Special Delivery: Special Delivery, Book 1 (22 page)

“I don’t need money. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

“You have to text me every day. If anything goes wrong,
anything—
”

“If anything goes wrong, I’ll leave him, and I’ll call you first.”

“Okay then.” Emma sounded slightly mollified. “Take care of yourself, Sam, please. It’s so lonely without you here.”

It felt good to hear. “You should go ask Steve to console you. Tell him how worried you are about me.”

“Actually, he’s the one who told me something happened with Delia. He called me. Totally blew me out of the water. He’s pissed at her too. We talked for an hour. He was like a different person. I wish he would let go in other, more sexual ways. I want the man in my goddamned bed.”

Sam remembered how cautious Steve always was, how he’d kept himself quiet while Delia shouted, but he also thought of how he’d called Em. “Maybe you should call him more.”

“I can’t have sex with him over the phone,” Emma snapped.

“You might be surprised. Think of it as foreplay.”

“Sure, I could tell him he’s sexy and that I want to grab his ass.” Emma sighed. “I
wish
I could. But then he’d think I’m a whore. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he’s heard I’m easy.”

God, did they
all
suffer from this? “I think if he thought you were easy, he’d be in your pants already. I know he’s not gay, so that’s out. I can’t think of any other reason for a guy to say no to you.”

Emma blew him a kiss. “Miss you, Sam.”

Sam blew one back. “I miss you too, Em.”

“Then come home.”

“I will,” he promised. “Just not yet.”

Once he hung up, he sat in the seat awhile, staring at the mountains. He played a few games, then gave up and watched the sky, thinking. The mountains were snowcapped, rugged and beautiful. Sam felt quiet, sated and safe.

When the silence pressed on him, he scrolled through his music, finally selecting a mellow playlist that still had some Kylie on it. He realized they’d driven all the way from Denver in total silence, except for their talking. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d been so happy
not
listening to music, especially in a car. He and Mitch weren’t awkward with each other anymore, either.

Things were looking up.

Mitch climbed into the cab, rubbing his hands on a rag. He nodded at Sam as he saw him hooking the iPhone up to the stereo. “Ready to go?”

“Ready.” Sam settled in, the music wrapping around them as Mitch pulled Old Blue onto the highway and into the mountains once again.

Chapter Fifteen

The road through the mountains was absolutely beautiful.

Mitch had warned it would take all day to get to Cortez, but Sam never loved a long drive more in his life. He snapped several pictures and even took a panoramic photo, but he knew none of the images came close to capturing what he saw with his own eyes. It was as if the world were smaller and bigger at once: the mountains made everything seem crowded close, but the sky expanded bigger than he’d ever seen it above his head. The towns they passed were charming, small and tucked like spare change into whatever corners they could fit. There were ranches, real honest-to-God
ranches
, with cowboys and everything. Wide, clear, rushing streams followed the road, their waters nothing like the mucky, muddy rivers back home. There were no irises, but Mitch did stop beside a large patch of columbine, which Sam was sure his mother would have loved. He dusted them liberally with her ashes.

The one thing Sam could have lived without were the winding roads.

Most of the time the highway was simply bendy, but as the day wore on and they snaked deeper into the mountains, the roads became narrower and higher against the sides of the peaks they climbed. Mitch pointed out the tree line to Sam, the place so high in elevation not even the evergreens could survive. Apparently the atmosphere was too thin. Sam was impressed by this, but in an increasingly less favorable way as that line crept closer to his own elevation.

“
We’re
okay, right?” He stared worriedly up at the bare rock and snow. “I mean—we can breathe long enough to pass through?”

“Don’t worry, Sunshine. There will be plenty of air.”

Sam tried to take reassurance in Mitch’s confidence, and he told himself that
obviously
they would not build a road so high travelers couldn’t breathe, but he found he nurtured a quiet panic the higher they went. They were in a national forest now, and while there were still homes and towns, they were fewer and farther between.

Then they passed a sign reading, WOLF CREEK PASS AHEAD: TRUCKERS CHECK YOUR BRAKES.

Sam turned to Mitch in alarm. “The sign— Did we—?”

“Did my brake check in Del Norte.” Mitch caught the look on Sam’s face, and his expression changed to surprise. “Sam—honey, are you okay?”

“Fine.” Sam tightened his fingers against his armrest.

But if he’d thought the road was winding before, he soon realized he hadn’t seen anything until now.

The road
climbed
the mountain, weaving back and forth like a ribbon along the side of a cake. It had no rail. Oh, sometimes there was a little metal suggestion, but mostly a sheer edge led abruptly into hell below. Rocks dotted the side of the road, several of them boulders. One was as tall as Old Blue. Signs advised motorists in all caps to WATCH FOR FALLING ROCK.

Mitch drove slowly now, keeping all his focus on the road and his driving as he shifted gears and watched gauges. They climbed higher and higher, weaving first one way and back the next, sometimes hugging the side of the mountain, sometimes the edge. As they went higher, Old Blue went slower, and slower and slower. Sam looked out the window and saw not only the tree line a short walk up the side of the peak, but snow on the ground all the way up through the brush.

“Here’s the top.” Mitch started shifting again, and Sam saw the same slope they had climbed open up in reverse before them, felt the weight of the rig pushing them from behind. As Mitch fought it off with gears and feet, Sam sank into cold, paralyzing terror.

Was that a burning smell?

Was that smell the
brakes
?

Sam swallowed hard, but his throat was almost too thick and tight to do so.

There was a moment of strange, white silence and even whiter light, and then Sam heard a voice as if from far away. It became louder and sharper, and suddenly he was back in Old Blue, and they were pitching slowly down a mountain road, Mitch shouting at him.

“
Sam.
Jesus—Sam, are you okay?”

Sam pushed some words out of his throat. “Mitch—I—” Terror swept him up, and he couldn’t say anything more.

Mitch shifted his gear, and the grinding sent Sam into shivers. “Sam, are you hurt, or are you scared?”

Sam stuttered through a few attempts of saying he was scared, then gave up on the letter S and regrouped. “Not h-h-hurt.”

Even through his terror Sam could see Mitch’s body sag in relief. “Okay, Sam, relax. I have done this road more times than I can count. Sunshine, I have done the Red Mountain Pass in winter—this is a fucking cakewalk by comparison.”

Sam tried to nod, not able to process what Mitch was saying but liking the sound of his voice. He tried shutting his eyes, but it was too easy to imagine the truck sliding off the edge. He fixed his gaze on the ceiling, but he could see the side of the mountain rushing by in his peripheral vision. Looking straight on was out, because that was what had sent him into hysterics in the first place.

“Stay with me, Sam,” Mitch called, and Sam turned toward him as if he were a beacon. He felt calmer instantly, partly because it was Mitch, strong and sure and solid, but also because while the view beyond him was the valley, it was the higher part, and it wasn’t swooping by but drifting. Sam could pretend they weren’t separated from death by little more than the pressure applied by Mitch’s feet.

Sam relaxed a fraction. “I’m sorry.”

“You should have told me you were scared.” Mitch remained focused on the road, but he glanced at Sam when he could. “I could have explained it to you.”

“I—” Sam swallowed the metallic tang of more fear. “I feel it pushing. The truck.”

“It’s a heavy load, and this is a steep grade. In a car it isn’t such a big deal, but I’m kind of a short train. I can’t stop suddenly. So I have to keep Blue going nice and slow and steady. But I know how, Sunshine. There isn’t much in the world I’m truly good at, but this I will confidently tell you I am.”

To prove his trust, Sam took another look at the road. The winding parts were getting a little longer, but strange gravel ramps occasionally ran up the side of the hill, sometimes with huge yellow barrels at the end. “What are those?”

“Runaway truck ramps.
Don’t go green on me, Sam.
They’re for safety. In case of emergency.”

In case the brakes fail.
Sam turned away from the road and back to Mitch. “Have you ever had to use one?”

“Once,” Mitch admitted. “On one of my first mountain runs. Didn’t do a brake check, and didn’t quite get the idea of how hard I had to work to keep my rig under control. But never again. Not one time since. Rigs go over the Continental Divide on all manner of passes, all day every day. You might as well worry about being hit on I-80 in Nebraska. Possible, but not probable, and it’s a risk you take along the way.”

Sam kept his eyes on Mitch.

Mitch remained calm and steady. “Don’t think about it. Think about something else.”

“Okay.” Sam tried. But nothing came to mind.

“Ask me questions. Anything.”

Sam tried to think of something. “What’s the kitty litter for?”

“Kitty litter?” Mitch frowned and then laughed. “Oh, in the cupboard. For winter, on the ice, if I get stuck.”

Sam’s hands tightened on his seat. “There’s snow now.”

“It’s okay.” Mitch kept gentling him, his voice soothing and easy. “It’s okay, Sunshine. I swear. Forget the questions. Tell me more about your mom. Tell me what she’d tell you right now, if she knew you were taking your first trip west after all these years.”

Sam tried to imagine his mother, sitting in her chair, listening. “She’d think it was great.” His gaze fell to Mitch’s arms and legs, not the window. “She’d say, good for you, Sammy.”

“Hope she wouldn’t be too upset by your escort.”

Sam smiled. “She’d like you.”

“Were you out to your mom?”

“Oh yeah. She was in PFLAG and everything, until she got cancer.” The memory warmed Sam. “I told her when I was ten, not realizing what I was doing at the time. I was staring at a boy on the playground, and Mom wheeled over. I remember being so caught up in him, like it was a spell, and then Mom asked if he’d hit me or made fun of me, and I was so shocked she’d think such a thing that I said, ‘No, Mom—I wish I could kiss him.’”

“And what did your mom say?”

“Nothing, for about ten minutes. Then she took me to the store and had me pick out my favorite ice cream and anything I wanted for sundaes, which was awesome because that
never
happened. I always had to pick one thing and only the brand on sale. So I picked
everything
. I made the most disgusting sundae ever, with four kinds of ice cream and five kinds of sauce and ten cherries, and ate it with a huge whipped-cream grin as Mom sat across from me at the kitchen table and asked me if I thought about kissing boys a lot, while she ate my sundae along with me.”

It was good, talking about his mom. Sam smiled as he went on. “I was a little nervous, but then she passed me more fudge, which somehow made it okay, so I said, yeah, actually, a lot. She asked if I wanted to kiss girls too. She seemed so calm, and so I told her, no, only boys. She asked what I enjoyed most about boys. That threw me, until she said her favorites were big, strong men—what about me? I didn’t know, so I said I liked that too, but I remember feeling good, like it was okay.”

Sam relived that moment, the sun filtering through the dusty curtains of the trailer, his mom hunched over the Formica table, smiling as they ate together. “When we finished our first sundaes we had seconds, these slightly more sane. She asked if other boys at school knew I wanted to kiss them. I said, no, and she told me that was fine, but when I wanted to let people know how I felt, to tell her, and she’d be happy to help me figure out what might be the best way. So we finished our ice cream, and when I went to bed, I lay there a long time, looking up at the ceiling. Finally I thought, well, I guess I’m gay. Then I went to bed.”

When Sam finished, Mitch glanced at him, his expression warm and happy. “I like your mom.”

Sam smiled. “Me too.”

Mitch nodded at the road. “We’re down, Sunshine.”

Sure enough, the road had evened out into a regular decline now, and ahead Sam saw the edges of a town. He let out a breath and sagged into his seat as Mitch drove on.

When he pulled off at the side of the road, though, near a small store, Sam remembered how stupid he had been up on the pass, and when Mitch unbuckled and stepped over the console toward the curtain, Sam stood as well and held out his hands.

“Mitch, I’m so sorry,” he began but lost the rest of his apology as Mitch took Sam’s face in his hands, brought his mouth down and kissed him.