The Interview Drive

Zac had always been good at showing off. That was half of selling houses, really, standing in an empty living room with your arms open and your voice warm, making a stranger believe this was where their life was gonna happen. He'd been doing it for eight years and he was good at it.

But this was different, and he knew it while he stood in his bathroom mirror on a Thursday afternoon in June, fastening a black lace bra around his chest. He was thirty years old, five ten, and he'd kept himself in decent shape mostly by walking properties and skipping lunch. The bra was a 36B, padded, bought online two years ago in a burst of courage that had never quite turned into anything. Until tonight.

Cliff. Thirty-five, broad, quiet in the way that made other people fill the silence for him. They'd met two years ago at a mutual friend's backyard party and had talked online ever since. Six weeks ago Cliff had asked him, plainly, if he'd ever dressed. Zac had typed yes before he could talk himself out of it, and everything since had been leading to tonight, to a motel outside Redding, five hours up Interstate 5.

He stepped into the matching panties and looked at himself. The lace sat strange against skin that had never worn lace before, and it looked, he thought, kind of perfect anyway.

"Okay," he said out loud to the mirror. "Okay. You can do this."

His phone buzzed on the counter. Cliff, right on time, because Cliff was always exactly on time. You ready? it said.

Ready as I'll ever be, Zac typed back.

Good. Drive safe. Text at each stop. I'll know if you skip one.

He'd packed the dress in a garment bag in the back seat, the heels in a shoebox, the makeup bag on top. He put on jeans and a plain shirt over the lingerie, because nobody needed to see him at a gas station in a bra, and he left his apartment at one with the sun high and the dashboard reading ninety degrees.

* * *

The plan had been simple. Drive the first two hours in his own clothes, stop at a big gas station lot just outside Sacramento, and change there. Except when he actually pulled in between a semi truck and a dented Honda, his heart was hammering so hard he sat in the parked car for a full minute with his hands on the wheel, staring at the pay-at-the-pump screen like it had answers.

He texted Cliff instead. At the station. About to change.

A minute went by. Then: proceed.

One word. Of course it was one word. Cliff didn't waste words, and somehow that made Zac's stomach flip worse than a whole paragraph would have.

He grabbed the garment bag and the shoebox and walked into the station like he was going to the restroom, which technically he was. The single restroom was one of those hallway ones with a door that locked for real, thank God. He changed with his back against the stall wall, jeans off, the short black dress pulled down over his head, the zipper at the side worked up with fingers that weren't quite steady. The heels were four inches, black, and he'd practiced walking in them at home until his ankles stopped wobbling.

He took the photo in the mirror. It was ridiculous and he loved it, the dress barely to mid thigh, his legs looking longer than they had any right to, the neckline showing the lace at the edge. He sent it before he could delete it.

Cliff's reply came fast this time. Proceed.

Zac laughed out loud in the restroom, alone, in a dress, and a knock came on the door so he hustled out, head high, heels clicking, past a guy at the pump who didn't even glance up. Fine. Great. Showing off, like always.

* * *

The rest stop near Williams was bigger, busier, all sun-baked concrete and diesel and families herding kids toward the vending machines. He'd told Cliff he'd stop there, so he stopped there, and this time he did the makeup in the family restroom with the door bolted and his phone propped against the paper towel dispenser.

Foundation, a little contour because he'd watched enough tutorials, mascara, and the dark red lipstick Cliff had told him to buy. He smoothed the dress down over his thighs and looked at the result and felt two things at once, both strong. Exposed, because anyone could knock. Powerful, because nobody would know what to do with him if they did.

He touched up the lipstick one more time, which was pure stalling, and then texted the obligatory photo.

Cliff replied: Good. Redding by six. Room 14.

No heart emoji. No anything. Zac put the phone away and grinned at himself in the mirror like an idiot.

The last stretch went fast because it always did, the valley giving way to the first brown hills, Mount Shasta showing up huge and white on the horizon like it had been waiting for him. He drove in a dress and heels for three hours, and by the second hour he'd stopped feeling strange about it. The road did that, kind of washed everything down to just road.

* * *

The motel sat off the highway on the Redding side, a long low line of doors painted a brown that might have been orange once, a half empty parking lot shimmering with the day's leftover heat. Zac rolled in at six on the dot because of course he did, and Cliff was standing by the door of room 14 like he'd been there an hour.

He was bigger than Zac remembered from the party. Same buzzed hair, same stillness. He wore a gray t shirt and jeans and he watched the car pull in and didn't wave.

Zac got out, and the heels put him almost level with Cliff.