I had zero enthusiasm for such fuckery but even fewer choices. I crawled back into the cab of the shittastic truck and drove like my nanna for another forty miles before Rubi found a garage that could help us.
A mechanic came out to meet us, dressed in high-viz trousers and a camouflage jacket.
Rubi regarded him through the haze of the vape he’d stolen from Mateo before he and Decoy had left. “That’s a juxtaposition of an outfit. Does he want to hide in a bush or be seen from space?”
“Looks like a cunt to me.”
“Try not to tell him, will ya? We need him to like us.”
“All right.”
“Bro, your face has subtitles. If you can’t be nice, be somewhere else.”
Fine by me. I took my real-life smokes and fucked off across the road to a bench outside a bicycle shop, pondering how long it would take me to steal one and pedal it from Leeds to Devon. Cos that’s where we were, fucking Leeds, and the last time I’d been in this city, I’d been with Vik.
Getting mashed on mandy.
Kissing on his living room floor.
We still did that, the kissing on the living room floor, not the mandy. But these days, he didn’t leave me to the fate of a cold pizza and a comedown. He rarely left me at all—I’dlefthimthis time and I regretted it as much as the blue smoothie juice thing Rubi had poured down my throat this morning.
“Spirulina, Roo. You need it.”
I didn’t. I needed Viktor, and I’d learned that calling and telling him so was better than suffering alone.
Need his voice.
I called him. For the first time since I’d left for this cunty trip, he didn’t answer. Couldn’t describe how that felt. Or how annoying it was—how I felt, not that he wasn’t at my beck and call for phone therapy. My head throbbed, anxiety or fatigue, I couldn’t tell, and it pissed me off.
Couldn’t even enjoy my smoke. I tossed it away, jittery, like I’d been all day, driving alone in the Bone Rattler. It made no fucking sense that I missed Rubi’s constant yapping, but I did. I missed company. I missed home. I missed Jean and Viktor, and I didn’t know how I was going to survive any extra days that fucker of a tyre added to this hell.
Headache could keep you off the road too.
I didn’t get severe ones anymore, but even the middling bastards screwed my focus too much for me to handle a truck this big, and worrying about it made my skull buzz harder, the threat of it worse than actual pain.
Fucking cunt.
I slouched on the bench, hating the entire world. Except Vik and my nanna. And okay, Rubi, when he came back and slung an arm around me.
“Two hours. Paid him extra and everything. How’s that noggin’?”
“How’s your fucking noggin’?”
“Probably the same as yours. Take these, drink this, and let’s go for a nap.”
I took the pills and drank the water. “Where are we going for this nap? My bed’s in Kwik Fit purgatory.”
“Bertha. I keep telling you, the bunks are a dream compared to the padded shelves in the Rattler.”
Uncomfortable beds were the least of my worries. I squinted at my phone, mysilentphone, willing it to ring.
It didn’t, and Rubi wasn’t in the mood to let me stew on it. He pulled me into a full-blown side hug. “I’m sorry this has been so hard for you, brother. I should’ve told Saint not to put you with me on this run.”
“You’re not the problem.”
“I have been. Chattypants put us together for a reason, and I fucked it up with my hooliganism.”
“I like hooliganism.”