Chapter 47: Snacks on the Highway
The Ford ate up the two-lane highway, its tires humming a steady rhythm against the asphalt. The world outside was a wash of deep indigo and the last fiery streaks of orange, the mesquite shadows stretching long and thin across the road. Taichi’s hand was still warm where Noah had held it.
He shifted, the vinyl seat creaking under him, and reached for his backpack at his feet. The zipper sounded explosively loud in the quiet cab.
“Hungry?” Taichi asked, his voice cutting through the low twang of the radio.
“Could eat,” Noah said, his eyes still on the unspooling road. The white-knuckle grip was gone, replaced by a loose, thoughtful hold on the wheel.
Taichi rummaged, pulling out a paper bag. He laid the contents on the seat between them: a packet of peppered beef jerky, a half-crushed box of sour gummy worms, and a bag of sunflower seeds. “Road trip essentials. My mom used to pack this stuff for tournament drives.”
Noah glanced over, a faint smile touching his lips. “No pork rinds?”
“Draw the line there,” Taichi said, smiling back. He ripped open the gummy worms, the sour sugar smell instantly cutting through the scents of leather and dust. He pinched a red one between his fingers. The gesture felt bold, ridiculous. His heart kicked against his ribs. “Here.”
Noah looked at the candy, then at Taichi’s face. His cheeks colored slightly, visible even in the dashboard’s green glow. He didn’t take it with his hand. He kept one hand on the wheel, and slowly, deliberately, opened his mouth.
The air in the cab thickened, grew warm.
Taichi leaned over, his shoulder brushing Noah’s arm. He placed the gummy worm on Noah’s tongue, his fingertips brushing the soft warmth of his lower lip. The contact was a lightning strike, a jolt that traveled straight up Taichi’s arm. He pulled back fast, shoving his hand into the bag for a jerky strip just to have something to do.
Noah chewed, swallowed. The grin that spread across his face was slow, real, and utterly devastating. “Sour,” he said, his voice a little rough.
“That’s the point.” Taichi focused on tearing the jerky with his teeth. The salt and pepper bloomed on his tongue. “So, Sunday supper. What’s that entail?”
“Chaos,” Noah said, the tension easing back into something like fondness. “Enough food to feed the county. Dad at the head of the table, grillin’ everyone about their week. My sister’s three kids underfoot. Mom flittin’ between the stove and the table, never sittin’ down ‘til dessert.” He paused. “They’ll like you. Mom’ll fuss over you bein’ too thin. Dad’ll ask about your game. He respects discipline.”
“And what will you be doing?” Taichi asked quietly.
Noah was silent for a full mile. The headlights picked out a roadside cross wrapped in plastic flowers, then let it fall into darkness. “Tryin’ to breathe,” he finally said. “Tryin’ to remember how to talk.”
Taichi nodded, watching the shadows of Noah’s profile—the strong line of his nose, the set of his jaw. “What was it like? Growing up out here?”
Noah let out a long breath. “Simple. Hard. You got up with the sun, you worked ‘til your hands bled, you went to church, and you didn’t complain. My dad… he’s a good man. But his world is straight lines. Right and wrong. Strong and weak.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel. “What about L.A.?”
“Loud,” Taichi said, a little surprised by the question. “Always moving. My dad worked twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, my mom managed a bakery. I spent more time on soccer fields than in my own house. It was… easy to get lost in the crowd. To just be the fast kid with the good footwork. Nobody looked too close.”
“And did you want them to?” Noah asked. His gaze was fixed ahead, but the question hung there, delicate and sharp.
Taichi considered the vast, empty land rushing past. It was the opposite of a crowd. There was nowhere to hide here. “Sometimes,” he admitted, the word feeling foreign. “But it was safer not to. On the team, you hear things. The jokes. The slurs tossed around like nothing. You learn to laugh, or you become the target. So you laugh.” He hadn’t meant to say that much. He busied himself with the sunflower seeds, cracking a shell with his teeth.
“I know those laughs,” Noah said, his voice low. “I’ve perfected ‘em.”
For a while, there was only the sound of the engine and the quiet crack of shells. The darkness was complete now, a blanket of stars starting to prick through the velvet sky.
“I’m scared,” Noah said, so quietly Taichi almost didn’t hear it over the road noise.
Taichi stopped chewing. He looked at Noah, at the tightness returning to his shoulders. “I know.”
“Not for me.” Noah shook his head. “Well, yeah, for me. But for them. For my mom. It’ll break something in her. Something she won’t ever be able to glue back. The picture she has in her head of my life… it’ll just be shattered pieces on the floor.” He swallowed hard. “And my dad. I don’t know if he’ll look at me again. Not the way he does now.”
The raw pain in his voice was a physical thing in the cab. Taichi didn’t know what to say. There were no guarantees. He thought of his own parents, their hopeful questions about nice girls they’d met at the bakery. He’d built a wall of smiles and soccer scores. Noah was about to take a sledgehammer to his entire world.
“You’re not doing it to hurt them,” Taichi finally said. “You’re doing it so you can finally breathe when you go home.”
Noah glanced at him, his green eyes gleaming with unshed tears in the dim light. “You believe that?”
“I have to,” Taichi said. “Or else why are we doing any of this?”
A sign flashed by: Callahan Creek, 15 miles.
The nearness of it was a shock. The fragile bubble of the truck, this moving confessional under the stars, was about to pop.
Noah reached over, not for the wheel, but to find Taichi’s hand again on the seat. He laced their fingers together, his grip firm, anchoring. “Thank you,” he said, the words thick. “For bein’ in the house. For bein’ real.”
Taichi held on tight. He watched the fence posts begin to blur past, marking off property lines in the night. Somewhere out there in the darkness was the ranch, the porch light, the unknown. He held Noah’s hand and didn’t let go as the truck sped on, carrying them toward the shattering.