Page 10 of Hurricane Love

“Manual, that’s nice,” Diego said, interrupting his runaway train of thought while admiring Wylie’s grip on the gear shift, the prominent veins in his hands. It conjured images of what else those hands might be able to handle. Fuck, Diego had to stop thinking this way. He’d been able to stuff those feelings way the hell down for seven years. Why did that need to change now?

“Hard to find these days, but I like the control, and it’s easier to rev the engine at stop lights.” Wylie flexed all five fingers around the gear shift’s knob.

Diego chuckled at that. He sounded rusty. He could just imagine this young punk rolling up to a red light, glancing over at another hotshot driver and revving his engine for the thrill of it. “I learned to drive a manual on my grandfather’s old Jeep that he used for hunting. Ever race it?” Diego asked.

“Not really. I’m too much of a chicken shit to go all-out. My mom…she, uh, she was killed in a car accident.”

For some reason that information seemed out of place with the image Diego had conjured of Wylie in his mind. Diego had envisioned family vacations and game nights and framed photos along the hallway, lovingly dusted.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry. Drunk driver?” Diego asked.

Wylie shrugged. “Not sure. Some asshole was driving recklessly across the Howard Franklin, zipping in and out of traffic. My mom was coming home from a late-night shift at Tampa General. He tapped her and she went into the wall. Fucker drove off. Hit and run.”

“Fuck, man. That’s awful.” Diego wished he could exact retribution on whomever had been so carelessly cruel, to stealWylie’s mother from the world and then fuck off without any consequence at all.

“She was in a coma for a while, but she just couldn’t pull through,” Wylie said with a heavy sigh.

“What a fucking nightmare,” Diego said, glancing sideways at him.

“It really was. Seeing her hooked up to all those machines helping her breathe and everything else, it fucking sucked. Getting all worked up if, like, her eyelid twitched, all for nothing. Then the doctors told me she’d slipped into a vegetative state, and that was it, you know?”

Wylie glanced over at him briefly, looking young and vulnerable. Diego wanted to wrap him up in his arms. He would have if they weren’t in the car. He settled for laying a hand on his shoulder. “How old were you when all this happened?” he asked.

“Sixteen.”

Diego imagined a younger version of Wylie at his mother’s bedside, clutching her hand and praying she’d come back to him, making all sorts of desperate promises, only to lose her in the end. It was a different kind of loss than what Diego had experienced. Diego’s trouble had been self-inflicted, and he’d pretty much deserved what he got. Wylie’s was a tragedy that had been thrust upon him at a young age, further proof that there was no kind of cosmic justice at play in this world.

“I’m her only kid, so I had to be the one to decide,” Wylie said. “She wouldn’t have wanted to go on like that. She was a nurse. She’d told me how awful it is for the patients when the families can’t let go. So, I had to do it. Just…let her go.”

This story just got worse and worse. “Jesus, man, what about your dad?” Diego asked, suspecting he knew the answer already.

“He took off when I was a baby. Lives somewhere out west with a new family, or so I heard a while back. Haven’t really been in touch with him since I was little.”

Diego’s own dad was a deadbeat too, never paid any kind of child support or visited him as a kid, even though he’d livedlocally for most of his life. His dad had been in and out of prison for robbery and theft and other bad shit. His family kept tabs on the man and gave Diego regular updates, even though he’d rather they didn’t. Diego was determined not to follow in his old man’s footsteps, despite what his mother might think.

“My dad’s no good either,” he said and left it at that.

“Twins,” Wylie said humorlessly.

“So, what happened next?” Diego wondered how Wylie had been able to overcome so much. “How’d you end up graduating high school and getting a college diploma and scoring in the top ten percent on the LSAT?”

Wylie grinned. “You remembered.”

“Of course, I did. It’s impressive.” Especially with all the bullshit Wylie had had to endure. Diego should probably be taking notes.

“My English teacher, Nancy, she took me in and gave me a place to stay.” Wylie nodded his head intently. “She’s like, my rock.”

“Mrs. Miller?” Diego asked, having a memory of his former English teacher, a sharp-tongued lady who chain-smoked during her lunch hour and planning periods at the nearby Wendy’s and dispensed advice to whomever she caught skipping school, which had often included Diego and his friends.

“Yeah, she hooked me up with a therapist, an old friend of hers named Bob Winchester, Dr. Bob. I still see him, even though he’s retired now. He’s one of my neighbors. Nancy owns a trailer park over on Indian Rocks Beach called Sunset Village, but she only allows her friends to live there, so it’s like this really chill retirement community. For me, it’s like having a shit-ton of grandmas and grandpas.”

“Sounds like a sweet set-up,” Diego said, trying to imagine it.

“Really is. The baked goodies and casseroles are ridiculous.”

Diego smiled at the thought of it, glad the young man was being cared for and had a community to support him. Silence fell over the cab, but it wasn’t awkward. Wylie vaped and Diegodirected him where to turn off. He appreciated that Wylie didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with idle chatter. He was different from what Diego had initially thought–wiser and more mature, in addition to being a sexy smartass.

They turned into the parking lot of his building, which was just two sad rows of one-bedroom apartments stacked on top of each other with the constant noise of traffic in the background, even this late at night. No trees, only weeds growing through the cracks in the asphalt. There were a couple single moms living there with their kids and an ex-Marine with PTSD whom Frank had known back in the day. All charity cases like himself, no doubt.