“Hey, where you guys at?” Rogers called. He had changed from warmups and an old pair of hightops into shorts and sandals and was wandering down the hall that led to the living area from his bedroom.

“Yo,” Brady’s voice returned from the den.

Rogers passed beneath a timbered archway and stepped down into the sunken room. Brady and Gunnar were hunched over a glowing screen. They bickered playfully as they searched through audio files on the network. Gunnar was at the controls. His right hand moved over the interface and his finger tapped at the touch screen. Suddenly he straightened and both arms shot into the air.

The result was anticlimactic. Opening strains of an ancient rock and roll anthem issued from hidden speakers, barely audible. Gunnar’s pose went from victorious to crestfallen and his hands fell to his sides, palms out, and his head turned left and right as if he was looking to a crowd for answers. He rebounded quickly, and his finger tapped the screen and the volume grew louder and again he tapped and the music grew louder still. He stopped and turned and locked eyes with Rogers.

“You know, this would be a helluva lot easier if you’d just give me access,” he said. “Ten seconds, all it would take. Serious. Just sayin’.”

Rogers shook his head. His was the only key that would sync.

Gunnar turned back to the screen and slid a finger across it and the volume of the music increased dramatically. His head bobbed on his thick neck and his body gyrated as he stepped away from the display.

“Oh, yeah!” Gunnar shouted in time with the vocals. He shook his hips, a snarl on his lips, and he danced provocatively toward Rogers. He mumbled lyrics as he writhed.

“Nah, nah…I play the game when it’s goin’ my way, and there’s nuthin’ like a party when it’s kickin into gear. Gettin’ ready for a party tonight, I’m getting’ ready to cruise.”

Scott stepped into the room. Gunnar had Rogers pinned against a modern leather sofa and was grinding himself against his taller friend. He shook his head and blinked in disgust.

“Ba-by!” Vind yelled, enunciating each syllable.

“Alright, who let him touch that fuckin’ thing?” Scotty asked. He surveyed the room. “You know his taste in music is like his taste in chicks. Dude don’t do nuthin’ that ain’t already been dead for thirty years.”

“They’re called classics, you whelp,” Gunnar fired back.

Rogers slipped from his friend’s grasp and the redhead turned his attention on Ewell. He continued his dancing spastically as he approached.

“Plus, people partied way harder back in the day, man,” he lectured. “Look it up. So if my man says we’re gonna have a party tonight, we’re gonna party, man. Now what did you do with my beer, you overgrown, underage mooch?”

Scott nodded in the direction of the kitchen and licked a long skinny finger.

“I put it in the fridge next to what is left of that chocolate.” He looked at Rogers and his eyebrows went up and down. “Shit was good too, bro. The peasants are forever grateful.”

Rogers rolled his eyes and tried to shoulder past Brady. Yargus shoved him into the leather sofa. He fought his way to the interface and tapped the screen with a fingertip and suddenly the music was playing outside. Gunnar was grinding his pelvis against one of Scott Ewell’s impossibly long legs.

Suddenly the redhead froze. He pointed a fat finger at the French doors that opened onto the expansive wooden patio that bordered the house.

“Fire up that grill, bitch!” he exclaimed, knocking Ewell aside with one beefy forearm. “And cook me a chicken pot pie.” 

*******

Rogers was in the garage. The Porsche was down off the lift and Gunnar was standing beside it. Rogers had pulled back the cover and Gunnar was chattering about his new Nissan and how with this part and that it would keep up with the RSR. Rogers laughed in all the right spots but his heart wasn’t in it. The gleaming race car reminded him of the big empty hole inside and pretending otherwise only made it worse. Besides, there was no way the GT-R would ever touch the Porsche. Not with Gunnar behind the wheel.

They went out the garage door and Rogers tapped his link and the door began to close as they stepped into the open. He drew a deep breath. The fresh air helped clear his mind. A strange feeling, as if he had forgotten something terribly important, swept over him. Not getting enough sleep. Too many dreams. Need to focus.

They crossed the slab of blacktop that spanned the space between the garage and house. More people had arrived, and they slipped between the assortment of parked cars and trucks. A party in these parts attracted most of the population between the ages of fifteen and thirty, and the ones at the Dunn place this summer, the first of their kind, were particularly well attended. Cars would soon cover the paved oval and the overflow would stretch down the drive. Good thing school was starting soon. This scene has been repeated too many times already.

He squeezed past a blue Honda compact. Like many of the assembled vehicles, it was an older model, a gas burner, efficient enough to still be economical to operate. For a lot of the people around here, fill-ups were easier to finance than upgrading to an electric. A decal across the car’s rear window promoted Western Montana College in bold type. Kristin’s car, Rogers mused. Hubcap will be in rare form.

Gunnar jabbered as they walked but Rogers was barely listening. He pulled his link from his pocket and checked it. A message from Laura. She would be there soon. It was going to be the last time he would see her.

Getting to be a lot of that.

The sun had set but the day’s heat still lingered. People milled around the centerpiece of the wooden patio, the arbored pavilion that housed the outdoor kitchen and the great iron grill and smoker that Josh Brown had helped build and the towering form of Scott Ewell standing before it. Smoke from smoldering charcoal and burnt fat swirled above the grill and drifted past his dirty blond crew cut. His arms flailed like a dying maestro as he tended venison burgers and chicken parts that cooked over flickering flames. He held a brown bottle of ale in one hand and shiny metal tongs in the other. A young girl stood close by, swaying her hips to the music, laughing at his antics.

He raised the tongs and they almost reached his mouth before he realized his mistake. He lowered them and drank instead from the bottle in his other hand, wiping thick lips wet with foam across the back of it. He and the girl traded glances. They both giggled.

“Hey, Chef Boy-are-thee,” Gunnar called.

He and Rogers approached the grill.

“You better not have drunk all of my beer.”

The teenaged giant whirled to face the newcomers. There was a feigned look of mania in his eyes. The tongs in his hand were pointed at Gunnar like a rapier.

“No brew for you,” he said, swelling to the full extent of his six feet eight inches. He stared at Gunnar for a moment and snapped the tongs together repeatedly like the jaws of a cornered animal. He gave a crazy cackling laugh and turned back to the grill.

Gunnar turned to Rogers with a skeptical look. Rogers shrugged. A girl, short, pretty, and buxom, went by them protesting loudly, carried against her will. She struggled to free herself but Josh Brown and another boy held her tight, one at the shoulders and the other at the knees. The pair packed her to the edge of the pool and paused dramatically before tossing her in.

“Nice,” Gunnar said. He had a huge grin and he nudged Rogers with an elbow. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Need a beer, dude?”

“Nah,” Rogers answered. To qualify, he added, “not yet.”

Gunnar shrugged and moved off in search of a fresh drink. He called out greetings as he pushed through the crowd. Josh and his accomplice had helped the girl from the pool and she stood on the flagstone surrounding it with an unhappy look on her otherwise attractive face. Water that dripped from her clothes and fed puddles at her feet made her strangely appealing.

She peeled a sodden mat of thick dark hair from her cheek and flipped it over her shoulder. Wet cotton clung to her full breasts. She slapped Brown with an open palm when he reached for them and hurled obscenities at the two conspirators as they ogled her with indifference.

“Hey hero,” Brown called to Rogers when he saw that he was watching them. Josh was thoroughly enjoying himself and wanted to call even more attention to his antics. “You got anything sexy this hooker can wear? Maybe then she’ll stop complaining and put out.”

“Yeah, sure,” Rogers replied. He plucked a towel from the pile stacked neatly in a cubby nearby and offered it to her. She mopped at her sopping face. “Come on, Kristin.”

She moved to his side. He was a gentleman and he took her by the hand and led her through a twirl as if they were dancing and she was his partner. She came around to face him and he held her fingers lightly at arms’ length and bowed. His opposite arm gestured towards the open patio doors. A hint of red appeared beneath the wet pale skin of her cheek. Over her shoulder, she scowled at Brown.

“That’s how you treat a lady,” she said.

“If you see one, let me know. I got something for her,” replied Brown and he grabbed himself.

They turned and he led her inside and they strolled hand in hand through the house. She was quiet and Rogers smiled. He knew her thoughts. She hesitated before his bedroom door but he led her on, to the guest room, and unlatched the door with his free hand and shoved it wide.

At the entryway they parted and Rogers crossed the room and opened the shutters of a large closet. The girl stopped just inside the door. He noticed her hesitation and turned.

“There’s all kinds of stuff in there. T-shirts, shorts, hoodies. Feel free,” he said, pointing.

“Rogers?”

She paused.

“How come you never, like, tried to hook up with me?”

“Oh, you know. I’m seeing Laura.” He was handsome and had an incredibly disarming smile and he flashed it at her. “Besides, I kinda liked your sister.”

“Really?”

“Freshman year, maybe. That was a long time ago.”

He tried to cut the line, let her loose into the current like the bull trout that Lee Harper and Brady Yargus taught him should only be caught on dry flies because that was the hardest way to do it. He wished one of those two was here now. They’d be happy to take this fish off his hook.

Kristin was staring at him. Her eyes flitted to the bed.

“Well,” she purred. “I’m here now. How ‘bout the next best thing?”

A wisp of desire stirred within Rogers. He took a breath and let it slip away. Even if he was the kind to fool around with a girl at a party, it certainly wouldn’t be one like Kristen. She had been with Brady and Scott Ewell both, and those were only the two he knew about.

“You’re dripping on the carpet,” he said.

She was. She had forgotten the incident at the pool as soon as Rogers took her hand and now she remembered and was embarrassed. She ducked past him into the closet and rummaged through the hanging clothes.

“What you got in here?”

“You know. Just old stuff I don’t wear. Help yourself.”

Distance, he remembered. He moved toward the exit.

“Bathroom is through that door over there. See you outside.”

“Thanks,” she said without turning around. She buried herself among the hanging clothes.

He retraced his steps and returned to the blaring music, the swirling barbecue smoke, the clamoring voices. More people had arrived. They crowded the pavilion and spilled onto the stone patio. He knew most of and they all knew him but only a select few he considered his friends. The entire scene made him long to escape.

This was the last time.