“Everybody calls it the Shit Hole. Like, the last place all the trash in this town goes before it dies.”
“And Cody lives there?”
Logan squinted at him through the haze of his cigarette. “Maybe you should ask him.”
Nate pinched the bridge of his nose. Somebody drove by blasting Van Halen, David Lee Roth encouraging them to jump, before the truck rounded the corner and the music faded into the night. “What about the rest? Something about his mom? And lizards? And Cody?” He had to take a deep breath to make himself say the words. “Is he really gay?”
Logan didn’t answer, and Nate finally dropped his hand and faced him. Logan still had his arms crossed. He’d almost finished the cigarette. It smoldered between two thick fingers. “The way Cody tells it, you guys were pretty close over break. Seems like you were friends.”
“We were.”
“But then school starts, and you just run off with your buddies from the Grove without a backward glance.”
“No!” He wasn’t sure if he was angry or just frustrated as hell. “That’s not how it happened. He’s the one avoiding me! I’ve looked for him. I’ve tried to find him. Jesus, that’s why I came here tonight, to this fucking joke of a bowling alley, trying to figure out where the hell he’s been hiding!” He sighed, scrubbing his hand through his hair, his sudden burst of temper already burned out. “It’s like he’s afraid of me or something.”
Logan dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath the toe of his boot. “Or something.”
He obviously knew Cody better than Nate at this point, and Nate tried not to hate him for it. “Look, are you going to tell me where he is or not?”
“At work.” Logan put his hands in his jacket pockets. Nate expected him to pull his cigarettes out again, but he didn’t. “He’s been washing dishes with me up the Tomahawk.”
Nate certainly hadn’t expected that. “Since when?”
“Since school started. We alternate Mondays. He works Wednesday and Friday, so I can play football. I work Tuesday, Thursday. We both work Saturdays, sometimes together, sometimes back-to-back.”
Okay. Here was information Nate could really work with. He felt a small surge of hope. “So he’s there right now?”
“He’s scheduled to work till ten.”
“And what about tomorrow?”
“Sunday? Tomahawk’s closed on Sundays.”
Of course it was. Nate still wasn’t used to living in a town that shut down completely every seventh day. Only Pat’s, the bar on the edge of the town, was open on Sundays, and from what Nate could see, it seemed to do pretty good business too. “Will you see him before then?”
Logan cocked his head, studying Nate as if he couldn’t quite tell if he was a butterfly or just a dumb old miller moth. “Maybe.”
But the way he said it clearly meant, If I decide I want to.
“Will you ask him to meet me? Tell him I’ve been looking for him. Please. Tell him I’ll meet him tomorrow at noon. At the usual place. Tell him—” He almost said, Tell him I’m sorry, but he stopped himself. Cody deserved to hear his apology in person. “Just tell him to come. Will you do that for me? Please?”
Logan pushed off the side of his car and turned to unlock the driver-side door. “For you? No. I won’t do a goddamned thing for you.” He didn’t even glance over his shoulder as he climbed inside. “But I’ll do it for Cody.”
Cody was glad when ten o’clock rolled around. Logan had left at eight, and without him to talk to, the last two hours of Cody’s shift had crawled by. He could have left early—they weren’t all that busy—but unless Frank specifically told him to clock out, Cody kept working, doing the math in his head over and over, trying to determine exactly how much his next paycheck would be worth. It was late October, and the bite of winter was in the air. It was a miracle they hadn’t had snow yet, and all Cody could think about was whether or not this paycheck would give him enough to get a coat.
Not if he wanted a brand-new one from the Sears catalog. He’d need several more weeks for that. He thought of the secondhand shop Nate had taken him to in Rock Springs.
There wasn’t much chance of getting a ride from Nate this time around.
He pushed through the back door of the Tomahawk into the employee parking lot, already reaching for his cigarettes. He was surprised to find Logan there, leaning against the fender of his Camaro and smoking.
“What’re you doing here?”
“Came to give you a ride.”
“Oh.” Logan had given him rides home before, but only when they both got out of work at the same time. Making a second trip back to pick him up was unexpected, but not unwelcome. Sometimes Cody didn’t mind the one-and-a-half-mile walk back home, but he sure wasn’t going to complain about getting to skip it. “Thanks.”