Rest Stop Rivalry

Phoebe Martins was forty-two years old and she had never once regretted the way she'd built her life. Twenty years on the road, most of it solo, just her and her rig and whatever interstate needed her that week. She'd been happily single since she walked out of college at twenty-two, and people always asked her the same dumb question, like aren't you lonely? And she always laughed and said lonely for what?

Because here was the thing people didn't get about truck stops. There was a whole economy out there nobody talked about. A woman with a good jacket and a better smile could have company any night she wanted it, no strings, no drama, nobody asking about her feelings at six in the morning. Phoebe was good at it. She wasn't bragging, well okay, she was bragging a little, but she'd earned it. Twenty years of practice made a person excellent at something, that was just math.

So when her phone buzzed at a truck stop outside Phoenix on a Tuesday evening, she expected a load update or a dumb meme from her sister. Instead it was Kylie.

Kylie Webber, her best friend and her worst habit. They'd met twelve years ago at orientation for the trucking company, both around thirty and cocky, and they'd been circling each other ever since. Best friends who couldn't stop competing about everything. Fastest unload times. Best diner coffee finds. And yeah, the hookup scoreboard, which neither of them would ever admit existed out loud but which they both kept in their heads anyway.

The text said: you remember Ian? the drifter from the rest stop? he's back. And he's issued a challenge. Both of us. You in?

Phoebe sat there in her cab staring at the screen and felt something hot crawl up her neck that she refused to name. Ian. Six months ago, some highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere, a lean quiet man who looked at her like he already knew every story she'd ever tell. One night with him and then he'd vanished, leaving a note under her wiper that said something cryptic about a contest. She'd figured he was just weird. Apparently he was weird and organized.

she typed back: what kind of challenge

The reply came fast, like Kylie had been sitting on her phone waiting. Race. Phoenix to oregon. First one to reach him at the motel wins the night. But every stop on the way, there's a trial. His rules. Meet me at the gas station off the I-10 in an hour and I'll explain.

Phoebe should have said no. She knew that even then. But the jealousy was already burning in her chest, this ugly bright little flame, because Ian had been hers first, hers alone, and now Kylie was going to race her for him like he was a prize at a county fair. And the worst part, the absolute worst part, was that Phoebe wanted to win more than she wanted to breathe.

See you in an hour, she typed, and started her engine.

* * *

The gas station was one of those sad fluorescent-lit places on the edge of Phoenix where the desert started winning. Kylie was already there, leaning against her pickup like she'd been posing for a magazine about women who looked dangerous in denim. Forty years old and she still dressed like trouble.

"You actually came!" Kylie grinned. "I figured you'd chicken out."

"Chicken out? Please. I've never backed down from anything in my life, why would I start with you?"

"Because you know I'm gonna win." Kylie held up her phone. "Okay, so, Ian sent us both the same message. Listen. The road is the game. Seven stops between here and the motel off Highway 97 in Oregon. At each stop, a trial. The trials involve other people. The rules are his. First one through the door wins the night."

"Trial? Trial like what, exactly?"

Kylie shrugged, way too casual. "He didn't spell it out. He just said each stop, prove you can take pleasure and danger in the same breath. His words. Creepy, right? But kinda hot?"

"Kylie, that's insane. We don't even know what we're signing up for."

"You read his note six months ago, right? What'd it say?"

Phoebe dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out the folded paper she'd kept, which she'd been telling herself for six months was just laziness about cleaning out her pockets. It said: The best night of your life was a preliminary round. When you're ready to compete, you'll know.

"Okay, so it's creepy," Phoebe admitted.

"And you kept it for six months. So let's go, girl. He's waiting at the end, and I plan on getting there first." Kylie was already walking to her truck. "Follow me or fall behind!"

Phoebe stood there for a second in the fluorescent glare with her heart doing something embarrassing and thought, this is a bad idea, and then got in her cab anyway. Because some challenges you don't walk away from. Some challenges have your name on them.

* * *

The first stop was a motel outside Flagstaff, the kind with a bar attached and a parking lot full of potholes. It was past midnight when Phoebe rolled in, and the first thing she saw was Kylie's pickup already parked out front. Oh, hell no.

Inside the bar, a guy was buying drinks for a woman in a leather jacket, and the woman was Kylie, and she was laughing at something like it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. She caught Phoebe's eye across the room and winked. Then she slid a napkin across the bar, and a waitress carried it over to Phoebe's table like a little messenger of war.

The napkin said: already done, honey. Man in the corner, thirty minutes flat. Your move.

Phoebe looked up. Kylie was kissing the guy's cheek and walking out, waving over her shoulder without looking back. Thirty minutes. The man at the corner table was already watching Phoebe with the kind of patient look guys got when they thought they were doing the seducing.

Well. Two could play this game, and Phoebe had never lost a game in her life.

She walked over to his table with her beer in hand and sat down across from him without asking, which he seemed to find amusing. He was maybe thirty-five, lean, tired-looking, the kind of drifter type she had a radar for. Ring of keys on his belt. A duffel bag by his feet.

"Rough night or good night?" she asked him.

"Neither yet. Depends on the company." He had a slow smile. "You look like trouble."

"I'm the best kind. I'm Phoebe. And I'll be honest with you, handsome, I'm on a clock."

"A clock, huh? That's a new one." He leaned back, interested. "Most women lead with a fake name and a story about their dead husband."

"No fake names, no sad stories. Just a woman who saw a man sitting alone and decided her night was gonna get better." She let her knee bump his under the table. "So. You got a room, or are we doing this the complicated way?"

He laughed, a real one, surprised. "Straight to it. Okay. I like it. Room 14, around back." He stood and picked up his duffel, and she caught something odd in his bag, a glimpse of paper, maps, a Polaroid that might have been a face. But the beer was warm and the night was short and she filed it away under later.

Room 14 smelled like cigarettes and old carpet, and honestly that was romance compared to most of her stops. He set the bag down and turned around, and there was that slow smile again.

"Ask me nicely," he said.

"Is that how this works?"

"That's how it works with me. Say what you want, plainly. I don't do guessing games."

She liked that. She liked that a lot, actually. "I want you to fuck me," she said, walking toward him. "Nice and hard, no holding back, and then I want you gone by sunrise, because I've got a race to win."

His eyebrows went up and then came down, and the smile turned into something hungrier. "Well then. When you put it that way."

He pulled his shirt off and she got her hands on his belt, and the whole thing went fast and hot the way she liked it, him pressing her back against the motel door, her jacket hitting the floor, his mouth finding her throat while she worked his pants open and got her hand around his cock, already hard, no games there at least. She was wet and ready and past the point of pretending to be patient.

"Bed," she managed, and he grabbed her by the hips and walked her there, and then his mouth was lower, kissing down her stomach, and she grabbed a fistful of his hair. "You don't have to do that, I'm not really a, oh, okay, okay, wow, you really don't have to do that."

He laughed against her thigh and kept going, his tongue working her clit in slow circles that got faster when she pulled his hair, and Phoebe arched off the mattress and thought, fine, fine, Kylie can have her thirty-minute guy, this one's better. Her hips were moving without her permission and she was making noises she'd deny in any court in the land, and when he slid two fingers inside her along with his mouth she came hard, grabbing the headboard, saying his name except she'd never actually gotten his name.

"My turn," he said, crawling up her body, and she flipped him over onto his back because she'd never once been on the bottom for a stranger's turn, and straddled him, sinking down onto his cock with a long slow groan that made them both shiver. He grabbed her tits, thumbs dragging over her nipples until they were hard and aching, and she rode him hard, exactly like she'd promised, no holding back, the headboard banging the wall in a rhythm that probably had the neighbors complaining.

"God, you're strong," he gasped, hands on her waist, watching her like she was a show. "Where'd a trucker learn to, holy shit, do that?"

"Twenty years of practice, baby," she panted, and leaned down to bite his shoulder, and he bucked up into her hard enough to make her see white. She felt him swell inside her and she was right there with him, second orgasm rolling through her as he came, both of them shouting something wordless into the cheap motel air.

She collapsed onto his chest, sweaty and grinning at the ceiling. Thirty minutes? Try twenty. She was already composing the text to Kylie in her head.

Then she rolled over, and in the lamp light she saw the duffel bag was open. And inside it, she saw a stack of Polaroids. Women. Dozens of them. And on top of the stack, a note in handwriting she recognized, because she'd read it six months ago under her windshield wiper.

Round one. Did she mention the danger part?

Phoebe sat up so fast the sheet tangled around her legs. The man was in the bathroom, water running, door half open, and she was alone with the bag for about four seconds, which was plenty.

She read the note twice. Same slanted letters. Same cheap pen. Six months she'd carried that first note in her jacket, and she'd told herself it was because it was funny, a good story for the road. Now her skin was doing something cold and prickly and she pulled the sheet up anyway, which was stupid, she'd just been riding this guy like he owed her money.

"Hey," she called toward the bathroom. "You know a guy named Ian?"

The water shut off. "Who?"

"Ian. Drifter. Kinda pretty, kinda creepy, leaves notes on windshields."

He came out wiping his hands on a towel, and his face did a thing. A little flicker, gone fast. "Never heard of him."

"Uh huh."

"Why?"

"Because his handwriting is in your bag, sweetheart." She nodded at it. "And because there's about forty pictures of women in there and I'm gonna guess none of them sent you selfies as a thank you."

He looked at the bag, then at her, and something shifted in the room. Not him. The room. The lamp dimmed like a brownout, and the air got thick, and Phoebe felt it on the back of her neck first, that old animal feeling truckers get in empty lots at 3 a.m. The feeling of being watched.

"Get dressed," she said, and she was reaching for her jeans while she said it.

"It's probably nothing, the light flickers in this place all the..."

"Get dressed."

He got dressed. Fast. And while he fumbled with his boots she looked at the corner of the room by the closet, where the shadow was. Except the closet didn't have a corner like that, the wall was flat, she'd noticed the room the way she noticed every room, and there was a darkness standing in a place where darkness had no business standing. Tall. Still. Breathing. She could hear it breathe, long and slow and hungry, like something that had been waiting outside windows its whole life.

"There's something in the corner," she said quietly.

"I know." His voice had gone flat. "It was there before you got here. I thought it followed the last one."

"The last one?"

"The last woman." He picked up the duffel like it was a shield. "You should go. You should drive and not stop."

"Okay, see, guys usually say that after, not during, and I don't run." She had her jeans on, her boots on, and she snagged the Polaroids off the top of the stack, because if this was Ian's game then Ian's game was evidence. "Is it gonna chase us?"

"It doesn't chase." He opened the door and the hallway light fell in and the shadow was just gone, like it had never stood there, and Phoebe honestly couldn't say which was worse. "It collects."

* * *

She was on the road by 2 a.m. with the windows down and the heater off even though the desert goes cold at night, because she wanted the cold in her face. She texted Kylie from a red light outside Kingman.

Ran my trial in 20. Beat your 30. Also the motel is haunted as hell. Details later. Drive fast, ugly.

Kylie texted back a single emoji of a rocket and then, Beat you to the border, and Phoebe laughed out loud in the cab, alone, at 2 a.m., which is the kind of thing you do when you've decided not to be scared.

* * *

The rest stop was off the I-40 maybe forty minutes from the California line, all sodium lights and gravel and one flickering vending machine, and Kylie's pickup was already there, parked crooked like always. Phoebe pulled the rig in and hopped down and Kylie was leaning against the fender with two bad coffees, one for each of them, because that was the deal they'd had for twelve years, rivals in everything, coffee always shared.

"Twenty minutes," Kylie said. "Bullshit."

"Ask the man. Oh wait, you can't, I wore him out."

"You're insufferable." Kylie handed her a coffee. "I got mine in thirty and he cried a little, so, you know. Quality over speed."

"He cried?"

"A good cry! It's a skill, Phoebe. You rush everything, it's why you eat standing up."

They were laughing, both of them, leaning on the truck in the empty lot, and it felt like orientation day twelve years ago when they'd sized each other up over stale donuts and decided instantly to be friends and enemies at the same time. Then Kylie nodded toward the restroom building. "So. Next trial's listed on the stall door. Somebody taped it up."

"By who?"

"Who do you think?" Kylie pushed off the fender. "Ladies first?"

The bathroom was fluorescent and echoing and empty, and taped inside the first stall door was a note in that same slanted hand. Phoebe read it out loud so Kylie could hear.