V

Allen

Roy keeps saying he owes me a life debt, as is customary with his people. He’s fucking around, as he does, like when he talks about the planet he’s from. Planet Grebulon, Rigel 5, doesn’t matter. It changes every time he brings it up. His jokes are bordering on deeply uncomfortable.

But sometimes, in the miles where we don’t trade verbal hits, and the FM radio static cannot form itself into a coherent tune no matter which way we turn the dial, he’ll say something different. Soft and quietly grateful. Sometimes affectionate, but somberly so.  Like, “You don’t have to tell dad.” Or, “You’re my best friend, you know that?” Not the rapidfire I know him to speak, but his words nonetheless.

Words are failing us both. It’s stopped being odd when he lets the silence be silence, and started being comfortable. Knowing he’s still kicking, half asleep in the passenger’s seat. That he’s always had my back, in the ways he did. That I’ve got his, now.

There’s the confidence that he won’t tuck-and-roll out the door while I’m gunning 85 on the I-64, or something equally stupid.

Soon, it will be the I-70. We’re approaching St. Louis.

Roy is barely awake when he mumbles something.

“You say something, Roy?” I ask.

He repeats: “You’re my best friend.”

I laugh easy and say, “I know, dude. You’re my best friend.”

Roy says: “You didn’t let me finish.”

I keep my head mostly pointed down the road, but sneak a glance at him.

“Go on.”

“I dig that about you.”

I laugh, sheepish, and I say, “What? Wait, what exactly do you dig about me?”

He grins sleepily, eyelids half closed, and says, “That you ran track and didn’t join the fucking football team freshman year.”

A chuckle from both of us. “Who wouldn’t dig that?”

“I dig that you like the same shit I listen to.”

“Oh, come off it,” I say, “You and I both know KC has one good channel, what else would I listen to?.”

“You’re so nice,” he says. “To me.” Serious, now. Unsmiling.

I’m nodding, because I want to be nice to him. I hope I’m nice to him. I really hope so.

“Hey, Al?”

“Yeah?”

He cranks the passenger’s seat all the way back, as far back as it can angle, and he closes his eyes.

“D’you love me, too?”

VI

Like my father before me, I am an impulsive and self-violent wreck. It feels weirdly fitting that Allen is taking the helm most of the way back in my dad’s ‘78. Like, of course this is how it’d be. All those years of having my back, and he hasn’t let up. Not once.

I haven’t drank since that midday wake up at the Motel 6. It feels wrong to, like it’d be upsetting to him. Maybe one day, it’ll be upsetting to me too, but for now this is what I got. 

And I’m falling asleep in the passenger’s seat, trying to express something, something hot and unformed burning in my chest and threatening to spill out in another crisis event. Something intense, something that isn’t just love by itself, but a need for it to. That vulnerability. I’ve never told him I love him before. The way I do in this moment is the most ‘me’ way I could. 

When I hear his answer back, I hold it for dear life.

VII

My answer, in short:

I do.

We take turns on the last stretch, between St. Louis and Kansas City, around 45 minutes per turn, or so we guess.

When Roy and I finally stumble into the house, at 3AM, my dad’s woken up in the lounge. The living room lamp illuminates the scuffs on our faces, the dirt we didn’t get the chance to shower off. Grass stains. We’re awake enough to be grinning at eachother like we have some secrets, because we do.

When we stumble home, my dad is mad as hell.