Besides, how did someone go about telling a parolee that more would be better? That the connection between them could become a bridge that might never collapse beneath.
Chapter21
Blaze
Blaze’s palms were sweating on the steering wheel, but he kept his foot light on the gas pedal. Driving so slowly, he never felt out of control, even though the dump truck felt as though he was steering an enormous elephant. In the passenger seat, on the other side of the huge stick shift, Gabe seemed relaxed, so Blaze must be doing something right.
“We’re about fifteen minutes out,” said Gabe. “But just past this hill, pull over.”
“Pull over?” In an overexcited motion, Blaze turned the steering wheel to the right side of the road, bumping over several deep ruts, but finally coming to a stop in a cloud of dust that he could see in the headlights.
“Yeah.” Gabe undid his seatbelt and leaned forward.
The engine was still running, the dashboard lights casting up an icy green glow that lit up Gabe’s face, his smile. For a moment they looked at each other as the engine coughed, cooling down, and the low sound of the wind across the grasses grew.
“Turn the engine off, and the headlights,” said Gabe. “Come look at the stars.”
Eagerly, Blaze did as he was told, undoing his seatbelt, clambering out, and, leaving the keys in the ignition, threw himself out of the truck’s cab, landing hard.
He could see the top of Gabe’s head—a dark shape, a shadow—and followed, going to stand where Gabe was. Then Gabe reached out and, with warm fingers, pushed Blaze’s chin up to look at the stars.
“Maybe you could see these in prison,” said Gabe, softly. “But maybe they look better from out here.”
They did. There was no barrier to the night filled with stars, save the soft edges of low hills along one side of the road, and the foothills and mountain range in front of them, but miles away. All the rest was a crisp, dark blue, the stars looking almost fake, so silver and hard pointed. There weren’t any clouds blocking those stars, no light pollution from anywhere, no haze.
“Wow,” said Blaze, but it seemed such a lame response in the face of all this brilliance, added to which was Gabe standing so close.
All of Blaze’s flirty patter, any running commentary he’d been planning to make, faded away, absorbed by the darkness, into nothingness. Leaving the stillness of night, the wind in the grasses, maybe the faraway hush-edged rush of a shallow river nearby. And his heart, beating all out of proportion to the fact that he was just standing there. Inches away from Gabe.
Gabe moved close, seemed to cough low in his throat, then his shoulder pressed to Blaze’s.
“This is nice,” Gabe said, half-low, as if to himself. “Just to be in the midst of all this and look up.”
Another layer of Gabe peeled back, revealing a cowboy with a poet’s heart, a child’s sense of wonder. Wonder that Blaze had lost long ago, if indeed he’d ever had any. Wonder. Innocence. Awe.
“It is nice,” he said in return, returning the press, ducking his head to touch his temple to Gabe’s shoulder.
Quickly he withdrew. Gabe could interpret that how he wanted and respond how he wanted, and never in his life had Blaze felt so scared, so daring at the same time. Gabe wouldn’t want someone like him, his edges torn, his background littered with yesterday’s sawdust, a soundtrack of lies.
“We should get back.”
The words came low, almost soundless beneath the faint wind, and Blaze felt his heart brittle inside of his chest.
“Okay,” he said, because there was no fighting it when a man said no.
He couldn’t make Gabe want him the way he wanted Gabe, but as Gabe got in the driver’s seat, and Blaze pulled himself into the passenger seat, he ran over what had just happened between him and Gabe. Advance, retreat. Advance again, retreat again.
Why would a man do that? Because he was scared. Because he had hard limits and wouldn’t cross them for someone like Blaze. Because, perhaps, and most importantly, he had a sense of honor that wouldn’t allow him, as Blaze’s team leader, to step down from that, to use Blaze like that.
Blaze held his tongue all the way back to the valley, the window open, hanging onto the handhold above the window, holding on till his fingers ached. All of him ached now, with wanting what he couldn’t have, what had been so close. Telling his body to be still, just be still.
And then there was the question as to where he was going to sleep that night. Again in the tent with Gabe? Or on his own, sitting up in the dark until sunrise?
When Gabe parked the dump truck once more beneath the dark, dense shadows of the trees, he turned off the engine and, before it had even begun to cool, he slid out of the truck.
Blaze was on his heels, and he would not have accused Gabe of running, no, but he had to hurry to keep up, telling himself the only reason he was going with Gabe to Gabe’s tent was to get his stuff. After that, Blaze’s mind was a blank.
Gabe stepped into his tent and pulled the chain for the overhead light. The tent was flooded with bright edges and crisp shadows, and Blaze longed for the Coleman lantern to be lit. For the soft yellow glow to surround them the way it had before.
