Riding the Hammer Lane Read online

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  By Cassie Decker

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  Riding the Hammer Lane

  By Cassie Decker

  It’s long-haul trucker Eddie’s first Christmas away from home, and he picks up the CB radio in search of friendly voice. He doesn’t expect to reconnect with his old instructor—and brief but passionate fling—Colton. Eddie realizes the scarf he’s been knitting symbolizes the love and longing he’s been trying to deny. When fate brings them back together on a lonely, snowy stretch of Iowa highway, will they grab hold of their second chance and acknowledge the love woven tightly between them?

  To Jon, one of my strongest supporters.

  “BREAKER ONE-NINER.” Snow rushed at my windshield as I barreled down I-35, making it look more like I was flying light speed through a starfield in a far-off galaxy and less like I was hauling cargo through a windswept stretch of Iowa backcountry. “Anyone out there reading me tonight?”

  I can’t really say what possessed me to pick up the mic that night. I had hardly touched the CB in the ten months I’d been driving solo, using it only occasionally for traffic and weather tips, yet here I was, putting myself out there, hoping to hear more than just static on the other end. It was Christmas Eve, and I was still three weeks from my scheduled Hometime. I was feeling lonely, I suppose.

  I had never missed a Christmas with my sister in all my twenty-two years on this planet. Even though I had always been something of a loner and preferred my own company a majority of the time, hence my choice of an over-the-road trucking career, Devin and I were as close as two siblings could be, and I was a little down on myself for having to spend the holidays alone this year.

  I kept one hand on the steering wheel while the other gripped the mic with my finger not depressing the Talk button. The coiled cord connecting it to the radio mounted into the ceiling swayed as my rig went over a dip in the highway, and I waited for a reply. There weren’t many other semis on the road that I could see out there in the dark, but sometimes the radio waves bounced quite a good distance. It was a touch unreliable, and you didn’t have any control over who you got on the line, if anyone, but the part of the country I found myself driving through was situated right between two cell phone towers, so I couldn’t get a signal for even a quick chat with Devin or my nephews for the last few days.

  There was some chatter fading in and out between a couple guys, but I could hardly make out more than a few words regarding a weigh station about fifteen miles from my current location. I frowned and reached my arm up to put the mic back in its holster. But then a voice piped up through the line, clearer than the rest, and I brought my hand back down near my mouth, hopeful.

  “Yeah, driver, reading you.”

  The sound quality CB radios give you is far from high-def, but that voice tickled something at the back of my mind. “How are the roads treating you out there tonight?” I asked, for lack of a better conversation starter.

  “Like my ex: unforgiving and just as cold,” the voice quipped.

  I chuckled into the mic. “I hear ya there,” I said, even though I’d never had a boyfriend, thus no ex. I’d had a few flings, though, one in particular from last winter that was scorched into my brain for an eternity, but they all ended quietly and amicably. It didn’t seem like anything I needed to admit to my new chat buddy, though.

  The line was quiet for a few seconds except for the purl of CB static, and I thought I’d lost him as soon as I’d got him. But then he came back with a question: “Driver, what’s your handle?”

  Every trucker had a handle, or nickname, whether it was given to them or they picked it out themselves. Mine was bestowed upon me my second day of trucking academy by my instructor.

  “Rooks,” I said. It was a shortened version of rookie, but also a not-so-clever play on my last name—Brooks.

  I’d no sooner taken my finger off the Talk button than a rig came flying down the hammer lane on my left, kicking up a wake of snow as it went. The truck was bobtail, meaning it wasn’t hauling a trailer, but I’d recognize that candy-cane red cab with white-striped doors anywhere. It was my driving instructor, Colton, from the academy. What were the chances?

  “Holy shit, it is you, Eddie! I thought I recognized that voice!” Colton exclaimed as he blew by, giving a couple pulls on his horn as a greeting.

  A wide grin spread across my face, and warmth bloomed in my belly. “Big Hoss! What the hell are you doing out here?” Iowa was way more than a stone’s throw from Colorado, where the trucking school was located and where I had first met Colton in February.

  “I decided I missed being out on the road too much, so I put my teaching on hold for a spell.” His blinker flashed and he pulled back into the right lane two car-lengths ahead of me. “I’ve been hauling as an independent driver for the last five months and loving it. Looks like you got yourself a commercial contract?”

  “Yep. Brisco Auto Parts offered me a pretty good deal. I’m transporting for their warehouses between here and Boulder.” I slowed to a lower gear to let in a car merging onto the highway, putting even more distance between Colton and me.

  “I thought you signed on with Fast Track Fleet after you passed your test?” Colton asked.

  I was taken back to that day the moment he said it. I remembered it so vividly, opening the email that contained my very first job offer from FTF with Colton sitting right beside me, close enough for our hips to touch. He was so happy for me, and I felt so damn proud of myself for getting the attention of a trucking company so quickly after passing my CDL. But for as high as that day made me feel, it was also tinged with sadness. It was the last day we’d seen each other, and it was sealed with a goodbye kiss—the kind that lingers on your lips long after you’ve told yourself you were going to be okay with leaving.

  Clearing my throat, I pushed the Talk button. “I did, but I guess it was only a temporary gig. I didn’t know that going in. Brisco took me on in June, and I’ve been hauling for them ever since.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry, Rooks. If I’d have known it was only a short-term job, I’d have told you to wait for something more permanent.” Colton’s voice was quiet and seemed to hold a measure of regret, as if we could have had more time together if I hadn’t jumped on FTF so fast. Maybe it was true. Maybe things would have been different. But there isn’t a way to go back, only to drive forward. You have to keep going. Or as Colton loved to say: “Get after it, kid.”

  I shook my head and pulled my hand from the steering wheel long enough to push my ball cap up and scratch my fingers through the light brown hair on my forehead, which was badly in need of a trim. “It all worked out in the end. I got a lot of experience out of those four months.”

  “Got some crazy stories to share with the class there, Eddie?”

  I could hear his smile. And I could see it in my mind’s eye, crinkling up the corners of his hazel eyes and flashing bright behind a nicely trimmed black beard. It hit me hard, then, how fucking much I had missed him. Harder than was rational for a two-week fling, surely.

  I forced a smile to my own lips. “Oh, dozens. My first ticket was from a trooper for not having a full fire extinguisher.”

  Brake lights started popping up in front of me under the streetlights lining an overpass as more people crowded together on the Interstate. They were all no doubt traveling to see family for Christmas. I eased off the gas to avoid kissing the bumper of a snow-covered Buick that edged into my lane without warning.

  “You’re kidding me.” Colton chuckled. “How the hell did you pull that one off?”

&
nbsp; I settled back into my seat. “Okay, so I was parked in the back lot of a Wendy’s, getting a bite to eat, right? Well, I saw a guy while I was sitting there eating my burger flick a cigarette butt out his window when he was pulling out of the drive-thru lane. It hit a patch of dry grass and lit it up like a box of gas-soaked kindling. So I grabbed my extinguisher from behind my seat and ran over and put it out. I got a free Frosty out of the deal for my ‘heroic measures.’”

  “Let me guess: you didn’t stock your cab with a fresh extinguisher after that,” Colton said.

  “The damn thing was still half-full!” Arguing my case to a man whose job it was to train people of every in and out of long-haul trucking was pretty pointless, and I knew it.

  “Did you try that line with the trooper?” He laughed. He knew damn well I did.

  Before I could tell him where he could shove it, the CB signal wavered and picked up the sound of a guy singing horribly out-of-tune Christmas carols. Colton cut back in, but he was fading in and out. “Well, this is my exit, Rooks. I gotta pick up a trailer in Ames tonight. If you catch me on the horn tomorrow, and I really hope you do, you can tell me more of your crazy stories, okay? Get after it, kid.”

  “Copy that, Big Hoss.” I signed off and set the mic back up in its holster. I could just barely make out Colton’s cab through the flurrying snow as he pulled off, but I gave him a little salute just the same. My chest felt a bit tight watching him go, and I hoped like crazy we’d get lucky enough again to connect the next day.

  Later that night, as I was idling at my drop-off point at a warehouse in Ankeny waiting for the team to unload me, I sat on my cot in my space behind the cab seats. The TV was going, but I wasn’t really watching it. I was looking out the windshield at the snow softly dancing in and out of the beams of the parking-lot streetlights and thinking of Colton. The time we’d had together was short but incendiary. Even though I had passed it off as a fling all those months ago, he was always at the back of my mind, in one way or another.

  Pulling my focus away from the snow, I glanced down at my lap to the knitting project in my hands. My sister’s wife, Maria, had taught me the basics of the craft when I lived with them, and I found it was a soothing hobby. I had gotten pretty skilled at it over time with help from YouTube tutorial videos while my time on the road stretched on.

  The scarf I had been working on for the last few weeks was nearly finished. It was one of the most complicated patterns I had attempted, and even though I hadn’t recognized it at first, I realized then that it reminded me of Colton. He really was on my mind almost constantly, whether I was conscious of it or not. The wool was rich and dark like his hair, with subtle contrasts woven through of brown and green, like his eyes. The intricate cable-knit pattern was like the elaborate tattoo sleeve he had covering his left arm. Even the body of the yarn conjured thoughts of him. It had a nice, thick weight to it and would certainly keep you warm on the coldest night when bundled around you. Complex and masculine, yet soft in all the right ways.

  My fingers grazed against the yarn, clicked the needles together, followed the sequence row after row. I let my mind wander while my hands did their work. Slip two stitches to the cable needle and hold in front. Knit two. Knit two from the cable.

  In the beginning of it all, the student/teacher taboo between Colton and me was thrilling. He’d been instructing my class for three weeks before we shared our first kiss behind the garage next to the test-drive track. After that it was a rush of secret BJs in the men’s room, breathless make-out sessions whenever we were alone, and nights spent wrapped around each other in the sleeper cab of his rig he kept at the school. It was two weeks of pure bliss.

  But it had always run deeper than just a fling, even if I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself back then. I’d like to think Colton felt that way too. I’d shared a part of myself with him that frigid February, and he never once exploited it. He hadn’t given me any preferential treatment over the other students in the six-week class, whether it was in the classroom or out on the track, and I admired the hell out of him for it; I needed to earn my way on my own merit, like I had done my whole life, and he gave me the ability to do just that.

  Hearing his voice after so long apart made me realize I hadn’t ever really gotten over him. It stirred up a flurry of emotions inside me like a snow globe on a paint shaker and made my chest feel all fluttery and light. Colton had wanted me to pursue the career I’d dreamed of, and we both agreed that a long-distance relationship wouldn’t be something we could do. But with the way my heart called to him, louder now than ever before, I wondered why we ever thought we shouldn’t fight harder to make it work.

  By the time my load-out was finished, I glanced back down to the scarf in my hands to see it was just about done. All it needed was to be cast off. Smiling to myself, I knitted the last stitch, knowing exactly who I had been making the scarf for the entire time. I cut the tail from the working yarn and weaved it through a couple times while hoping with all my might that the old radio mounted to my ceiling would pick Colton up again in the morning.

  The next day, December 25, found me out on the road bright and early. I was in a chipper mood for the first time in weeks. My cell caught a decent signal right when I woke up, and I used the opportunity to call Devin and video chat with her, Maria, and the boys to wish them a Merry Christmas and watch them open the presents I’d ordered for them online. It was so good to see them, and even though my heart ached to miss being with them for the holidays, I wasn’t quite as lonely as I had felt the night before. Reconnecting with Colton was the only thing that pulled me out of that lull.

  The clouds had cleared in the predawn hours while I slept, so by the time I was on the highway just after sunrise, the sky was a frosty pink giving way to sharp, crystal blue. A sparkling layer of freshly fallen snow blanketed the passing farmland and clung to every tree like an artist had come through in the night and painted each branch in a shimmering white high-gloss.

  That view was the reason I truly loved my job. Despite the occasional loneliness, I just couldn’t beat the beauty of the scenery in the different states I’d driven through. Having the opportunity to see the country like that from behind the wheel with nothing but the open road ahead of me, while getting paid to do it, made it one of the best jobs in the world, in my very humble opinion.

  Traffic at that time of the morning was sparse; most people were with their families, opening presents or having a big Christmas breakfast, and it left the highway wide open for me. Even though there had been a pretty good accumulation of snow the night before, the roads were thankfully clear for the most part—the Iowa DOT had the salt-and-plow business down pat. I trundled along at a good clip on my way to my next pickup point in Marshalltown, thinking of Colton. I thought of the way he always framed my face with his big palms when he brought our lips together, like kissing me was a reverent thing to be cherished. I thought of the way he would run his thumb over my knuckles when we held hands in a way that seemed inadvertent yet simultaneously intentional.

  My CB buzzed as I rolled along, droning with light chatter. I’d turned it on as soon as I started my engine and let it continue picking up signals while I drove. None of the voices had been Colton’s yet, but it was still pretty early, I reminded myself.

  “Breaker. Breaker one-niner. Rooks, you reading me out there?” No sooner had I thought it than I heard his voice.

  My heart skipped a beat, and my hand shot up for the mic. I cleared my throat and cracked my neck, trying to play it cool, even though I definitely wasn’t. “Rooks here, reading you loud and clear. That you, Big Hoss?”

  “Who else would it be?” He laughed.

  “Could be anybody askin’ for me. You didn’t know how popular of a guy I am this side of the Rockies? Everyone knows my name—like Cheers,” I shot back with a heavy dose of playful sarcasm. God, I wanted so badly to see him again—to kiss him again.

  “I had no idea!” His voice held a mock tone of surprise b
ut also had an undercurrent of sexy curiosity running beneath it. “You must have been busy since February.”

  A hot blush burned at my cheeks. “They got you out on the road today? On Christmas?” I asked, quickly changing the subject. I could talk a big game, but I had absolutely no credibility to back it up. I hadn’t been with anyone since Colton.

  “I could ask the same thing of you,” he came back with.

  “Hometime isn’t until the middle of January for me,” I said. I did a pretty miserable job of hiding the sadness in my voice.

  “That first Christmas away from home is always rough,” he said softly. “Hey, where’s about are you on your haul? We should meet for coffee. Catch up.”

  My pulse ticked up a few more beats a second. I glanced at the GPS screen mounted on my dashboard. “Just outside Melbourne. I’ve got a couple hours to kill.” We agreed on a café on the outskirts of the small town, and I plugged in the destination on the touch screen with excitement thrumming through me.

  I grinned as I looked over to my passenger seat where I’d set Colton’s gift. The truck stop where I had stayed the night before was one of the big, fancy kinds with endless rows of fluorescently lit gas pumps, a plethora of prepackaged foods with enough preservatives to survive an apocalypse, pay-by-the-minute showers in the restrooms, and a kitschy souvenir gift aisle longer than the eighty footer I was currently hauling. With that many amenities, I was surprised to find they didn’t have any Christmas gift bags. I assumed it was because they didn’t feel the need to stock something like that at a truck stop, but seeing as they had everything from toothpaste to boxes of breakfast cereal, I guessed they were sold out since it had been Christmas Eve night.

  I simply had to get creative with the only option available to me; I had to get after it, to use Colton’s favorite saying. The scarf was rolled and lovingly placed in a purple gift bag with the latest cartoon princess on it proudly proclaiming “Happy Birthday!” while inexplicably shooting sparkles from her hands. I’d taken a marker from my glove box after getting back in my rig and scribbled out “Birthday” and written “Christmas” above it. It was genuinely the best I could do under the circumstances. Wrapping it in the Sunday comics seemed an insult somehow, and handing it to him outright didn’t do the gift justice. I’d spent more on knitting that scarf than any other project I’d worked on, pouring more than just time into it.