His Road Home

by Anna Richland

  “He told me about the packages you both sent.” Cookies and brownies, so she’d opted to stick with books and postcards.

  Kristin jiggled the littlest child before she continued, “Is Cruz really letting you drive his 442 across the country?”

  “His car’s that important?” What, was it gold-plated?

  “Hoo-yeah, he calls it the Perfect Ten.” Jewel laughed. “Don’t be jealous, though. I think you’re the first woman older than eight to ride in those fancy vinyl seats.”

  They talked while Rey and the kids horsed around, until everyone drooped with cold. Kristin swapped the baby to her other hip and fished in her pocket. “Rey!”

  He pushed his chair toward them with the children stacked on the seat and each other’s laps like Russian nesting dolls.

  “I left a casserole on the counter.” The baby started squawking at the same time Kristin retrieved her car door opener. “I still have your power of attorney for household goods, so I’ll sign when the movers come next week.”

  A girl who looked to be kindergarten age tugged on Kristin’s coat. “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

  “I know, honey, so say goodbye to Uncle Cruz.”

  Jewel squeezed Rey so hard she lifted him. “Good to see you. And Grace seems nice. Don’t blow it.” Then the two women and five kids loaded their vans and left faster than she’d ever seen her coworkers’ families do from the ship.

  “That was quick,” she said.

  “Army hoo-ah.”

  “It worked.” She didn’t need to add now we’re alone because she saw a smile reach his eyes. The building was a four-plex, two up, two down. Of course Rey had a second-floor unit. He slung his duffel over his shoulders, she grabbed the other bags and, without words passing between them, she agreed to stay with him instead of at a motel.

  * * *

  “This is the car?” Grace wished she’d checked closer last night when she had a prayer of backing out of the plan, but she’d been distracted by remembering reasons to wait longer before sex. Rey had stayed up later than she had, still tidying his immaculate apartment while she had drifted to sleep on the futon couch. Now her rental car had been returned.

  Rey’s love was bright blue, a color that reminded her of a royal blue tang, a comparison heightened by black striping. On the hood, two air-intake thingies—at least, that was what she thought their function was—looked like nostrils. The front end was a snout, lengthened by the optical illusion of the black stripe running from the grille to the windshield. Shiny chrome rectangles perched above the bumper, all with some car function, but to her eyes they looked like teeth ready to open wide. His car was definitely alive.

  “You think I’m driving this across the country?”

  He pressed his lips swiftly to hers, then opened the driver’s door. “Grace, meet...Ten.”

  “Jewel wasn’t kidding that you call it the Perfect Ten.” Two huge black vinyl seats, more like loungers, were separated by a streamlined armrest. Wood-grain finishes set off the chrome knobs and round instruments, reminding her of a vintage Chris-Craft boat more than a car. The rear sported a cavernous single bench from the days before seatbelts or ergonomic contours. At least it would hold his wheelchair.

  “Ten, meet Grace.” He put her hand on the vinyl and covered it with his bigger one.

  If a car could have personality—and since boats were individuals with names, she conceded that some cars might have character also—this was a straightforward and masculine ride, despite being categorized like a hot woman. Grace decided she liked the looks of Rey’s 442, although that didn’t mean she could drive it.

  He slid into the driver’s seat, twisted off one prosthetic, then the other, and piled them on the passenger side. “Sit.”

  The seat was large enough to share if she scooted her back against today’s shirt slogan, “Reason #3 Amps Do It Better: Battery Power.”

  “Please.” He patted the space between his spread thighs and raised his eyebrows. Whether challenge or question, she couldn’t tell.

  There was no delicate way to clamber across his leg and settle her butt between his thighs, and no chance that the act of lifting herself up and over hadn’t thrust her intimately close to every part of him that occupied her thoughts.

  Her hands reflexively locked around the steering wheel while her mind catalogued how each time he inhaled, his chest pressed her shoulder blades. The driveway and street became insubstantial. The only thing she knew was the solidity of his body behind hers and around hers. She shifted in a small circle, maybe a bid to adjust her hips, but she liked how the motion rubbed her lower back against his body. Like scratching an itch, except it created another.

  So attuned to his body that she could feel him begin to lean to the left, she tensed with expectation of his lips touching her neck. Her hair ruffled by her ear, as if he was breathing that close to her, but then the car door thudded shut.

  She’d forgotten to close it. Cradled between his arms and chest, distracted out of her mind, she probably would have driven out of the garage with the door open if he hadn’t taken charge. This wasn’t going to work. But she wasn’t going to stop, not until they incinerated.

  Removing her right hand from the steering wheel, he placed it on the gear shift. “Hold,” he whispered. “Tight.”

  No way she could learn to drive this car with his voice and his body making her want to push and rub against the bulge in his lap, so it was good she’d studied internet how-to videos on manual transmissions. It was better that he’d backed into the garage months ago.

  He stroked one hand along her thigh. “Clutch, left foot.”

  His thumb crossed the seam of her jeans, and she dropped a hand to her lap, but he intercepted her.

  “Said hold.” He returned her palm to the wheel. “Listen up.”

  The interior had felt spacious, but now it shrank as she focused on the row of houses across the street and tried to remember the video.

  Forget the video. She had to remember to breathe. This early in the morning he smelled fresh from his shower. She wanted to wiggle around and bury her nose in his neck, especially now that she caught a rising hint of the musk of his body heat.

  “Gas and brake.” His other hand spread on her right thigh, and she felt the need to tighten and lift her hips, but there was nothing to press against. “This foot.”

  “The same as...same as my car?” She knew the answer, but she needed to speak, as if it would be a release valve for the tension in her chest.

  “Push clutch.”

  She did. She hadn’t noticed him insert the key and turn the ignition, but the car purred under her, its vibrations rocking them closer to each other. Her core moaned for her to abandon this lesson and turn and rub her body, especially her breasts, against his chest, but his left hand squeezed her thigh.

  “Then shift.” His right hand covered hers on the stick and pushed and moved in a zigzag pattern. “First,” he whispered in her ear, and her imagination tacked on the word base and zipped right back to flipping over and kissing him.

  “Gas.” He revved in his throat and squeezed her right leg, so she pushed the petal without considering the amount of force, and one of the dashboard arrows whizzed up. “Lift clutch.” He raised his left hand but pushed her right leg harder. “And go!”

  She raised her left foot, and they bounced forward. Five feet. The force of the stop whipped her chin down and up, and the Perfect Ten choked and died.

  “First stall.” He laughed in her ear. “I lived.”

  “Barely.” When her heartbeat slowed enough to permit speech, she said, “I’m not sure this is the most effective teaching method.”

  “But it’s fun.” And then he finally kissed her neck.

  * * *

  By Paducah, Kentucky, fourth gear felt natural enough that Grace w
anted music. “If your historically accurate dashboard isn’t compatible with my digital music, what do you listen to when you drive?”

  “Radio.”

  “Seriously?” The chrome dials were gorgeous, but she doubted their usefulness.

  “`Fraid so.”

  “Then your mission is to find stations for the next two thousand miles.”

  “May-beee.”

  “You cannot imagine how deeply I regret sharing that ringtone with you.”

  So they both laughed like crazy people who’d spent the morning parked in a garage kissing, not like respectable thirty-year-olds, but she realized the road trip was dissolving the boundaries she usually set on her behavior.

  * * *

  The Kansas City radio stations had blurred to static the next day as they cruised north through Iowa.

  “Behind on your job,” she told Rey. Over hundreds of miles of greatest hits and pop stations, he’d proved he could sing. She joined him to finish out the fading bars of the ABBA song. Somehow, laughing, her foot depressed on the gas more than she’d intended and they surged up the wide middle lane.

  Colored lights filled her rearview mirror.

  “Oops,” she said. “Busted.”

  As she moved right, he launched into the first line of the Janis Joplin song about Bobby McGee, but then he broke off and twisted to stare through the back.

  “My fault.” She’d never had a ticket. She rode the bus to work and drove her car twice a week, tops, for groceries or to meet a friend in Ballard. “I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry.”

  He started to laugh. “You look...don’t cry.”

  “But I got us pulled over.”

  The trooper left his vehicle as she struggled to manually crank the window. “Long way to Washington State, ma’am, but that’s no reason to be in a hurry. License and registration, please.”

  When she took the papers from Rey, the officer must have put together the base parking sticker on the windshield, the folded wheelchair on the bench seat and the edges of Rey’s black nylon shorts flat without his prosthetics.

  “Holy cow. Sir.” His voice snapped with respect.

  “Sergeant.” Rey’s jaw moved until he found a sentence. “Work for living.”

  “Roger that.” The trooper didn’t even look at the paperwork he handed back to Rey. “Here, put this away. Came home last August from Helmand with Marine Reserves. You?”

  “Paktia.” It came out staccato, but he managed to add Fifth S-F-G, his old unit, and her chest filled with pride.

  “Ma’am, you know you were doing eight miles over the speed limit?”

  “I’m sorry. I learned how to drive this yesterday and I guess it got away from me.”

  “Happens with these beauties. What year?”

  “Se-ven-ty,” Rey answered.

  “How fast can it hit a hundred? Not that I endorse driving at speeds in excess of the posted limit.”

  “Four-teen.”

  “Fourteen seconds?”

  Rey nodded across her. Car lust, like military acronyms, was one more thing she did not understand, but the cop and Rey locked eyes and she could almost see the catalytic carburetor nonsense flow between them like charges from an electric eel.

  “Man works hard to own a machine like this, he ought to enjoy it.” The officer was nodding to himself through the window, then his eyes met hers. “Think you could handle the wheel at ninety?”

  “Not a—”

  “You bet. She can.” Rey laid his hand on her leg.

  She looked between the two men, the trooper with his hat tilted so he could talk closer to the window, his top lip tight to his teeth as if anxious for her to agree, and Rey, leaning forward in his seat with anticipation.

  “I’ll hit the lights out front, and cars will move right. Let this beauty run for a couple of miles. Trust me, nothing better than speed.” He looked between them and winked. “Maybe some things.”

  Another crazy dive out of her comfort zone thanks to Reynaldo Cruz. She owed him. Big time.

  * * *

  The chicken-fried steak had tasted so amazing, she’d eaten a truck-stop sized portion and a slice of famous pumpkin pie after they visited Wall Drug and the Corn Palace. Now it sat in her stomach, restless as the thoughts she worked to rein to her side of the bed.

  On the busiest travel day of the year, they’d been lucky to get any bed. If Rey hadn’t stood beside her in the lobby with his metal legs showing from his shorts, they wouldn’t have had this one, but the clerk had said that since it was after four, she’d cancel a no-show reservation in their favor.

  A queen-sized mattress seemed large until a woman had to share it with a handsome man and her principles. Alphabetical listing of fish species of the North Pacific, that was what she’d concentrate on. Cold, wet and slimy. Absolutely not hot, hard and at hand.

  Chapter Seven

  Last Thanksgiving Cruz had shared full-on turkey and fixings with the team, courtesy of Uncle Sam, but this year he and Grace faced the maw of the freezer section in Murdo, South Dakota. Frozen pizza would never fit in the motel lobby microwave, and the frozen burritos ranked lower than an Army meal ready-to-eat. Maybe they should have kept driving instead of trying to create a festive lunch and movie marathon.

  “Hungry.” He pointed at a stack of meals, then at himself. “Man.”

  “I get the picture.” She wrestled the door open and handed him boxes for the cart. “Promise you won’t tell me the sodium content.”

  “More, please.” When he raised two fingers, his neck hair prickled.

  “I only want one.”

  “I know.” He spotted the lady staring at them from halfway up the aisle. In her sixties, she was as colorless as Chris Deavers, his former captain and a Minnesotan from his football to his beer. He wore a pair of loose jeans today, not shorts, so she wasn’t gawking at his C-legs. Guess here they didn’t see tan people cruising the frozen foods.

  “You want three? Are you joking?”

  “Leftovers.” He tossed a package of frozen whipped potatoes into the cart. He wanted to explain to the upstanding citizen pretending to read juice concentrate labels that he wasn’t raised with frozen spuds. He knew how to make the real kind. His mother had learned how to mash them with butter and milk, even if she put garlic and chiles in them, because she wanted her daughter and son to feel like Americans. To be Americans. “Thanks—trad—traction.”

  “If you think I can turn leftover frozen dinners into casserole, you have the wrong woman. First, my mother makes turkey bibimbop after Thanksgiving. And second—” she tossed frozen green beans on top of the whipped potatoes, “—the stuff in those boxes does not resemble a real bird. It dissolves the second time you heat it.”

  The lady over Grace’s shoulder edged closer. Air expanded his chest, lifted his shoulders, and what remained of his quick snap muscles tensed to jump. Yeah, that would work in a grocery store. Dial down, talk to Grace. Tell her something. “My mother.” Desperate, that was how he sounded. “Turkey empa—empa—na—da.”

  Let it go. The aisle was not a dirt road. A juice can was not a remote trigger, and the old lady was not a threat. She was a lumpy retiree stuck halfway between Sioux Falls and social security, so if she wanted to be nosy, he had to let it fucking go.

  “We could forget turkey and nuke lasagna.” Grace’s eyebrows pulled in, as if she sensed something wrong with him.

  “Don’t care.” Cold air streaming from the open freezer didn’t stop sweat from sticking his T-shirt to his spine, and he knew he had to escape the surveillance before he freaked. Circling the cart was as awkward as a sixteen-year-old turning a car in a dead-end driveway, but he fled and left Grace to grapple with the stuck glass door.

  Around the end of the aisle, he spotted a pyramid o
f yams. He focused on their shapes and tried to replace bad stimuli with neutral thoughts. They could microwave sweet potatoes. He thunked two in the cart. The noise brought him down a notch. Brown sugar, another thunk, and his alert level lowered enough that he could swipe a hand across his forehead. Next he added a bag of nuts. As he reached for marshmallows, the adrenaline crash made his hand shake like a bad axle.

  Grace arrived. The delicate lines between her eyebrows had become furrows across her forehead. She rested her fingertips on his arm. “You know those are solid corn syrup?”

  Up and down her fingers stroked, and he tried to match his breathing to her motion. He held his waistband away from his abs, daring her to look. “Five under.”

  She sighed. “You might need to gain weight. I haven’t run in days. I’m as puffy as that bag.”

  The motels they patronized didn’t have fitness rooms, but if they upgraded, he might see her in shorts and a sports bra, slick and sweaty.

  “What do you think people here do to stay in shape in the winter?”

  He lifted the bag of marshmallows to be level with her chest and waited until she looked to give them a squeeze. “Indoor. Exer-cise.”

  She blushed.

  Now the double-tap. “Need more cu-shion.” He whispered the punchline close to her ear. “For pu-shin’.”

  As he expected, she gasped, her moist lips parted enough that he imagined how it would taste to cover them with his own.

  Fuck. He’d dropped his guard, and there was the eavesdropper ten feet away, watching them, even though her cart already had carrots, canned beans and a plastic box of lettuce.

  “Excuse me,” she began.

  Grace wrapped her fingers on his arm as if she understood the source of his tension.

  Here it comes. He covered her hand with his free one, needing as much connection as he could create.

  “Cold one out there, isn’t it? Are you two from around here?”

  “No, ma’am,” he answered swiftly to control the territory, save Grace.

  She nodded as if he’d hit the right buzzer. “Yah, I didn’t think so. You stopping tonight?”