He also wanted to get there before Dustin.
At that, he failed.
Dustin's truck was already parked on a frontage road that ran parallel to the interstate, pulled onto the gravel shoulder where a shallow embankment gave a clear view of the highway below. He was sitting on the tailgate with his legs dangling, a pair of binoculars around his neck and a gas station coffee in his hand.
He spotted Greg immediately.
“You're early,” Dustin called.
“You're earlier.”
“I've been here since noon.” He took a sip of his coffeelike this was a normal way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. “Did you know this interchange is one of the worst bottlenecks in the state? Three interstates converge about a mile south of here. Traffic stacks up every day around four thirty when the merge lanes back up.”
Greg stared at him. “How do you know that?”
Dustin gave a little shrug. “You can find almost anything on the internet if you know where to look.” He raised the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the highway. “If it's going to be a pileup, this is where it'll happen.”
Again and again, this mortal fascinated Greg.
Dustin had done research. He'd driven here from Boulder and staked out a stretch of interstate like it was a jump site, calculating the variables, mapping out the danger zones. This must be the same dedication he usually put into hurling himself off cliffs, except now it was turned toward keeping a stranger alive.
“You can't be here,” Greg said, only because he felt like he needed to say it, not because he thought Dustin would heed his words.
He was long past thinkingthat.
“I'm not going anywhere,” Dustin responded.
Of course.
Greg stood beside the truck, the afternoon sun warm on his face.
He should say something about last night. About the kiss, about the wall, about the way he'd spilled his heart out on the asphalt afterward.This can't happen. I wasn't made for this.
Greg said nothing.
Everything he'd told Dustin the day before was still true.
And yet here they were again. Side by side. As ifgravity kept dragging them into the same orbit regardless of what Greg decided about it.
“Coffee?” Dustin offered.
“No.”
“Good call. It's terrible.”
“Then why are you drinking it?”
“Because it's coffee and I've been here for three hours.” He took another sip. “You going to stand there or you going to sit?”
Greg sat.
Close to Dustin.
He didn't know why. Or he did, and he wasn't ready to look at it directly.
They watched the interstate in silence. Greg held his clipboard in his lap. Dustin held his binoculars. Slowly, the traffic thickened.
At 4:00, the flow started to slow where the interchange lanes converged, just like Dustin had predicted.
