Goose Run Gas was right on US 58, so it could get pretty busy because of those people who didn’t know there were other gas stations a couple miles in each direction. You know, ones that weren’t as run-down-looking at this one, where maybe the hot dog water had been changed this century and didn’t smell like ass. We had our regulars too, of course. Mostly people from town. Goose Run was a ways back from the highway; to get to the town itself you had to take the turnoff just to the west of the gas station. Most of the cars going past didn’t, and why would they? Goose Run had a population of only about a thousand people, and if you didn’t live there, there wasn’t much reason to go, so people kept driving despite the huge billboard Bobby had erected that declared Goose Run “A Honking Good Spot.”
Chase said it was blatant false advertising and someone should call the FTC, but Bobby was so proud of his slogan that he’d ordered a thousand matching postcards. We hadn’t sold one yet, and it was no wonder. They were terrible—and not in that “so ugly it’s cute” way. Just in the regular ugly way.
“Hey,” Chase called across the store. “You want a coffee?”
“Hell, no!”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m just goin’ out back to the stockroom.”
Half an hour later, after a flurry of people stopping for snacks and gas, I noticed he was still gone. He was probably taking a nap back there. I’d caught him doing it before, using a carton of chips as a pillow.
I looked up when the doors opened and a dark-haired guy walked in.
Matt.
Matt was the guy I’d given my number to a week or so ago when he’d been passing through. He hadn’t called me, though.
“Hey, stranger,” I said.
“Hey.” He gave me a smile that was half-shy and half-shamefaced. I guessed he was suddenly remembering he hadn’t called too. Which was no big thing, really. Wasn’t like I’d had my hopes pinned on him or anything, but I’d still been a little disappointed when I’d gotten nothing but radio silence because I’d thought he was cute the first time he’d come by, and I’d hoped he’d thought the same about me.
“You heading back home?” I asked him as he approached the counter, and he nodded, not quite meeting my gaze. “How was your trip?”
“It was…” He snorted. “It was whatever.” Clearly, some shit had gone down that he didn’t want to talk about. He shuffled his feet for a moment, and then his expression brightened. “Saw the Grand Canyon, though, so that was awesome.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it was incredible. It?—”
The doors opened again, and his blond friend came inside, grabbed some drinks, and joined him at the counter. “Hey,” the friend said. “Want anything else while we’re here?”
Matt smiled at him. “Hey. I was telling Danny about the Grand Canyon.”
“Oh yeah, it was awesome,” the blond guy said. He set the drinks on the counter and draped his arm over Matt’s shoulders. Matt leaned into the touch.
Okay, so that was how it was. Well, you know what? Good for them.
I congratulated them, and we talked for a while longer, even joking around for a bit about whether I was going to buy Matt his Mountain Dew or his new boyfriend was. They seemed like cool guys, and okay, it sucked a bit that nothing had come of giving Matt my number, but that was how flirting worked, right? I put out all the signals and absolutely nothing happened. At least, that was the pattern so far. But I wasn’t giving up. I was only on a losing streak of what—three or four years now? Things could turn around any day.
Any day now.
And it wasn’t as though I didn’t have any offers at all. I just had standards too, and I wasn’t quite desperate enough to follow any of the skeevy truckers into the bathroom when they gave me the nod. As the guy who had to clean the bathrooms, there was no way.
When Matt and his boyfriend left, I went and grabbed a bag of chips and ate them behind the counter, dreaming of what my life might look like if I got in my truck and just drove. It would probably look exactly as it did now since I’d be lucky if my truck made it five miles down the highway without shitting itself.
And yes, there was a certain amount of irony in the fact that I worked at a gas station but knew next to nothing about cars. If I did, I’d have fixed my truck’s oil leak by now. As it was, I kept promising myself I’d get around to looking at it next week and topping up the oil in the meantime.
I’d been getting to it next week for around a year now. It was like the yardwork—annoying, but it wasn’t like taking care of it was gonna change much, so I didn’t stress too much.
“Hey,” Chase said, strolling out of the stockroom with his hair plastered against one side of his head. Definitely napping then. “Cash just texted. That asshole next door came over and started hassling him about the mess in the yard and that tree branch.”
“Shit. What did Cash say to him?”
“What does Cash ever say to anyone? He slammed the door in his face and went back to bed.”
That sounded on brand for Chase’s twin. Cash didn’t speak much, but his facial expressions were a language all of their own, so I didn’t doubt that he’d managed to let Harlan know exactly how he felt about being woken up after a night shift. Or, y’know, he might have gone old school and flipped him the bird.
I frowned. Harlan had always been a cranky old bastard, but it seemed like lately he was getting worse. Or maybe we were? Fuck if I could tell. But he usually reserved his outbursts for when we were leaving the house. Knocking on the door was a new development and not a good one. Wilder’s theory was that things had gone downhill ever since Grandma had moved out a couple years back, and now instead of having a charming Southern lady with a sparkle in her eye for a neighbor, he had us assholes. Wilder might have been onto something.
