Greg looked at Dustin one last time with an expression as if he wanted to say something more, but he didn't. He stepped through the door and then he was gone.
The room went quiet.
Dustin sat on the edge of the bed and let the silence settle around him.
Any other morning, any other person, Dustin would already be moving, finding some activity he could get lost in, forgetting whoever he'd been with.
He was never stuck just waiting for the person to come back.
It was terrible.
And terribly unproductive.
He crossed the room and picked his phone off the carpet.
The screen was cracked. Of course. A spiderweb fracture sprawled across the lower left corner from where it had hit the wall.
The phone still turned on, though, to show him 47 notifications.
He scrolled with his thumb, scanning the headlines.
Apex Energy. Apex Energy. Apex Energy. A text from his buddy Fred asking if the Devil's Needle thing was real. A DM from someone he'd slept with in Vegas two months ago:hey stranger, saw the news, you're insane lol.Three news alerts hedidn't care about.
Nothing from Cathy.
She hadn't called back.
He wasn't sure what would have been worse—finding a missed call or the silence. Both sat wrong and neither gave him anything useful, so he swiped past all of it.
He opened the maps app.
Restaurants near me.
The results loaded slowly. A diner with a suspiciously cheerful logo. A pizza chain. A barbecue joint that looked worse than its three star rating.
And there—Casa Rosa. A Mexican place four miles south that was open until ten. The thumbnail showed a red-painted storefront and a chalkboard sign out front. The menu had pictures. Greg would like that. He'd study them and weigh his options with an intensity that would be either endearing or maddening depending on Dustin's patience level.
Dustin tapped through the photos, spotting tacos, enchiladas and a churro platter with chocolate dipping sauce that would probably make Greg forget his own name.
He scrolled through the drinks menu.
No milkshakes.
Dustin went back to the map and zoomed out. There was an ice cream shop two blocks from Casa Rosa. They could hit it after dinner.
He made a note on his phone, and then he lay back on the bed. On Greg's side, where the sheets still held warmth and the pillow still held the shape of him.
He wondered if Greg would like guacamole.
CHAPTER 26
Greg stepped through the door of a gas station bathroom off Exit 183 and slowly made his way onto the shoulder of Interstate 25.
The highway looked different in the morning. Tamer, somehow.
Greg walked south along the shoulder toward the accident site, hands in his pockets. Skid marks scored the asphalt in long, dark arcs where tires had locked and vehicles had spun. The median barrier was dented and scraped, the metal peeled back in places where impacts had buckled it.
Cars rolled over the skid marks like they were just another part of the surface.
