“Two hours?—”
“—when you last called to fucking annoy me.”
“I’m not trying to annoy you. I miss you.”
“Fuck’s sake.” A crash sounded at River’s end, letting me know the curse wasn’t for me. “Why do people keep moving things?”
“Sure you didn’t move it?”
River hung up. On purpose or by way of whatever calamity was befalling him, I couldn’t tell, but the silence he left behind got to me. I needed music, but I had no CDs left. Ranger had chucked them all out of the window when I’d hidden his Beats headphones to stop him blocking me out for hours on end. Fucking outrageous behaviour, and with a dirty Maccies firing my blood, I was feeling belligerent enough to do something about it.
I spotted a service station and signalled to leave the motorway, grabbing the mic for the ancient radio system I’d made doubly sure to install in every truck, including Mats and Deeky’s posh new cab, before we’d left Devon a million years ago. “Pitstop. Over.”
The radio crackled. Decoy came on the line, the sigh strong in his voice. “For what?”
“Enrichment.”
I left it at that and steered the Bone Rattler off the motorway and into the winding loop that led to the service hub.
“Where the fuck are we going?”
I shot Ranger a dry look. “Where do you think?”
“I think you’re a pain in the arse.”
“I see that gift in you too, brother.”
“You’ve got shit in your fucking eye then.”
Ranger landed that beauty and slid out of the cab the second we hit the lorry bay. Didn’t even hang around long enough to take the piss out of my parking, though his was far worse.
He stomped away, ignoring the rule that none of us were supposed to wander around alone.
I killed the deafening engine and let my body acclimate to the lack of turbulence before I opened the driver door and stretched my legs into the outside world as Mateo pulled Bertha, the shiny new rig, into the next bay.
Decoy wound down the passenger window. “Why are we really stopping?”
“Roo ate all the Pringles.” A few days ago, weeks, even, Deeky might’ve laughed. Now he just stared with the weary energy of a brother who had to drive to Aberdeen and back before he could go home and get laid. Just for him, I elaborated. “I need music. Or I’m gonna fucking kill the little prick, I swear.”
Again, past Decoy might’ve offered to switch or trade Mateo. But he was over trying to accommodate the shenanigans me and Ranger needed to survive this bullshit. “Don’t be long. I don’t want to run out of hours before we reach Carlisle.”
“Roger that.”
I slithered out of the cab and took myself away from Decoy’s parental disappointment, grateful Mateo had been too distracted by parking to give me an earful. Daddy Decoy was too nice to bollock me, and Ranger was harmless. Angry Mats, though?
No thanks.
The service station was a shithole. Just toilets, a Burger King, and the shadiest WH Smith I’d seen in my life. It had what I needed, though. I stocked up on Skittles, Doritos, and enough terrible pop albums to keep Ranger in frisbees for a year, and made my way back.
Mats already had his engine running, scarred face a horror show ofstop fucking about, you daft cunt.
Ranger was smoking.
In. The. Cab.
“Oi.” I climbed into my seat and made a grab for his half-smoked rollie. “No hotboxing the workplace.”
Ranger evaded, his spider limbs too long for me to navigate without actually sitting on him. “Fuck off and give me the Skittles.”