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It was funny, or maybe it was rather stupid. Nick and SA had tagged along together to Texas just for the sake of it — summer was soon to end. Might as well.
You hear about it on the news, that sweltering heat that's got you catching waves in the air, sweat holding on to your back ... that heat that's gotten you making a dash for the shower first thing you get home, even when it's wiped you out. You get home; your outfit's awful unsuited for the weather. Maybe you're a bit red in the face, hair frizzy, and you've no towel. God forbid you have no AC (AC businesses thrive in Texan summers).
They'd done this before as a band, which was at least a five man job in the van. Two people taking turns driving a truck couldn't be that bad; water, weed, and snacks remained a staple on the guys' list, and a cheap hole-in-the-wall kept them with enough fuel to drive. SA called dibs for first driver since he was feeling rather nice — a pleasant breeze blew across his face as Nick mumbled something incoherent that at least contained the word "driver"(?). An accidental 9 hours of sleep also contributed heavily.
"We should stop at... What, Lindy's?"
"No clue," SA replies. Nick's dumbly eyeing the scrunched up look on SA's face. He takes off his turquoise plastic shades and slides them onto SA's face. At least he's not the one driving; he can handle being blinded for a bit.
"Lindy's? I coulda sworn there was some kinda L word. Lindy's... Ludy's... Lucy's..."
"L..."
They stop at a red light. "Yeah, an L."
"Landry's?"
"Not girlish enough, honestly."
"...Libby's."
"Closer!"
"Fuck, man. Can't we just drive and you tell me if you see it?"
"Could miss a turn or something, you know."
"Pass me the map."
"I'm hungry." He passes it to SA. "You mad or what?"
After a glance, he holds a weak palm up. "No... Nah. I'm driving — I wanna make it out of here alive."
"See, I should've driven."
Laugh. Ha-ha. "No way, Jose."
"You got shades on and you're still about to have a heart attack?"
"...Someone's feeling nice today."
"Well, damn, okay." Nick lies back in his seat and lets his eyes fall shut. If some lucky turn takes place, he won't have a layer of BLINDING HOT TINGLING RED appear every time he closes his eyes.
He wishes anything would fill this silence. Sure, there's crickets, but there's no one laughing or talking in his ear this time. He's been saving his request to turn on the music for later; they picked out a few CDs together, and his sweat's all over one of them clutched in his palm.
Nick's "mouthy." Or "wordy," or some super secret code for "Nick Hexum's a real piece of work, a god of talking people's ears off," or some word that he gets while the other guys get "totally arrogant, super totally fragilistically stuck up" in their stockings. Really, though, he's more blubbery if anything when it comes to SA. There're striking men and women on the street. Okay! He'll admit that, but don't ask anything about who SA is if you don't wanna hear a smitten man pour his heart out. SA is driving like it's his life's mission.
TL;DR on the restaurant, they were looking for Luby’s, which was nowhere to be found. They do stop at a café and order two breakfast sandwiches, sitting across from each other.
Why’d SA even try driving? He's seen Nick do just fine, sober or not. At least he's getting a good word out of him. He’s watching himself through some camera lens: him staring with a blank face at Nick, who is devouring his sandwich with an equally blank face. Even a glance up at SA would probably murder Nick (shock, choke, die), so SA averts his gaze and sits around with a lost appetite. Nick is kicking his legs; he whacks SA once.
“On me,” Nick says. Quickly, he pays, shares his stash with SA, and decides to take over.
His time driving is also uneventful, though he especially needs shades due to a terrible case of Blue Eyes. It starts off slow. They offer each other a few words and they laugh about it, but those few words spiral into some next level mess over the latest what’s-gone-wrong and how’s-gone-wrong, the AC blowing in their faces as they laugh endlessly, totally endlessly until Nick has to beg SA to stop making him laugh. He’s the driver, after all.
“...And I was there once, you know, Galveston… And I didn’t even know what was coming, but everyone decided not to play volleyball at night without lights anymore ‘cause it got me in the hospital…” They’re giggling. “And I told them, ‘No, it’s all good,’ and they said, ‘No, Nick, you’re CONCUSSED!’” Laughter—the engine pipes up with a prominent hammering that jolts them into their senses. It is rhythmic in a way, growing stronger as Nick accelerates until it can’t go at all.
The car is dead silent, leaving Nick to make four faces in succession, roughly fitting the words “surprise, confusion, enlightened, and afraid.”
“...Engine’s broke?”
“You've gotta be shitting me.” SA climbs out of the car, rubbing his reddening eyes. “We’ll see, man.”
TERRIBLE job. Solid ZERO from both of them. SA goes “Huh, maybe it’s this part!” and strays them even further astray. Nick only knows how to turn around and wave like a maniac. They're two high Californians with a broken down truck in the middle of nowhere in North Texas, so imagine how many people bother to stop for them. Neither of them are helping each other’s case at all.
While Nick’s playing cheerleader, a black truck stops and pulls to the side; out comes a broad-shouldered, middle-aged man wearing a white tee over blue denim. “You boys lost?”
“Uh, yeah.” Wrong answer, son.
The man narrows his eyes and whistles. “I sure can tell… ‘Bout a hundred degrees out.” No duh — they're both covered in sweat. “What’s the problem, your engine?”
SA turns around to an open hood. “Well, yeah, but we don't really know the whole deal… It just stopped on us out of nowhere.” They get some young-men points (not fine-young-men), as the man waves them off to peer over the engine.
“You see that?”
In unison: “Yes?”
“Come see — that white smoke? Out the tailpipe?”
…Nod, nod. The man suddenly looks down at their license plate, then back up at SA, whose head is on Nick’s shoulder. He falls silent until Nick clears his throat. “...Engine’s overheating. Actually, you boys… have a fine day, will you?”
“Wh—what?”
“Yeah, find a guy to fix your engine — your truck’s got no idea how to deal with the heat over here.” The man waves goodbye as his back is already turned, which draws two frantic, confused waves from Nick and SA as he speeds off.
SA’s head spins over to face Nick. “The hell? He was gonna tell us!”
“Fuckin’ asshole,” Nick mutters, kicking a rock. It’s piping hot and hits his toe. “OW!”
While Nick jumps up and down and shouts, SA waits for him to stop, watching and wondering if he should walk off or reassure him it’ll be fine. Maybe this is some sort of karma for that time Nick tried to drown him in a kiddie pool with a hose. Still, it’s hot and dry as can be, his hands on his hips, tapping his foot like he's waiting on the weather, too.
Nick takes a deep, deep inhale, then a deep, deep exhale. “...Okay. So… Engine’s broken because it overheated. Okay.”
“So, what, we need a new one?”
“I dunno! I guess! God. We should’ve asked for a ride or something, man.”
“That guy would've rather shot us in the neck than give us a ride.”
“I’d rather die in AC.”
“Don't gotta be so dramatic,” SA replies (even though he, too, wants to complain of the heat). “We’ll walk!”
“We’ll walk.”
“Yeah. We’ll walk.”
“To—sorry, WE’LL WALK? WHERE?”
“TO A GAS STATION! I DON’T KNOW!”
“WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF… NOWHERE! THERE IS NO GAS STATION!”
“I bet you five bucks, if we try going a FEW MILES, we’ll find something, man, ‘cause we’ll die in this heat either way if we stand around. Go get the water in the trunk.”
Nick gives SA a look more displeased than ever. Still, he obeys and ambles on over. They walk on foot in scorching humid heat; unfortunate that it’s humid because that’s apparently “what gets you.” It takes a solid three minutes for them to accept they’ve no choice but to keep going. Not a single car has driven by since they started walking.
It really has them wondering what people even do around here without a car. In fact, the heat’s probably the reason everyone has a car in the first place.
Nobody wants to imagine walking to school or work in 100 degree weather—you get there and you have nowhere to go but inside feeling nothing but sticky and exhausted. Maybe they're not totally wondering anything right now, just trekking down the side of the road like a pair of zombies. If they had a conscience, they'd probably be thinking about that. Either that or why anyone at all would stick around at a gas station a billion miles from civilization.
Hot! It's hot. So, so very hot. Would it be any less hot without concrete? It’d probably be a crisp sixty-something on a good winter’s day. Who even lives here? Nobody. This is a USELESS region that NOBODY wants to live in.
“What should we do when we get to a gas station?”
“Huh?”
“Gas station.”
“No… Say the whole thing again.”
“I’m not saying the whole fucking thing again, Nick.”
“Yeah, well it's not my fault I didn't hear you, but what do you know about that?”
“What’s that even mean?” he groans, stopping in his tracks to stare at Nick. “I can’t do this.”
“You’re turning back?”
“You’re joking.”
“Just… Come on.” He reaches out to grab SA’s hand. “Gas station.”
In some parallel universe, they’re two high school girls holding hands as they finish the mile. It's 93 degrees but it feels like 97, and they haven't had lunch yet; the dew point’s 78 degrees. They swear they hate it all, that they hate dressing out and slowly running out of breath with a sharp pain in their chests, but their favorite part’s at the end when they know they have to finish it anyway. When their mile is up, they fall onto the grass and close their eyes for twenty seconds, then open them. Makes the sky bluer and the grass greener.
The gas station they reach has no restrooms. It's been forty minutes and they should be half-dead right now, but SA shouted as loud as he could when he caught sight of a building, sprinted right on over, and Nick followed suit like they'd just started walking. There's a lounge for truckers; the AC lets Nick ramble on about how great that is. SA decides to lie down on the floor until a custodian asks him to get up. They’ve got this—yeah, they've got this. Nick pulls him up with two arms with a contagious smile staining his face.
“ID, please,” says the cashier as they're about to pay for two bottles of beer. SA hands over his few bucks once they show their IDs, leaving them to walk outside and rest their heads against the wall. Sure, they were just out in the heat a minute or two ago, but the scenery’s nice. It's nonexistent! How neat. They’re both staring ahead, unsure of what to think of each other. Nick's watch says it's around 8:27 PM.
The sunset says enough, though—flat, green plains roll as far as the eye can see, definitely flatter than Omaha. They won’t be in Houston for another four hours, but hopefully their car hasn't been taken, and hopefully someone around here knows a thing or two about replacing an engine (or please, God, please, maybe someone could give them a ride). If they've gotten this far, maybe they could sleep on the grass now that it's a little cooler. Okay, no, not really. It's an outdoor sauna.
Not that either of them would mind sleeping together on really warm, wet grass.
SA turns to Nick, empty bottle in hand; he presses it against his own cheek, then tosses it in the dumpster. “There's a bunch of employees here. We could probably—”
“Something on your face.”
“Where?” He begins tapping random parts of his face until Nick nods approvingly. “Yeah, okay, thanks.”
“I was a real dick back there, man.”
“...Forget it. It was hot out, anyway.”
“No—seriously, I just wanted to say…”
“I’m not gonna kill you because you were a—” He feels Nick’s breath square against him, his lips an inch away, begging for him to close the gap. The sight is enough to give SA a GREAT laugh. A great story, even—one time I was high in the middle of nowhere after walking like five miles in the heat with my best friend, and he leaned in to kiss me or something like a fucking maniac, and I decided to kiss him back because I thought he needed it and it's been a long day. He closes the gap, their lips meeting as if it’s something they do every day, like they do it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, when really, they’ve only done it about once as a dare. Speaking of which, SA won those five bucks he bet on, but this kiss is probably worth ten.
Nick’s a smooth kisser; it’s been enough time for him to learn SA prefers not to rush a kiss. The tips of their tongues barely touch at first, just slowly going through the motions... Kiss his top lip, then his lower lip, then he runs his tongue along his lower lip… Don’t be too loose with it, but don't hold on too tight, either. Never in a million years would he have imagined getting to seriously kiss him. He was hoping, if anything, that SA would laugh in his face instead of accuse him of anything preposterous, but no, he’s kissing him right then and there.
SA, on the other hand, recalls the first time they kissed; he hated it because they only got a minute for it but lied and claimed Nick was “too bold of a kisser.” How the words even came out of his mouth he had no clue. What was he supposed to do, say “No, I wanted more time to make out with my male best friend”? Nick was just too quick with it, too confident. If anything, SA would’ve been too bold if he didn't restrain himself, but this moment now is out of some odd affection for a beaten up man, like a reward for getting this far. Really minty—does this guy always take mints? He lets out a moan, then pulls away when Nick runs a finger over an erect nipple.
“...Wow. I—”
“Thank you.” Nick leans in to kiss him again, and neither of them seem to realize there's a clear window right behind them.