The guys wanted to hit Boxcar after, but I said I had a thing. Santos gave me shit about it, but he let me go.
I sat in my truck in the parking lot for a while, watching my breath fog up the windshield. The clock on the dash said 9:47. Derek would have Dad in bed by now, or at least settled in front of the TV with the volume low. I could go home. I could sleep for once. I could be a normal person for one night and not drive forty minutes to a bar where nobody knew my name and nobody asked me questions I didn't want to answer.
I put the truck in drive.
The highway was empty, just me, the occasional semi, and the yellow lines disappearing under my headlights. I rolled the windows down and let the cold air tear at my face, trying to wake myself up. I'd been going since five in the morning. That was almost seventeen hours now. My eyes felt like sandpaper, and I should have been in bed.
I wasn't going to bed.
About twenty minutes out, I caught myself drifting. The rumble strip growled under my tires, and I jerked the wheel, pulse kicking hard. I pulled into the right lane and gripped the wheel harder, knuckles going white.
It happened again ten minutes later. This time I actually hit the shoulder, gravel spraying up against the underside of my truck, before I yanked it back onto the road.
I pulled over.
Semis blew past me, shaking the cab every time they passed. I sat there with the engine running and my hands still locked on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the dark highway and the distant glow of Albuquerque on the horizon.
There was a thought in my head, a bad one, the kind of thought that showed up when you were this tired and this empty, and it would be so easy to just not jerk the wheel next time. Just let it happen. Just let the truck drift off the road and into the ditch or the median or whatever was waiting out there in the dark.
I sat with it for a second. Not because I wanted to do it, but because I wanted to look at it clearly. Acknowledge it. Let it know I saw it.
Then I reached into the center console and grabbed the warm Red Bull I'd been saving for emergencies. I cracked it open and chugged the whole thing in three long swallows, and it tasted like ass, but I didn't care.
"Get it together," I said out loud. My voice sounded weird in the empty cab. "You're not doing that. You're just tired and your brain is being an asshole."
I turned the radio up loud enough to hurt and pulled back onto the highway.
Alibi was tucked into a strip mall between a laundromat and a nail salon, the kind of place you'd drive right past if you didn't know what you were looking for. No sign out front, just a black door with a small rainbow flag sticker peeling off the corner. I'd been coming here every Tuesday I could manage, and my stomach still clenched every time I pulled into the lot.
I parked in the back corner, away from the streetlights, and scanned the other cars out of habit, looking for trucks I recognized, bumper stickers for teams I'd played against, anything that might mean someone in there knew who I was. The lot was mostly clear, just a handful of sedans and a couple of beaters that looked like they belonged to the staff.
I sat there for a minute with the engine off, watching the door. A guy came out, lit a cigarette, and scrolled through his phone. He was maybe fifty, wearing a denim jacket and boots that had seen better days. He didn't look up. He didn't know me. Nobody here knew me.
That was the whole point.
I got out of the truck and walked across the lot, and the bass reached me before I even opened the door, something with a heavy beat that vibrated in my chest. Inside, the air was warm and smelled like beer and cologne and sweat, and the lights were low enough that everyone looked better than they probably did in daylight.
The bar ran along one wall, sticky with spilled drinks. A few guys were playing pool in the back corner. The dance floor was half-full, bodies moving against each other in the dim light, and I let myself look for a second before I headed for the bar.
"Whiskey," I told the bartender. "Neat."
He poured it without asking what kind, which meant he remembered me. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
I found a spot at the end of the bar where I could see the door and nursed my drink. The whiskey was cheap and burned going down, but it took the edge off the tightness in my chest. I let myself breathe, let myself be here in this place where nobody expected anything from me except maybe a good time.
A guy at the pool table was watching me. He was tall, with dark hair and the kind of jaw that looked like it had been designed in a lab. When I caught him looking, he didn't glance away, just held my gaze and let the corner of his mouth turn up.
I finished my whiskey and walked over.
"You play?" he asked, nodding at the table.
"Not really."
"Me neither." He set down his cue and leaned against the wall, looking me over in a way that made my skin prickle. "I'm Nate."
"Red."
"That your real name?"
