunshine bouncing off the chrome. With our hands in our pockets, I could see that we each were looking for a place to start, without an audience, each on our own. Would we be friends? Or would we just be two young men who knew each other?
And never mind the times we’d patched each other up, or how we made pillows for each other with our bodies. Stolen food and water for each other. Held each other in the dark when the night got cold and scary.
“You’ve done well for yourself,” I said, a tad stiffly, then amended the statement. “I don’t mean the truck.”
“I’m good now,” Jack said, the words sounding careful, his gaze watchful. “I help in the store; I cook and clean. Very domesticated. But the best part?” He dipped his chin, a bit of a blush on his cheeks. “Are the cuddles. Morning cuddles.”
He was just about making a joke of it, looking like he expected me to criticize him, the way I typically did. For smiling too much. For being easy to get along with. For being lovable. A low Montana wind swooped around the truck and stirred his hair, circling around his shoulders, ruffling the fake fur on thesage green parka he wore. Which looked a lot like mine, only mine was blue.
“Looks like we shop at the same place,” I said, looking down at his boots, realizing we wore the exact same pair.
“Surplus store in Billings,” he said, his smile pulling at his mouth. “Morgan’s a stickler for good footwear.”
I looked at the front door of the feed and grain where, behind the glass, Morgan and Wolfe stood side by side. Watching. Waiting.
“And you?” Jack asked, shrugging his shoulders to point in the direction of the feed and grain. “That guy?”
“Also a stickler for good footwear,” I said, my throat going tight because of all the things I couldn’t say. Couldn’t explain in a single breath about Wolfe and how good he’d been to me. “And hot breakfasts. Three square meals a day, in fact.”
Jack’s mouth moved, as if he was trying to hold something back. And maybe he understood what it meant to be loved like that because he hugged me, suddenly and hard, his arms around my neck, his breath in my ear as he whispered, “Sometimes the feeding is more than what’s on the plate.”
Then he pulled back, blinking hard, his eyes shiny. I knew what he meant. It wasn’t just the food and the roof over our heads. It was the way Wolfe had let me into his life, just as Morgan had let Jack into his. I hadn’t just fallen off that train. I hadlanded. Just like Jack had. The only question was Star and how to find him.
“Do we go looking?” I asked without preamble.
I didn’t have to explain what I meant. Jack blinked and looked away, as if studying the horizon, testing the wind to see what it was up to. I looked where he was looking, at the brown and white, winter-still landscape, a blue sky that went all the way to the horizon. The little town with its straight, wide streets andalmost zero traffic. Winter bare trees amidst the pine trees lining the sidewalks.
“We could go looking,” said Jack. “If we knew where to look.”
“We don’t,” I said. “Trains can hit up to fifty-five miles an hour. Star told us that, remember? Which means he was miles away inside of a heartbeat. Plus, the train was on a spur line. He didn’t know where it went. Did the train switch to another track somewhere down the line? Did he get off? Or did he stay on all the way to the coast?”
“I thought you two were already there all this time.” Jack dipped his head, chin wobbling. There was no hiding it. “Without me.”
In my heart, I knew that had I not fallen off that train, I would have stayed on, and me and Star would have ridden all the way to the coast. To sunny Santa Monica where all of our dreams would have come true.
Jack had been particularly keen on the idea of buying a hot dog from a beach vendor and eating it with his bare toes in the sand. Star had wanted the same thing, with the addition of seeing some orcas breaching the surface of the water. He had also wanted to see seals and to touch a starfish while it clung to the rocks.
Me, I’d wanted to see sunlight sparkling on the water and feel that cool breeze coming off the Pacific. I’d planned to stand for a good long while in two inches of water, my jeans rolled up to my knees, while the salty waves lapped at my bare feet and watched the sun go down over a curved horizon. All while imagining my past was being erased.
“We would have,” I said. Because it was true. “I’ll be honest, I would have. Before. But now?” I paused. A bump on the head hadn’t changed me. But Wolfe had. “I had amnesia for a while. Didn’t even know who I was. I knew your name. I knew Star’s name. Everything else was blank. So.” I blew out a hard breath,struggling to capture what I was feeling and to express it without babbling. “I feel different now. If I were on that train today and it started going?—”
“Don’t tell me you’d had gotten off.” Jack’s frown sliced through me. “No lies.”
“No lies.” Biting the inside of my lips was the only way to keep them from trembling. Knowing Wolfe, being around him, had opened up a part of me that felt things. Made me feel raw with the thought that I would have been cruel to Jack. That I had been. It was too much. I forced a laugh and said, “I would have gotten off in this podunk town that doesn’t even have a Dairy Queen. Pure altruism. I blame Wolfe.”
I scrubbed at my watering eyes, almost wishing I could go back to before, when nothing mattered, when I felt nothing. “I have your duffel bag,” I said, my voice wobbling. “Everything’s in it.”
“Donotcry,” Jack said in hard tones. He grabbed my head in his hands and forced me to look at him. At his fierce expression, his eyes sparking green fire, dark hair swirling around. “Because if you cry, I’ll cry. Think of how unmanly that would be.”
“Fuck off,” I said, swatting at his hands, ineffectually because I didn’t really want him to let go.
