“You’ll see.” He mounted the Harley and she got on behind him.
He rode them west, toward town, and then straight through it—all the way down Station Street, across the train tracks. He took a left on Railroad Avenue, passing the motel, then onto the quiet route that ran beside the foothills. Maybe a mile out of town, he eased them to a stop on the shoulder and climbed off.
Abilene did the same, unsure why this spot was significant to him. All she saw was a load of scrub brush and sage, a whole lot of desolate badlands to the east, and rising red rock to the west.
“Follow me.” Casey headed toward the hills.
“This is where you come to think?” she asked, following his path between the boulders and brush.
“Just trust me.”
She did, even as this mystery excursion had her scratching her head. They hiked for five or ten minutes up into the hills, until she was short of breath and warm enough to unzip her jacket and fist her mittens.
“Just about there,” he said, kicking his way through a tangle of brush.
At long last, they stopped, and she followed his lead when he turned and sat on a flat outcropping, facing east.
“Okay. I see it now.” She took it in—the whole of Fortuity was laid out before them, all the way out to Three C and the open range beyond. She oriented herself by the church in the center of town, finding Benji’s and the diner, even the house she’d rented a room at, a little ways south.
“I haven’t been up here in over ten years,” Casey said, squinting against the sun, studying the landscape. “This is where I’d go in high school to smoke weed and think deep, philosophical thoughts. It’s where I was sitting when I decided to leave town.”
“Oh.”
“It’s funny . . . When I made that decision, a decade ago, now, this view seemed like everything I needed to know. Like I was looking at the future—at my hometown, the place I’d get stuck in forever if I didn’t escape. It looks different now.”
“How?”
“Lots of ways. I think before, I looked at this place and I thought about what kind of a life I could have, and all I saw was my dad’s legacy. Or lack thereof. I think I thought, if I don’t get out of here, I’m gonna be nothing. I’m gonna wind up working at the quarry, like every other nobody.” He waved his arm south. “I’m gonna live in some little house, a few blocks from where I grew up, and in fifty years I’m gonna die and wind up in that graveyard.” He flicked a hand to the northeast.
“And what do you see now?”
“I see memories now. I see the garage, and all the streets I drove down, the creek where we used to swim. I see Big Rock, where I kissed a girl for the first time when I was fourteen. And the train tracks that I followed when I tried to run away and find my dad when I was six. And I see the future, too. I see the bar I was barely old enough to drink at when I left town, and now it’s mine.”
She nodded. “That’s all very nice, but what did you bring me here to talk about?”
He took a deep breath, let it out slow, and laced his fingers between his knees. When he turned, she did the same.
What precisely was charging those blue eyes, she wondered? Something beyond nerves. Waiting as he assembled his thoughts was torture, the longest half a minute in her life. “Casey?”
He huffed a heavy breath.
“I messed up last night. You told me you were starting to feel something, starting to wonder if we might be something serious, maybe, someday. And I let you think I didn’t want that.”
“Oh.” Her chest felt funny and she resisted an urge to rub at her heart.
“I got scared, and that was lame.”
“Scared of what?”