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“You’re absolutely right. It was worth the trek out in the weather.”
I reversed out of the parking spot, and when I crept forward through the parking lot, a blue puffer coat caught my eye. I stopped the SUV and blinked a few times so my eyes could adjust to the bright lights of cars on the main road as rain pounded the windshield. Standing alone at the bus stop, surrounded by plexiglass, was someone wearing a blue puffer coat.
“Is that Skyler?” I asked.
“Where?” he quickly asked and looked around the parking lot. “Where?” he asked again. The desperation to see Skyler again was in his voice.
“Right there at the bus stop.” I pointed in the direction of where the headlights were shining.
“Fuck. Go out on the main road and drive by slowly.” As I navigated through the parking lot and onto the road, flickering lightning lit up the sky.
“He shouldn’t be under the awning,” I mumbled.
“He shouldn’t be there, period.”
I kept the SUV in the emergency lane as we moved closer to the metal-covered bus stop.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Spencer said.
“Offer him a ride.” I voiced it even though Spencer was already rolling the window down.
“Skyler!” Spencer called out, and Skyler looked up from his phone.
“Hey!” Skyler pulled his hood over his beanie and walked toward the SUV while pocketing his phone. I glanced in the rearview mirror and the side mirror for oncoming traffic as Spencer spoke.
“Can we give you a lift?” Spencer asked.
We never offered to give anyone we played with in Edge rides. It wasn’t wise to do so because they didn’t know us, and we didn’t know them. Trusting someone to play in Edge was one thing, but anything outside of the club was another story. However, something with Skyler really clicked with us, and without needing to discuss it, Spencer and I felt it would be okay.
“I’m going kind of far. I’d hate for you guys to have to drive out of your way to take me home.”
“You don’t have to work tonight?” Spencer asked. During our time together after our play, Skyler had mentioned he needed to work tonight. But maybe he only said that to try to get out of having to take part in the aftercare portion that we required.
Nothing on Skyler’s face indicated he’d been caught in a fib. Without missing a beat, he said, “I was going to try to work, but the weather is so bad.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror once again before leaning close to the steering wheel to look at his face. “We won’t pressure you to come with us, but we wanted to offer you a ride,” I said.
“My place is about twenty minutes from here. If you guys don’t mind?—”
“We wouldn’t have offered if we minded,” Spencer told him. He gestured to the back seat as I unlocked the doors.
Skyler smiled and nodded before going to the rear door. I turned the blinker on, preparing to merge onto the main road again while Skyler got in and buckled his seat belt.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“No, problem. It’s terrible out,” Spencer said.
“Where are we heading?” I asked Skyler as I pressed the screen on the dash for the GPS.
As Skyler gave us the address, I entered it into the system, and the map outlined our route. Very quickly, I realized Skyler didn’t live in a good area of Denver. I was sure Spencer could see the area on the screen that we were headed to, and that he was thinking the same thing. I pulled onto the street and followed the on-screen prompts to Skyler’s. I wanted to move on from the silence in the car.
“What line of work are you in?” I asked. I thought that was general enough of a question without coming across as being nosey or risking making him uncomfortable.
“Customer relations. What about you guys?”
Customer relations. Maybe he worked retail or something in the service industry, and customer relations was a fancy way of describing it. I can’t find any fault in that. After all, Spencer and I candy-coated our jobs all the time.
“We work for Black Diamond Resorts in security,” Spencer said.
