Page 2 of Lifeline

It was just him and me, and that⁠—

* * *

The truck gave a heavy lurch, and I jerked awake, realizing I had dozed off while being driven to the Search and Rescue team’s outpost in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. It was a weirdly stiff thought, and I shook my head, grimacing as I looked at the driver to see he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to me as he whisper-sang under his breath.

“Oh, holy shit,” I cried out as the truck went flying over what had to be an inhumanly sized bump in the road. “Woooaaahhhh!”

The truck came down and while I sent a prayer to the mechanical gods for the transmission, I couldn’t help but let out a wild laugh.

Beside me was a crazy man with a wide grin and a devil may care attitude as he gave the truck a little shake. “Doing alright over there?”

“Would it matter if I said no?” I asked with a laugh, gripping the handle above the door.

“Probably not,” Jake laughed as he looked around. I knew he was looking for another opportunity to send the truck flying. From the moment he’d picked me up from the airport, there had been a wildness that had drawn me to him. I mean, that he was also tall, huge, and stupidly good-looking helped. I had got 100% Grade A straight man off him with ten seconds of conversation, but hey, a guy could look and appreciate, right? “At least you’re not screaming, so that’s something.”

“I might regret saying this, but you’re going to have to try a lot harder to get me to scream,” I told him with a laugh.

He looked at me slyly. “Don’t go saying that; I’m good at getting people to scream.”

Oh, I bet he was.

Straight man, Aidan. He was a straight man.

He was like the good parts of a country boy, a frat boy, and a guy fresh from military basic training crammed into one person. Obviously, I didn’t know Jake well enough from a couple hours driving to say if that was true or not, but that was the aura I got off him from start and if things kept going, our finish when we lost control and careened into a tree.

I suppose there were worse ways to go than with adrenaline pumping through your veins. There were other ways I’d prefer, that involved less screaming and a fiery death, but still…there were worse ways.

Admittedly, no one wanted to die while they were supposed to be setting out on some grand new adventure. Especially when said adventure was supposed to be the start of something new. It wasn’t like my life was awful or that I was running away from something bad, but…I suppose feeling you were growing stagnant and if you didn’t get out of the swamp that was the foundation of your life, you might not move.

Of course, going to the middle of nowhere to work for a Search and Rescue team was a first step. I hoped it was a step in the right direction and that I might actually do something with myself. Then again, I could be dropping myself into the middle of nowhere with a bunch of guys I didn’t know to end up doing nothing, or worse, making an ass of myself.

I had to remind myself that nothing in life worth having came easily and freely. I had never been comfortable taking risks with my life or future. Sure, I’d made some choices that were…questionable. Partying too hard, hopping around jobs when I should have settled for something to build a stronger foundation, screwing around in college too hard and not getting a degree…well, there were several reasons I shouldn’t be trusted to measure risk and reward in my life.

Yet there I was, trying my hand at it. At least it felt more like an active choice than ignoring my current life’s course and letting the river take me. I was taking a risk, taking control of my life and⁠—

“Holy shit!” I said with a laugh as he swerved around something that had fallen into the road and sent me bouncing around despite holding on and wearing a seatbelt. “They let you drive people all the time?”

“Sure do,” he said proudly, and I hung on as he dodged the debris in the road. I knew there had been storms lately, and they had been pretty rough on the area, but hell, I would have thought they’d clear the roads. Then again, I suppose the only thing out that way was the outpost, considering we had left the nearest town about twenty minutes before. I couldn’t even remember the name of the town despite having spent a few hours there waiting for my…escort.

His driving evened out as the debris on the road dwindled, and I settled back into the seat, taking a deep breath, steadying myself. My thoughts drifted back to the dream I’d been having when I’d dozed off. I didn’t know why the dream, which was mostly a memory, had reared up from the depths of my brain and made a display of itself.

It had been…well, a while since I’d last thought about that time in my life. I had dated before then, and I’d dated since. I suppose we all had someone we considered ‘the one who got away’ and had to live with that for the rest of our lives. That was fine…mostly, but I’d prefer to think about that on my own terms. Like when I was a few too many drinks in and the alcohol betrayed me, or when I was going through the chest I had in storage that I’d used for years to hold the memorabilia I’d collected over the years.

Not when I was catching a few winks before starting a new job that I did not feel confident in. The part of my mind obsessed with psychology suggested that was exactly why I was thinking about back then. It was one of the few times in my life that I looked back on with genuine regret that clearly still lingered. The end had been so…unsatisfactory, leaving more questions than answers, which was common with a breakup, but something about that breakup had felt worse. So why wouldn’t I, someone taking a significant risk and starting a grand new chapter of my life, think about the one chapter in my life that had never felt properly finished?

“You alright over there?” Jake asked, and I stiffened, realizing I had probably been giving away my thoughts, or at least blatant glimpses into them. I had always been told I had the worst poker face imaginable.

“Hmm?” I responded lightly, trying for nonchalance to offset whatever he’d seen on my face.

“I dunno, ya looked kinda…pissed?”

“Just randomly deciding this was the moment to sort through the ghosts in my past,” I told him with a snort.

“Ain’t it always random?”

“What?”

“Thinkin’ about that sorta thing.”