Lucas Phelps woke at peace.

He took a while to realize the difference. The soul slips so naturally into peace when it is offered, it’s almost unnoticeable. He relaxed, his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, a faint smile playing over his lips.

Holy shit, I’m happy. How did that happen?

It wasn’t like a great weight had been lifted from him. That’s not what this felt like.

It was more like when you’re driving, and something is stuck in the wheel, and you hear it tick-tick-ticking, and you mean to do something about it but you keep forgetting, you get busy, and that tick-tick-tick keeps going on and on, sinking below the threshold of your notice, until if anyone asked, you might not be able to tell them there was a noise at all. Then finally one day you take the car in, they make an adjustment, and as you drive off, it strikes you how quiet the car is now.

It was like that. This crazy noise in his head that had been going on forever was now replaced by quiet.

You can’t possibly think spending one night with Ash Cray made your whole life better.

Maybe it’s just that it didn’t make it any worse. Maybe it was nice for once just to enjoy himself with someone who understood him. Someone who had been through it all with him.

“And since it’s Ash,” Lucas said to the empty room, “we won’t ever have to have a conversation about it.”

If he was being honest with himself, there was no way he wanted that to be a one-night stand. They’d done that already, false starts that left Lucas wondering if things would go further, then disappointed when they never did.

Even if Ash didn’t want to talk about last night, Lucas still wanted to see him.

“Maybe I should see a therapist instead,” he said, swinging his legs over the bed. He headed into the shower. “I clearly need psychiatric help, if I think Ash Cray will be interested in anything more than a onetime thing.”

Ash had been so tense last night. And what Lucas had to offer certainly made him…not calmer, exactly, but wasn’t excitement a cure for tension too?

What occurred to Lucas as he stepped out of the shower was, all this self-talk was a great way to avoid calling Ash. His phone was right there beside the bed. He could’ve picked it up already. Hell, forget calling, he could have sent him a quick text. Maybe just an eggplant emoji.

He stared down at the phone. Yup, he could just pick it up right now. Zip off a little message. Had a good time last night. That’s all. An acknowledgment.

He could reach right down and grab that phone.

Sure could.

And yet his hand did not move. In fact, he moved away from the phone, off to the window that overlooked the woods. He stared out, his body faintly steaming from the heat of the shower, in the cold room.

He’s probably busy right now, anyway. He left while it was still dark. Hurried home, probably spent some time writing a memo about why he hates me, and now he’s at work, overseeing great projects that will shape the economy, while I stand here in my birthday suit and put off calling him for as long as possible.

Was he scared? Lucas didn't really get scared. When he was little and his grandpa would take him out on the farm, they’d often run into snakes, including quite a few rattlers, and Lucas would stare at them with fascination rather than fear, watching his grandpa deal with them.

Funny that that is what he would think of, while considering calling Ash.

His bite is deadlier than any serpent’s.

Was he going to stand here afraid of calling someone who had given him one of the greatest—although fastest—blow jobs of his life?

What are you afraid of?

Oh, come on. He knew what he was afraid of. It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to understand. He was scared Ash would blow him off. Scared Ash would get all cold and heartless and say one of those cutting things, one of those Ash Cray kinds of things, to put Lucas in his place and make sure that nothing else happened between them.

At least nothing else for another ten years or so.

“Okay, okay, I’m not a coward.”

Yeah, but people don’t change. You know what he will say.

This time it would be different. Something had happened between them. Not the thing that had happened before, that was all lust and desperation. There was something different this time, something…clicked. Some kind of compatibility they hadn’t been mature enough to understand back in college, or worse, back in high school.

He picked up the phone. His thumb clicked it on, and then very, very slowly he dragged his finger across the screen until Ash’s number was there.

It’s so weird that I still have his number.

You’re procrastinating. Just call the man.

He did, he hit the green call button and waited. It rang once.

“You’ve reached Ash Cray. Leave a message.”

Well. That was curt.

“Hey,” said Lucas. “It’s me. Um, Lucas Phelps, if that wasn’t clear. Yeah. So, about last night—no, wait, forget last night. I mean, don’t forget it. I was just wondering if you wanted to… Actually, wait. Let me start this over. I had a really good time, and I just thought, if you weren’t busy—I mean, I know you’re always busy, but—”

The phone beeped and hung up.

Lucas stared down at the phone in horror.

Oh god, I am an idiot.

There wasn’t any way to take that message back, was there? Maybe he could dial in to Ash’s voicemail and somehow clear it out? Yeah, right.

He hadn’t meant to sound like such a sap!

He’s going to hate me. He'll think I like him, or LIKE him. It’ll make him say something shitty to me, I just know it, oh god, why did I call him?

Every bit of that peace and tranquility from this morning was gone. Poof, like a magic trick. Presto, here is your tension and stress again.

There was only one thing for it. If he sat here looking at his phone, waiting for Ash to call back, he was going to drive himself crazy. No. That was stupid. He had to do the thing that always brought his equilibrium back. He had to walk the land.

He tugged on his clothes and boots.

* * *

It had rained sometime last night. The ground was soft, and his boots wanted to sink deep into the soil. He had a stick with him, and as he passed under tree branches, he’d reach up and tap them with the stick, making their drops fall like a little local rainstorm all his own.

He could comfort himself knowing that even if his voicemail hadn’t been the stupidest series of words ever uttered by a human being, it’s not like Ash had plans to call him back anyway. Ash was like a comet in the sky, this beautiful unapproachable thing; you were lucky to get to see it once, extra-lucky to get to see it twice, and there was no reason to hope it would ever happen again.

Besides, had anything changed about Ash? No, it had not. He’d acted weird when they talked about the Battle of the Quarry, like Lucas had misunderstood what happened there. But how could Lucas believe that? Was Ash really just going to blame Callum for everything that happened there?

Ash wasn’t innocent.

But then…he hadn’t said he was innocent, had he? He had certainly looked guilty as all hell.

He was a puzzle.

That didn’t mean Lucas had to be the one to figure him out.

I want to, I really do.

Lucas was trying to avoid thinking like that. Those thoughts might mean that he liked Ash, that he wanted to spend more time with him, that he wanted…

Don’t go there. Don’t torture yourself.

He was so lost in thought he wasn’t paying attention where he was walking until he saw those orange survey flags again.

They were in bad shape, spotted with mud. Another few had been knocked over in the rain.

Don’t read anything into that, he warned himself. Those orange flags weren’t symbols of futility or anything like that.

It wasn’t good to hold out hope, any more than it was good to give up hope.

When his phone rang, it snapped him out of all those thoughts. His heart started racing, and he patted his pocket. He got his fingers in there, trying to pull his phone out, but it was like his pants were too tight, the phone wouldn’t come.

“Damn it, get out of there!” he said to it. “Quick, before he hangs up!”

Finally he fished the phone out and answered it, “Hey, listen, about that voicemail—”

“What voicemail?” said Pete on the other end.

“Oh. Uh…hey, Pete.”

“You sound disappointed that it’s me.”

“No, it’s just—”

“No, no, I get it, I’m just the guy that comes over and drinks your beer and eats your pizza, it’s not like we’re friends or anything—”

“Dude, seriously, I didn’t mean—”

“And it’s certainly not like I have some Very Important Gossip to impart to you.”

That got things back on track. “Gossip?” Is it something about Ash?

“You’re going to be shocked,” said Pete. “Flabbergasted. Your timbers will be shivered. Your gizzard will be—”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m serious, man, this is grade-A, 100% pure, high-school-drama gossip.”

Wait…high school? Is he talking about Ash? Oh god, does he know something about Ash? Nobody can find out what happened last night!

For the first time since he woke up, he realized just how much his life had changed since last night. It was one thing to have slept with Ash years ago. It was another to have slept with him last night. The guys would kill him. They’d never let him live it down.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Pete.”

“Of course you’re not sure, I haven’t told you yet! Are you ready for a blast from the past? Are you ready for a skeleton from the closet?”

“If you throw one more figure of speech at me, Pete, I’m hanging up this phone.”

He heard Pete’s laughter from the other end of the line. “Dude, I know, I’m sorry, half of me just wants to spring this on you, the other half wants to spend an hour building up to it, total gossip foreplay.”

“Gross. Let’s skip the foreplay.”

“Okay, okay. So me and Rex were out getting coffee this morning.”

Lucas looked back towards his house…beyond his own place, and the big house, was the little house Rex lived in lately. “Rex is already up? He’s with you?”

“That is not the big news, I promise you. Anyway, we were at Perky Pete’s, and guess who we saw?”

Please not Ash. Please not Ash.

“Who?”

“Ricky Talbot! The Ricky Talbot!”

Lucas nearly dropped the phone. As it was, he stood there for a second, staring off into the distance, the orange flags seeming to tell him something, a signal that was just out of reach.

“Ricky…Talbot,” he repeated robotically into the phone.

“I think he’s buying Perky Pete’s! Isn’t that kind of stupid? I mean, aside from the name itself, because I’m always thinking I ought to sue them for stealing my name.”

Lucas shook his head. “I don’t understand. Why would he buy a coffee shop?”

“I was asking my friend Joe that, you know Joe, right? He took Karl’s old job there? Anyway, Joe says Ricky made all this money out in Silicon Valley, and nobody’s sure why he’s back in town, but he is, and he’s trying to buy the coffee shop!”

Things began clicking into place. Things that Lucas didn’t want to think about at all.

He understood it now. He shook his head. He didn’t understand it. Not yet. But the glimmer of the idea, the outlines of it, were there in his head.

The one person who might want to hurt him and Ash. The one person who might have both the reason and the means for it.

“Thanks for telling me, Pete. I need to go.”

“Go? Are you kidding? Dude, we’ve got to get his number, invite him to game night! It’ll be like old times! Should I tell Rex to—”

“Pete. Pete? Don’t do anything, okay? Don’t try to track him down. Not yet. I gotta go.”

“Okay, but seriously, if you—”

He hung up and slipped the phone back into his pocket.

One of the survey flags bent into the mud, as he pushed at it with his boot.

I have to talk to Ash. As soon as humanly possible.