Special Delivery: Special Delivery, Book 1 (37 page)

He was Sam. He was Sunshine. He was Peaches. He was a hot twink fucked by two men at once. He was a male nursing student. He was gay. He was his mother’s son. He was a fatherless boy. He was his aunt and uncle’s awkward yoke to bear. He was Emma’s friend. He was everything, simply, and with no more complications.

He was, as they fucked him, the boy who got off on sucking straight cock in the school bathroom. He was the boy who liked comic books, especially stories with slight boys and men whose greatest attributes were cleverness and kindness. He was the boy who loved music. He was the boy who fucked deliverymen in the alley while he was supposed to be working. He was the boy who ran away. He was the boy who had been ogled and appreciated and sneered at and envied and seduced all the way across the mountains. He was smart, and he was a fool. He was handsome, and he was awkward too. He was kind, and he was cruel. He was an angel, and he was a whore. He was all these things.

As the two men fucked him, aroused by his body, his cries, his offering, his self, Sam realized, actually, it was all just fine.

He laughed, a deep, lusty, powerful sound which drew him out of the strange space and back into his body, where he wrapped himself inside the power and rode them as hard as they rode him. When his orgasm filled him, he cried out, half-bark, half-roar, and he came, bucking and shouting, across Randy’s chest. Then Randy came, and like the end of a string of dominos, Mitch came after. Then he pulled them both out of Sam and drew them all down to the mattress together, where they tangled one more time in an indistinguishable nest of gasping bodies.

“Fuck,” Randy whispered, when he was able.

Mitch grunted his agreement, and Sam smiled, resting in their arms as his body happily throbbed between them.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It felt stranger than Sam thought it would to leave Las Vegas.

It was odd enough to get into Randy’s truck before noon, let alone to be heading with Mitch and Randy to what was work in one way or another for both of them. It was awkward to no longer be their third but a third wheel again as Randy clocked in and Mitch checked Blue over. Sam ended up sitting in a dingy lounge near the repair garage, surfing through his phone, where, finally, he started dealing with the reality of going home.

He texted Emma to let her know he would be home sometime on Wednesday, but that he’d call her sometime on Thursday, unless things went really bad with his aunt and uncle and he needed a place to stay for the night. He emailed Delia to say he was coming home and that he wanted to talk about where they had left things, and where they would go from here. He had no idea where that would be, but he figured he had fifteen hundred miles to find an answer.

He texted Darin and told him to get over himself, because he was done with pizza boxes forever. He didn’t text Keith—he wanted to ignore that bastard in person.

He called his advisor at college and asked her some questions, and he called the financial aid office and asked them a few more. He did a search on Craigslist for jobs. He found a few that surprised him, and while he didn’t call any of the numbers, he took notes. Returning to Craigslist, he checked for apartments in Middleton, cringing at the prices, but he searched the listings anyway, seriously considering them. Then he got out a pen and paper and made some lists, of what he owed, of what he had and what he could get rid of.

Then, with all this swimming in his head, he played Sheep Launcher until Randy came and asked him if he wanted to go to lunch.

“Where’s Mitch?” Sam asked, shouldering his pack and tucking his phone away.

“Supervising the load. He said he’d try to catch up.” Randy pointed at a building across the road. “Mexican sound okay?”

Sam remembered Los Dos Amigos, so long ago. “It sounds great.”

The food was not even close to as good as Los Dos, but it was hot, and it was food. Of course, Sam wasn’t hungry at all.

“You doing okay?” Randy asked.

Sam shrugged. “It’s weird to be going.”

Randy wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned back in his chair. “I never imagined I’d be sitting here with you, that day I met you.” Randy’s smile was wicked but wry. “I was trying so hard to get rid of you.”

Sam let out a shaky breath. “Well, give me another hour.”

“That’s the trouble. Now I want you to stay.” Randy squeezed Sam’s hand. “Thank you, Sam.”

Sam hadn’t expected this. “For what?”

“Bringing Mitch here. He wouldn’t have come, otherwise. Or, if he had, he’d have ignored me again. You were our big do-over, and it’d be nice to think we got it right because we’re older and wiser, but we got it right because of you.” He picked up Sam’s hand and kissed it. “So, thank you for giving me back my best friend.”

Sam withdrew his hand and poked at his taco. “So it will be old times, huh, when he comes back to town? The two of you, partying?” He poked the taco so hard he made a hole. “The three of you?”

“You honestly think after all this, after everything I
just said
, that he’s going to go out and find another Sam? Because that’s the bar now, you know.
You.
” Randy kicked him lightly under the table. “I know you’re young, but don’t be an idiot. Don’t let him go.”

“Randy, don’t.” Sam pushed his tray away.

“I haven’t been around quite as many blocks as Mitch, but I know the real thing when I see it. Do not fuck this up.”

“It’s not that.” Sam felt sick, and he wished he hadn’t eaten anything. He rubbed at his face and slid his fingers into his hair. “I can’t describe it. Please. Just let it go.”

Randy pushed an envelope across the table. “Here. My number’s in there too, and my email, and my address, the whole lot. Call if you need anything from Uncle Randy. Or if you’re ever in Vegas and you need somewhere to stay, or if you need a fuck, say the word.”

Sam opened the envelope and looked accusingly at Randy. “What the fuck is this?”

“Your two hundred.” His eyes twinkled. “Every penny earned.”

Sam fingered through the bills. “There’s more here than two hundred.”

“Have to take care of the college boy.” Randy nudged Sam’s tray at him. “Go on. Eat. Milk that youthful metabolism while you can.”

Sam did eat, most of it anyway, and when Mitch never did turn up, they took takeout to him. Sam snagged a few bottles of Bohemia for later too. They found Mitch sitting in the cab of Old Blue, charts spread out over his lap and his cell phone in his hand.

“Sunshine,” he said, distracted as he saw them walk up, “can I borrow your phone? I need to check something, and the ’net is down.”

Sam handed it to him, then turned to Randy. He realized this was goodbye, right now, and that he didn’t know what to say. Randy smiled, a rueful, Randy smile, and took Sam warmly in his arms.

“Goodbye, Peaches.” Randy kissed Sam gently on the cheek and slapped Mitch on the leg. When Mitch didn’t pay attention, he slugged him in the arm.

“Hey.” Mitch glared down at him.

“I’m heading to work, Old Man. Am I going to hear from you in less than two years?”

Mitch put his clipboard and Sam’s phone down and hopped out of the truck. He regarded Randy gruffly for a second before taking the other man in his arms. “I’ll call you.”

“You’d better,” Randy said, and in unison, they kissed one another on the cheek.

Randy squeezed Sam’s hand, and then he was gone.

In another twenty minutes, Sam and Mitch were too.

Sam set up some music and settled in his seat, tucking his feet on the cushion and hugging his knees to his chest, watching the desert expand before him. They took the same road they had to Zion, but it was different riding in a rig, and where they would have turned off to go to the park, they stayed on the interstate instead.

Utah was quietly, desolately beautiful, but Sam missed the fat, leafy trees of home. Even when they entered national forests and he saw grass and scruff here and there, he thought of Iowa, of the green cornfields and pastures, and the well-manicured lawns of Cherry Hill Estates, and he missed them. Utah was beautiful, but it was someone else’s beautiful. Even so, when Mitch stopped at a scenic overlook for him to get a better view, Sam scattered more of his mother’s ashes.

They drove all the way through Utah that day into Colorado, into the western plains, stopping for the night in Grand Junction. Mitch checked fluids again and refueled, and took quite a bit of time with the brakes. They ate at the truck stop restaurant, their conversation subdued and slightly sad. In the truck, Sam surprised him with the Bohemia, which he accepted with a smile and a kiss, and settled Sam beside him on the bed as he surfed mindlessly through the satellite television, never landing on anything at all.

They made quiet, achingly tender love and slept in one another’s arms. But once again, when Sam woke in the morning, they were already on the road.

Mitch was more talkative the next day, pointing out landmarks and interesting things about the land they passed, particularly when they went through Glenwood Canyon. He told Sam about the natural hot springs and lamented they wouldn’t have time to enjoy them. He told Sam about the Eisenhower Tunnel, and had him look up Loveland Pass on the map, and did his best to illustrate what a wonder and boon the tunnel was. He explained the engineering of I-70 through the mountains, of how it was the last of the interstate system completed, and how hard they’d worked not to disrupt the landscape.

“You like Colorado, don’t you,” Sam said, after one of the stories.

Mitch shrugged. “I like a lot of places. We live in this huge country with so many climates, so many different cultures, so much different everything. I’ve been driving it over ten years and I haven’t seen it all, not even close. I wish I could get gigs in some of the more out-of-the-way areas, but I don’t have networks there yet. I suppose I should go and make them. I know I’ll die not seeing it all, but I want to do my best to try.”

It was such a Mitch answer, but Sam looked into that life with sadness, because much as he wanted to have that experience too, he couldn’t see a way to be a part of it without being Mitch’s special delivery forever. “So nowhere is home to you, then?”

Mitch rubbed his thumb along the wheel for a second before answering. “Home isn’t a place for me.”

He seemed to be waiting for something, but Sam didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that, so he settled in and watched the mountains go by.

They stopped in Vail, and Sam scattered more ashes, though not much. There weren’t many left. He felt sad, even though he was happy he’d taken her along and spread her everywhere, because he knew she’d rather have taken a trip across the West than sit forever on Aunt Delia’s shelf. But he realized she wouldn’t ever sit on that shelf, not anymore. She was everywhere now, all over the whole west, and she was in so many rivers and flowers and valleys that she’d keep going, and going and going. The woman who had spent so much of her life tied down, by her situation or by her disease, would never be tied down again. Blinking back tears, Sam tipped the little which remained of her into the rainbow glass chest, and as the secret plan formed inside his mind, it filled him with joy and hope and sorrow all at once.

By afternoon they were in Denver. They didn’t stop, though, until Sterling, and they weren’t there for long. They pushed on, across the flat of eastern Colorado to the western edge of Nebraska, where the Platte River greeted them once again, and where oaks and ash and maples bowed over its banks.

That night Mitch parked them at a rest stop, not in a town, and he stopped early. He led Sam to a picnic table, which he decorated with a cloth—one of the spare sheets—and to Sam’s surprise and delight, prepared for him a barbeque of steaks, potatoes, and at the end, roasted marshmallows, for which he had graham crackers and chocolate bars to make s’mores, though they ate several of the marshmallows simply plain.

Mitch popped another marshmallow in Sam’s mouth. “I would have made tamales, but you have to have a kitchen for that.”

“It was lovely.” Sam kissed him in thanks.

They sat at the picnic table a long time, watching the sun set over the river. They were far from the parking lot, where the cars and trucks came and went, and in that square of space, they created their own world. When night fell and the mosquitoes came out, Mitch fetched a blanket and wrapped them together in it, and when that wasn’t enough, he brought out a can of bug spray. He also produced a bottle of sparkling wine.

“I wanted you to have a good memory of our last night,” he said when Sam commented on the extravagance of it all.

This saddened Sam, and he sank deeper into Mitch’s arms.
I will miss you, so much.
He wanted to say it, but he couldn’t. He could hardly say anything. Randy’s admonitions echoed loudly in his ears, but Sam was more tongue-tied now than at the restaurant. He thought of Mitch’s arms, so warm and steady wrapped around him. He didn’t want to leave them, even for a minute.

He started to shake.

Mitch fumbled in his pocket before taking Sam back into his arms, pressing kisses into his hair. “Sam, you have to tell me what you want.”

To stay with you. To never go home. To never finish school, to never look back, to have this moment go on forever.
But those thoughts felt so childish, so wrong, even though he knew nothing about leaving Mitch was right. “I don’t know.” He buried his face in Mitch’s shirt, then swallowed again. “You. I want you.”