“It's beautiful here,” Greg said.
“Yeah.”
“Did you grow up near these mountains?”
“In them.”
“That explains the jumping.”
Dustin almost smiled. “How do you figure?”
“You grew up surrounded by heights. It makes sense that you'd want to interact with them rather than just look at them.” Greg adjusted his glasses. “That's what humans do, I think. They see a challenge and want to overcome it.”
Dustin said nothing. He kept his eyes on the road and his hand on the wheel and didn't think about how accurately Greg had just described the first time he and Tyler had stood on that cliff behind their school and looked down.
They drove in silence for a while. The highway curved through canyon walls, red rock rising on both sides, the Uncompahgre River running alongside in the valley below.
“What's she like?” Greg asked.
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
Dustin's grip shifted on the wheel. “I've told you about her before.”
“You told me very little.”
“You didn't need to know much,” Dustin responded. “I don't usually bring guys home.” Or girls, for that matter. Dustin had never introduced any of his dates to Cathy.
But Greg wasn't just a date, was he?
Dustin glanced at him, sitting there with his ridiculous clipboard.
No, Greg wasn't 'just' anything.
“She's practical,” Dustin said, focusing his gaze back on the road. “She doesn't do the big emotional displays. When I was a kid and I'd come home with a scraped knee, she wouldn't hug me. She'd clean it, bandage it, and ask me if I'd learned anything.” He paused. “It was different with Tyler.”
“Why?”
“Because Tyler cried and I didn't.” Dustin shrugged with his good shoulder. “I stopped crying when I was about eight. I figured out that if I didn't make a big deal about being hurt, things moved faster. You skip the worried-parent part and go straight to getting fixed and getting back outside.”
He could feel Greg processing this, probably filing it in his mental notebook of human behaviors.
“You trained her not to worry about you,” Greg said quietly.
Dustin's hand tightened on the wheel.
Was there any truth to Greg's words?
“I don't know about that,” Dustinsaid. He turned the radio on, not because he wanted music but because the silence was getting too full.
He got a country station. Some dude was singing about a truck.
“How much further?” Greg asked.
“About an hour.”
“Are you nervous?”
