Open Road by M.J. O'Shea

“This hotel has a laundry room.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Yeah. Convenient, right?”
    “I’ll come down with you. I don’t want to sit up here alone.”
    Because even after a day of distractions, he still didn’t like the silence. Angus grabbed his bag and followed Reece out the door.
    “I probably should’ve brought more stuff.”
    “Nah, it’ll be fine,” Reece told him.
    “You always say that.”
    “And I’m usually right.”
    After their laundry was cleaned and dried and folded back into their bags, after they were stretched out in their beds, Angus felt… restless. He needed to sleep, he needed to get some real rest, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
    What’s wrong with me?
    Months later, he should be over it, as embarrassing as it was.
    Maybe… who knows. Maybe he never would be.

Chapter Eight
     
     
    Las Vegas
     
    THERE WAS something about the desert. It wasn’t beautiful, exactly, at least not in Reece’s opinion, but there was a sort of enchantment about the way the rocks and sand stretched for so long it was hard to tell where it ended. The hills were far off in the distance, lumps of craggy stone. Sometimes it looked like they could run and get to them; sometimes it looked like they were so far it would take years to reach them. They drove through a valley littered with tiny cactuses and stunted palm trees, and one creepy white building that looked like it housed some sketchy government research project, then another valley that looked like a scene out of some old movie, with canyons and rock formations so close together the road barely fit between them. Reece halfway expected to see the Lone Ranger flying out from between the rocks on the back of his trusty horse.
    It was hard to concentrate on driving when all he wanted to do was stare. The landscape was the opposite of everything they were used to—trees, water, green. Reece wanted to pull over and take about a million pictures.
    “This is pretty wild, isn’t it?” Angus asked when they were in the middle of what a roadside sign called a box canyon. It almost seemed like places like this didn’t really exist outside of movies. The canyon rose steep and craggy, in stripes of deposited rock and dirt on the sides of the road, and boulders littered the shoulder. There wasn’t a single plant except some scrubby yellow grass, and the sky above them was so blue it nearly glowed. The only thing that served as a reminder that they were, in fact, in a real place was a scrap of dirty blue fabric lying on the side of the road.
    “Definitely isn’t Portland for sure,” Reece murmured.
    He missed the trees, which had thinned out somewhere around Carmel and never really returned, but as long as the landscape was temporary, he found it fascinating.
    “How much farther to Vegas?” Angus asked.
    “’Bout three hours. Not too bad.”
    “Do you have to work tonight?” Angus asked.
    “Nah, it can wait. I’ve never been here before, and I really want to check it out.” Reece had been slacking on his job a bit, but he’d managed to get an extension on one of his projects and push a different one off to another editor. It’d be a slim month paycheckwise, but he could afford it. He and Angus needed this time.
    “I forgot you hadn’t been to Vegas before.”
    “Yes. Because somebody went with other people and left me at home.”
    Angus made a face. “I would’ve had a lot more fun with you, if that makes you feel better. Those guys suck. It was like we kept walking by all these places that looked cool, and I wanted to check them out, but we never did. Seriously. They sucked.”
    Which had been Reece’s feeling about Brad’s friends for years. “Well, hopefully I won’t suck.”
    Angus snickered. “Not likely.”
    Reece looked over and grinned at him. He loved those moments when his best friend came back out loud and clear. “Maybe not this weekend.”
    “You’ve seriously got to stop that,” Angus said. He snorted.
    “Nah.