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Eddie was the one who wanted to go out in the first place.
But that was before the games, in his defense. That had been a different Eddie— an Eddie who was fresh off of a boring flight, after a rough few months and a rough few months before that and come to think of it, a rougher few months before that. Not that it’s been all bad, but the point was that Eddie could use a break. Nashville had felt like the perfect opportunity for that, a chance to go out with his best friend and see a new place and not think too hard or too much for once. Eat something good, get a little buzz, watch Buck make a fool of himself. Just the two of them in a bright new place with new things to see and no real pressure.
Now, he sort of feels like he’s had enough.
He’s sitting at a long oak bar with a polished sheen on its surface, watching a droplet of condensation trace a path over the glass of the beer he’s almost finished with. There’s a cowboy hat on his head and Buck is looking ridiculously cheesy in one of his own, covered in disco ball tiles and sparkling every time he moves his head. He’s been having a good time tonight, mostly. He’s just—
It’s crowded here. It’s not just him and Buck anymore. The games are over and the adrenaline has faded. He’s a little annoyed, even now, by what happened with the team from the 113. Buck is mostly smug about it, but Eddie is bothered down a little deeper thinking about how incompetent they’d been. He can’t entirely shake it. He’s starting to realize that maybe Los Angeles Eddie and Nashville Eddie are really the same Eddie, overall.
He watches as one of the blondes from the stands— whose name Eddie is sure he was told, but for the life of him he can’t remember what it is— eyes Buck down the bar and refrains from rolling his eyes. It doesn’t bother him; he’s long-since used to watching people of all ages fall all over Buck, and he can’t even really blame them. Eddie is aware that Buck is like that. He deserves the attention, too, as it turns out. He’s the kind of person that you look at, disco ball hat or otherwise.
The people who eye Buck like that don’t really know him, though. Not like Eddie does. They don’t get the version of him who gets mad too easily if he hasn’t eaten enough or who sleeps starfished and hogging the blankets at the same time, or who is quick to jump to conclusions, easy to hurt and tender. They don’t get the Buck who sings really badly in the shower or the one who limps on his bad days or the one who brightens up at the sight of a caterpillar or the one who always eats the first pancake because he says it’s the sacrificial one and he wants to be sure whomever he’s cooking for gets the good ones.
These are the versions of Buck that Eddie gets. The one who is his best friend. He’s secure in that, has been for a long, long time. Nobody else will ever have the place that he and Christopher have, any more than someone else could replace Maddie in his life or Bobby in his memory. Even his own actual father can’t come close.
The eye-rolling isn’t about that. It’s just that the whole thing is a little predictable and Eddie is on his best days a little judgemental.
It’s still early, for all intents and purposes. Most of the crowd is still here, not just the one who’s taken up residence at the end of the bar. Eddie catches her eye for a quick second and then looks away. The last thing he wants is for her to set her sights on him the way she’s been looking at Buck.
He lifts the glass bottle to his mouth and downs the last of the beer, tilting his head back and letting it wash down his throat. It hits the bartop with a soft clink and Buck looks over, smiling softly.
“You ready to call it?” he asks.
Eddie waves him off. “You stay,” he says. Buck has that slightly flushed look about him, a relaxed set to his shoulders. “You seem like you’re having fun.”
Buck frowns a little at that. “You’re leaving though?”
“Yeah,” Eddie nods, then flashes Buck a smile, the kind he knows will be comforting to him because it really is genuine. Eddie’s not playing at anything here. “I’m beat, man. The bull got the better of me.”
Buck snorts lightly, ducking his head, and Eddie grins brighter.
“Don’t laugh at me,” he warns. “I did okay.”
Buck nods. “Six seconds isn’t bad,” he concedes.
Eddie pats him on the shoulder. “Reigning champion can’t leave early,” he says, and Buck glows with the praise— his weak spot, always.
He still hesitates, though. He still sweeps his blue eyes over Eddie like he’s checking something, double-checking.
“You sure you’re good?” he asks. “I can head back with you.”
“Nah,” Eddie assures him. “I’m good, Buck, really. You have fun, I’ll catch up with you back at the hotel. Just want a little quiet.”
Buck gives in, then. It’s present on his face in the way that his smile turns easier. “So much for the honky tonks, huh?”
“Hey,” Eddie laughs, getting up and patting over his pockets, pure habit that he knows makes him look Dad-like and older than he is, but which comes naturally to him. “It hasn’t exactly gone well for us so far.”
Buck smiles, eyes sparkling. “I’ll try to do better tonight,” he says, leaning forward and tipping his hat in Eddie’s direction. On just about anybody else, it would look ridiculous— or, as Christopher would call it, cringe. Like many other things, it manages to be endearing on Buck.
“Goodnight, Buck,” Eddie laughs, tapping his shoulder again before slipping past him, cash on the bar and his hands in his pockets as Buck’s soft goodnight reaches after him.
It’s a nice night, starless but mild, and though the street is busy it’s still a reprieve from the body heat and noise inside the bar. He takes a slow breath and walks at an easy pace back to the nearby hotel, listening to the twang that spills out of every open doorway and pausing for crosswalks. He and Buck get a lot of shit for being attached at the hip, and Eddie can understand why. In the same way that on their first night here two days ago, neither of them had considered doing anything without the other, he feels vaguely aimless now with a few hours at his disposal to occupy himself alone while Buck soaks in the attention at the bar.
He’s glad that Buck is loosening up. He stands by what he’d said at first— that he thought Buck needed this. If he were being really truthful, he’d have to admit that it was the biggest reason behind his push to get them out of the hotel. He thinks that it’s become sort of second nature for the both of them, acting out of each other’s best interest. There’s nothing so bad about that, though. About having each other’s backs.
Back in the hotel room, Eddie showers, in and out of the hot spray just to get the evening off of him. He swaps his clothes for something more comfortable— sweats and one of his older LAFD t-shirts, one that has a small hole right around the collar that makes it unfit to wear on duty anymore. He tugs it over his bare shoulders and only then notices that it hangs loose on him, a strong indication that it had actually originally belonged to Buck.
Having lived together for several months last year, the LAFD t-shirts were impossible to keep straight. They all looked identical, the size their only defining feature. More than once, Buck had gotten halfway into one before realizing it was too small for him and therefore definitely belonged to Eddie. The other way around, however, works just fine. Eddie leaves it on— if it’s been living in his house long enough to get packed into his duffel bag, Buck won’t be missing it anyway.
He orders room service, and kind of wishes that Buck were here for this. He kind of always does, if he’s honest. Nashville hot chicken, as it turns out, is actually really good, even from a room service menu, and he feels a little bad that Buck is missing out on enjoying it with him.
After he’s eaten, he flops down onto the bed, leaning back and resting tired muscles against the pile of soft downy pillows. He’s not really in the mood to do anything, but it’s definitely too early to sleep. He unlocks his phone, navigating past the picture of himself and Chris taken by Buck last summer and moves through his messy home screen. He never bothers to organize or move his apps, no matter how many times Chris rags on him for it and tells him that it makes him seem old. The seldom-used Instagram app is on his third page and he taps it now.
Earlier, when they were all gathered at the 113’s firehouse, everyone had exchanged Instagrams. Eddie had offered his up even though he almost never uses it, and now he figures that if he wants to be polite with their new…
Well, he wouldn’t call them friends.
But whatever they are, he wants to keep up good relations. He doesn’t want them thinking bad of him or of the 118, and following them back on an app that he never opens anyway is not exactly a hardship.
The first post on his feed is from Christopher. Eddie had conceded to his having an Instagram account shortly after they returned from Texas— not because he’s a pushover, but because he could recognize that the trust in him was something that Chris desperately needed after spending several months with Eddie’s parents. They don’t often talk about the particulars of the experience, but it’s a shared one, so Eddie is pretty sure he can fill in the blanks.
It’s a picture that Eddie can recognize as being taken in Hen and Karen’s living room, of a video game controller and two pairs of almost identical sneakers— Christopher’s and Denny’s, presumably. There’s no caption, just Denny’s tag in place of it. Eddie doesn’t pretend to understand why this is a cool thing to post on social media, but it does have almost a hundred likes, so there must be something that he’s missing. He doesn’t like it himself, sure that it would earn him a verbal lashing at worst and an eyeroll at best.
Instead, he opens his notifications and scrolls quickly through the list of people who have followed him. He recognizes variations on the names of most of the 113, and a couple of others who’d been present at the time, and he taps through and follows them all back in quick succession.
After that, they fill the homepage of the app, their profile pictures appearing in little circles lit with colored rings at the top of the screen. Eddie crosses one ankle over the other and starts tapping through them, glancing at various pictures from the games and from this evening until he catches— on one of the girls’ stories— a flash of silver that pulls his attention.
He lifts his thumb off the screen as Buck comes into focus in the corner of the screen. The video was taken at the bar that Eddie just left not that long ago, and posted only a matter of two minutes ago according to the little timestamp at the top of the screen. In it, someone that he doesn’t recognize is doing a silly-looking dance in the foreground. But behind that, there’s Buck.
He’s sitting at a table now, disco hat still firmly on his head, and he’s gesturing animatedly. Eddie hits the volume button on his phone, just a little curious about what Buck is ranting on to a giggling audience, and in the very same instant he hears his own name like a jolt to the center of his chest.
“— so Eddie and I went to the game,” Buck is saying, his eyes wide and bright. He’s in the edge of the frame, so Eddie can’t see who he’s speaking to, but he clearly has their attention. “And on the way there— okay, this was kind of my fault, but we got a boot on the tire and anyway, that part doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was so sure we were going to be late or even just miss the whole thing, but Eddie—”
Buck gives his head a shake, and there’s a look on his face that can only be described as pure, unadulterated admiration. Eddie feels his cheeks get warm. Buck speaks like he’s told this story before, probably more than once. Eddie has never heard him repeat it, ever.
“Eddie got that thing off of there in five minutes or less!” he declares, his palm flat on the table in front of him as he grins. He’s more tipsy now than he’d been when Eddie left him, and his smile is incandescent. “Can you believe that? Probably not, because you don’t know Eddie, but— man. It’s how he is, you know?” He shrugs, like whatever audience he’s speaking to should just get it, and then brightens. “It makes sense, though!” he adds, speaking quickly and still grinning. “Did you know he has a Silver—”
The video ends very abruptly, but Eddie doesn’t need to see it to know how that sentence was going to end.
His screen flicks to the next slide on the same person’s story and before Eddie can think about what he’s doing, he taps back and the video starts to play again.
“— so Eddie and I went to the game.”
He sits there and watches the whole thing, all the way up to did you know he has a Silver—
And then he taps back again. Then again, then again, then again. He watches Buck’s face light up at the mention of him. He listens to the way he says it, the inflection that comes with a familiar story you’ve told over and over again. He taps back over and over and watches Buck gesticulate wildly, his disco ball hat askew on his curls.
At some point, Eddie gets stuck on one part in particular.
It’s how he is, you know? Man. It’s how he is, you know? It’s how he is, you know.
This person— these people— they don’t know at all. But Buck does. He knows Eddie so well that he almost can’t imagine how anyone else might not. Eddie’s existence, the way that he is, is so intrinsic to Buck’s understanding of the world that he can meet perfect strangers and forget that they don’t know Eddie like he does.
Something in Eddie breaks open, somewhere between the fifth or sixth or seventh time he loops the video.
Or maybe something broke open a long time ago. Maybe it broke when they crossed the California state line together to come here just the two of them; or when Eddie laid Buck’s snickerdoodles on the ofrenda in his living room; or when Bobby died and Buck met him at the airport and they said nothing as they held each other tightly and it felt good, and that felt like a betrayal.
Maybe something broke open on the street outside his house with a drizzling heaviness in the air, Eddie leaving for Texas and Buck letting him go.
Maybe it’s been broken open, letting light in, since the moment he met Evan Buckley. A day in September, going on eight years ago now, that would change Eddie’s life forever. Maybe this particular crack has, in a way, been with Eddie all his life. Maybe it’s not a crack at all, but just a part of his makeup, something that he brought into the world with him on a June day in El Paso.
Whatever it is, however long it’s been there, Eddie is only seeing it now. It’s like— like— he can’t remember the word for that, the thing people do when something breaks and they put it back together with gold filling. Buck, of course, had been the one to tell him about it. Years ago now, after Eddie had broken a mug that Chris gave him. He’s sentimental like that, though he thinks maybe only Buck knows this about him.
He clicks back through and watches the video again, and this time he pauses long enough to feel it. That heart-racing, over the fence, soaring feeling he gets. He knows it. He feels it all the time. He’s been feeling it for so long that he hasn’t ever thought about slowing it down and playing it back and turning it over to consider what it is.
All of a sudden, it feels monumental. All of a sudden, it all makes sense to Eddie. It’s Buck. Maybe it’s always been Buck. Maybe he’s been so hung up trying to hide from what it would mean about his understanding of himself to recognize that it doesn’t matter so much, anyway. Because he could be gay— and maybe he is, and maybe he needs to think that through too— but at the center of that, there will still be this feeling. This Buck-specific thing.
He closes his phone, cutting Buck off mid-sentence for the dozenth time or so.
And then he picks it up again, checking the time, and FaceTimes Christopher, who answers halfway through the fourth ring, his face filling the screen.
“Hey, Dad,” he says. “Did you win?”
Eddie chuckles, the breath he hadn’t known he was holding flooding his lungs like springtime at the sound of Christopher’s voice.
“Kind of,” he says. “We accepted a tie.”
Chris shuffles around, a staticky sound and a moment of blurred connection before he comes back into focus, rolling his eyes. “That’s lame,” he asserts.
“It’s good sportsmanship,” Eddie corrects lightly. “This wasn’t about winning, anyway.”
Chris grins, looking briefly young again. “No mercy,” he says, a reminder.
“Some mercy,” Eddie laughs.
“What does Buck think?” Chris asks, a note of skepticism in his voice.
Eddie flickers back to the arena, to locking eyes with Buck as they considered the proposition of their competitors, to the easy way that they had been able to communicate without so much as a word spoken aloud to each other.
“He came around on the idea,” Eddie replies. His palms begin to sweat as his pulse kicks up in his chest. “But speaking of Buck, mijo,” he says.
“What?” Christopher asks cautiously. “He’s not hurt, is he?”
“No,” Eddie assures him. “No, no, he’s— actually, he beat everybody’s record on the mechanical bull tonight. Eight second ride.”
Christopher scrutinizes him. “Dad,” he says, audibly disappointed. “You’re from Texas.”
Eddie laughs. “No, I know,” he agrees. “I’ll carry my shame home to California.”
Home. California. The truth of it warms him, bolsters him, the same way that seeing Christopher does. He takes a grounding breath.
“At least if someone else had to win, it was Buck,” Chris concedes.
And isn’t that just the summation of the whole thing, in a way?
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. “So— um, do you have a minute to talk?”
“Denny’s in the shower,” Chris shrugs. Then he looks more carefully at Eddie, that sort of knowingness on his face that’s been there since he was much too little for it, always so smart and so in touch with his world in ways that were sometimes hard for Eddie to fathom. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. “I just— um, I guess I wanted to run something by you. I was thinking, you know, about me and Buck.”
Chris raises his eyebrows but says nothing.
“About how I feel about Buck,” Eddie presses on. “I want to talk to him about that but I…I always want to talk to you first.”
Christopher tilts his head. “Are you trying to ask me something here?” he asks eventually, somehow both scathing and warm in that way that Eddie’s beginning to think only your child can be.
He huffs a laugh. “Sorry,” he offers. “I’ll get to the point. Um, yeah. I guess what I’m saying is that I think— I think my feelings for Buck could be something big and something different. And I want to see if he’d be up for that, but only if you’re up for that. It has the potential to be a big change for all of us, if Buck is—”
“He will be,” Christopher says, soft but sure.
Eddie comes up short.
“Yeah?” he asks. “You think so?”
“Obviously,” Chris says, rolling his eyes. “You and Buck are…” He searches, and Eddie waits him out. In the end he shrugs one shoulder and says, “Different.”
Different, Eddie thinks. He’s not sure if Chris means different from the other people Eddie has dated or different from other kinds of best friends, but either way it’s true. He knows it’s true, now.
“I think you’re right,” Eddie says. “I don’t have a lot of answers yet. I don’t know what this means about… well, about me. But I don’t want to do anything that will put a wedge between you and I, Chris. Not even for Buck. You understand?”
Chris nods. “I get it,” he says. “Is this— did you just figure this out?”
Eddie blows out a breath. The video starts playing in his mind again, half-memorized by now. “Yeah,” he admits.
Surprising him, Chris snorts a laugh. “Took you long enough,” he says.
Eddie’s heart stumbles. So much of parenthood is like that, just stumble after stumble.
“So that would be okay with you?” Eddie ventures. “If Buck and I—”
“Sure,” Chris agrees. He hesitates, and then his voice and his face soften as one. “I just want you to be happy, Dad. I think Buck could make you happy.”
Eddie cracks open again. Wider, more gold. He’s mostly pieces now. “Thank you, Chris,” he says. “You know that I love you more than anything, right?”
“Dad,” Chris groans, but his voice is light. Eddie grins at the sound, a soaring sweet thing taking flight in his chest as Chris reluctantly but sincerely adds, “I love you, too.”
When they hang up, Eddie sits in his empty hotel room for a few minutes, examining how he feels. There’s a lightness in his chest that hadn’t been there before, and with it there’s also a fluttery anticipation.
He’s in love with Buck.
How he never saw it before, he isn’t sure. But he is. He has been, probably for a long time. That’s what this feels like— a relief, a weight off of his tired shoulders. He glances back at his phone for the time, and then makes up his mind.
Feeling calmer, Eddie slips into his sneakers and grabs his room key, letting himself out into the quiet hallway. All sound feels muffled here, and the click of his door echoes against the muffling carpet. Eddie ambles two doors down to Buck’s empty room and settles on the floor to wait.
He’s a patient guy, but he doesn’t really need to be. It doesn’t take long before there’s a distant, resounding ding from the elevator around the corner and then Buck is stepping onto the hallway.
Eddie had seen him just a couple of hours ago, really. But seeing him now— in his open shirt and with his curls in ruins from wearing a hat all night; cheeks flushed; favoring his leg just a little bit. It hits some deeper chord in him, plucking a sound in Eddie’s chest that he hadn’t known could be played in him, a strong low note that reverberates against his ribs.
His heart beats faster, just that little bit, and he wonders at the realization that it has been doing that in Buck’s presence for a very long time.
Buck spots him right away, and his expression cycles rapidly through delight and curiosity to concern as he draws level with him.
“Eddie?” he asks. “Are you okay? You didn’t get locked out, did you?”
Eddie shakes his head, his crown against the wall as he tilts his head back to look up at Buck from his place on the floor.
“No,” he answers simply. “Just waiting for you.”
Buck frowns, digging into his pocket for his phone. “Did you— Did I miss a call, or—?”
Eddie smiles a little. “No,” he assures him again. “I didn’t call. I was just waiting here.”
Buck looks down at him, his phone forgotten now that he’s been assured he’s missing nothing on it, and his expression creases into bemused confusion. It’s a sweet look on him, all furrowed brows and pouty lips that Eddie is suddenly seized with the desire to kiss.
As he’d been waiting, his thoughts had wandered. He’d combed over various interactions he’s had with women in his life and wondered if he doesn’t really experience sexual attraction, if that’s the answer.
Seeing Buck in front of him has quickly absolved him of this notion.
“Waiting for me?” Buck asks.
“Yeah,” Eddie admits. He holds one hand up to Buck, and Buck takes it and hauls him easily to his feet. How many times have they done exactly that, Eddie wonders? Too many to count, so many that it feels like second nature, and yet—
Everything about it, everything about Buck in front of him, feels shining and new, suddenly.
Buck goes to pull his hand back, and Eddie doesn’t let it happen. His fingers hold tight, and Buck tilts his head like an inquisitive dog.
“Eddie?” he questions.
For the first time, a thundering of uncertainty rolls over Eddie, dark clouded and ominous. What if he’s wrong about this? What if Chris is, too? What if this ruins everything?
Except that then he tilts his head back and Buck is looking at him. He’s still tipsy— still pink in the cheeks and overwarm and just a little bit unsteady— but his blue eyes are clear and beautiful. And Eddie thinks, it’s just Buck.
Just like that, he steadies again. It’s just Buck. Buck, who is golden and good and his best friend in the whole world, who would never hurt him on purpose, who loves him even if he turns out to be wrong about this. No matter what, Eddie is sure that they’re going to be okay.
It’s this certainty that gives him the courage to lean in, so close that he can smell the faint sharpness of Buck sweating off his cologne and the more distant remnants of the bar; so close that he can feel the warmth that emanates from Buck’s chest, from his skin and his living body.
Buck blinks, his lashes fluttering. They’re so close now that he has to look slightly down to meet Eddie’s gaze.
“Are you—” he stutters, his throat bobbing as he swallows. Eddie’s close enough to hear it.
“I’m okay,” he whispers.
Then, he puts his hand on Buck’s chest, feels the strong and fast beat of his heart as it races against his ribs; gathers his breath; and hauls Buck in to kiss him.
It happens just like that, in a slightly depressing hotel hallway in Nashville: Buck in his clothes from the bar and Eddie in one of Buck’s old shirts, feeling like everything about him is falling into place or at least that it will, very soon, because Buck’s mouth is on him and the moment they touch Buck is responding, melting to Eddie, touching him.
It’s sparkler bright and searing and it feels like coming home after a long day, like the most familiar thing Eddie has ever known. Like finding a piece of himself, and reattaching it with gold.
Breathless and wildeyed, Buck pulls back, his gaze roaming over Eddie’s face.
Eddie tilts his head back and smiles. He can’t help it. It moves through him beyond his control, carves out the dimple in his cheek and emits warmth and light and—
“I love you,” he says.
Buck’s breath catches, his voice weak. “What?”
Eddie nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it took me a long time to realize it. I know—”
“No,” Buck stutters. “What? You—”
“I love you,” Eddie repeats, solidly. “I don’t know what that means yet and if you don’t feel the same way that’s—”
“No!” Buck says. Suddenly, he’s crowding Eddie’s space, his hand grasping the fabric of what he doesn’t know is actually his shirt as he holds Eddie in place, blue eyes flashing. “No,” he repeats. “I do. I love you so much. I didn’t know— I didn’t know I could but-but I do, Eds. I promise.”
Eddie grins, boyish and sweet, brushing his fingers over Buck’s cheek.
“You don’t have to convince me, bud,” he says gently.
“Let me try anyway,” Buck says, breathless, and then he’s kissing Eddie again, like he means it, just the way Eddie had imagined Buck would kiss him, a lifetime ago when he was sitting on the floor in the hallway.
Later, curled up together, Eddie will admit what startled him into this revelation. Buck will flush bright pink and then they’ll both laugh and won’t be able to stop and it’ll feel dizzy and silly and theirs and they’ll realize, all at once, that they are best friends and everything else it is possible to be. That they have been for a long time now.
But in this moment, Eddie shuts his eyes and just lets Buck kiss him, and everything but that disappears like sparks.
The open road stretches out brightly sunlit before Buck and Eddie, who’s taking his shift at driving.
They’d missed their flight out of Nashville, and the official story that they’re telling everyone in the 118 group chat and beyond is that it was cancelled unexpectedly. The true story is that at the time when they should have been at the gate, Eddie was laid out on the bed beneath Buck in his hotel room, arching his back as Buck marked him with his teeth.
Now, they’re somewhere near the West, at least. If he’s honest— between Buck’s hand on his thigh and the hazy warmth of the sun and the endless monotony of the road— Eddie has sort of lost track. It’s all scenic. It’s all beautiful. The mile markers go on and on forever, and he doesn’t mind at all being trapped in a rental car with the most beautiful man he’s ever known.
Who, at the moment, is rubbing his thumb along Eddie’s thigh as another day slowly winds down, daylight beginning to fade as the cloudless sky turns pale around them.
“You seem tense,” Buck says, his palm warm through Eddie’s jeans.
Eddie glances over at him. “No,” he answers. “I’m okay.”
“Not like, emotionally,” Buck says. “I think you’ve been driving too long, we should stop and get something to eat at least.”
Had Eddie known that Buck’s softness and penchant for fussing over him would amp up to a million following their love confession, he can’t say he’d have done a single thing differently.
He drops his free hand to his lap, picks Buck’s hand up off his thigh, and brings it to his mouth to brush a kiss against his fingers. “I’m really okay,” he assures him.
Buck squints, the late afternoon light illuminating him and turning him to gold, like he wasn’t already.
“Still,” he says. “We should have dinner. I’m sure there’s…”
He trails off, squinting, and before long— as if Buck has the power to summon whatever he wants into existence— there’s the unmistakable neon light of a blinking motel sign, high up and nostalgic above the expanse of endless desert.
“Aha!” Buck says, beaming as he points it out. “Perks of taking the back roads, huh?” He wiggles his eyebrows in a way that’s probably supposed to be suggestive but turns out more comical. “We could stay the night,” he suggests.
Eddie smiles, shaking his head. “Not if you still want to make it back home for Hen,” he points out. “But okay,” he concedes, slowing to prepare to turn. “If you’re hungry.”
The diner comes into view, an old-fashioned exterior and a half-empty parking lot with mostly trucks dotted haphazardly around.
Buck smiles, then takes Eddie’s hand instead and kisses it like a reciprocation.
“Come on,” he says as the car turns and gravel crunches beneath the tires. “It’ll be fun.”
With Buck and an open road and a new life waiting for them, Eddie forgets to doubt that.