Author's note: This is the third story in the Skate AU. Previous to this are Skate and The Dog House.
Max walked up to the truck, cowboy boots crunching in the gravel drive. These had seemed the thing to wear when visiting Montana, and with her long brown hair, checkered Pendleton shirt, boot-cut jeans, and aging, enormous pickup truck, she could almost pass for a local. Until she opened her mouth, anyway.
She climbed into the driver's seat, slammed the heavy door. She had a long drive ahead; Butte to Seattle would take 10 hours at the very least. It was just after dawn, and cold, but as the sun rose over the mountains to the east, it would heat up fast, and the truck didn't have air conditioning. They didn't need it in Seattle, but Max sure missed A/C when she found herself this far inland in the summer, where the ocean breeze she was accustomed to was replaced by a hot, dusty, desiccating wind. Stepping out into it always reminded her of opening the door of a hot oven.
Despite the lack of creature comforts, there would be no replacing this truck. For Chloe it was the symbol of her hopeful future, the chariot which had carried her away from Arcadia Bay and into Max's arms. For Max, it had always been the number one accessory completing the picture of grown-up Chloe, blue-haired and bad-ass. If she tried, she could almost imagine Chloe without it. Almost.
By rights the old monster had no business being on the road anymore, but it had been kept alive, even improved, by the deft mechanical stewardship of David Madsen. The arrangement had begun before Max started college, and had, over time, helped heal the rift between David and Chloe. It had begun, oddly enough, over dinner on a visit to Arcadia Bay, when he had decided to question Max and Chloe's relationship.
"You move up to Seattle, and now you two are living this gay lifestyle…"
"You think it's a lifestyle?!" Chloe had sputtered.
Joyce had winced, "David, we talked about this…"
He kept digging. "You're both so young, I just think you're making a mistake."
Max almost choked on her food. "A mistake?!"
"I am not listening to this. I'm out." Chloe pushed back from the table, headed for the door. "Max, you coming?"
"No, I'm… gonna finish my dinner."
"Fine. Whatever." The front door slammed, and Chloe was gone.
Lighthouse, Max thought. Under the table, she pulled out her phone, texted Chloe. "Will catch up, trying to talk sense. Love you. xo"
David sighed and grimly returned his attention to his food, while Joyce stared at him in silent frustration.
Max took a deep breath, willed herself to relax. His being a pigheaded asshole didn't really affect her. She lived hundreds of miles away and this was not her family. "David. This is not something we chose. I didn't decide to fall in love with Chloe, it just happened, it's who I am. I can't control that any more than you can."
"But why can't…"
She cut him off. "You've got this attitude that we're doing something weird, or wrong, and it's bullshit. You belittle our relationship and you belittle us, and you need to start thinking about me and Chloe the same way you think about yourself and Joyce. Because it's the same thing!"
He blinked, hung his head. "Joyce... is the most important thing in my life." Joyce reached out and took his hand, under the table.
"Exactly! And it's not easy, by the way. She had it worse than me, she figured out she was gay when she was eleven. She went six years without ever telling anybody how she felt, not even me! Do you know her friends here, in Arcadia Bay, still don't know? When we see them, we act like we're just friends, because she's still afraid of how they'll react? In Seattle we can be out in the open and nobody bats an eye. It's not a lifestyle, it's just being honest about who we are."
"David," Joyce said, "Max is absolutely right. It's part of the reason I let Chloe move."
He looked at her, a little sad. "I guess I never thought about it that way. We didn't have any gays in the service…"
"You had plenty, but you served under Don't Ask Don't Tell!" Max said, "They had to keep it secret. And don't call us 'gays'."
He looked away, spoke wistfully. "The world keeps changing on me, I can't keep track of what's up and down anymore. I just want what's best for Chloe, I wish I could make her understand that."
"Then you need to stop questioning how she lives her life and start actually helping!" Max gestured toward the front of the house. "That truck is falling apart. You know she can't afford to fix it. Have you ever even offered to take a look at it?"
"It's not my truck."
"But she is your family, or at least you want her to be."
"Maybe… maybe you're right, Max. I could give it a once-over. It's pretty old but… sometimes that makes things easier to fix."
"That would be big of you." Max stood up. "I'm going to go catch her and bring her home, and if you're smart you'll apologize, even if she gets in your face."
"I… will. I am sorry, Max."
Once David had spent a little time under the hood, his enthusiasm for restoring old clunkers had taken hold. Over the ensuing years the truck had become a working symbol of defiance of the laws of automotive entropy. It had absorbed a new, far more efficient engine, new brakes, suspension upgrades, and about a thousand smaller things, the parts costing more than they would have paid for a newer, more sound vehicle. But this was way cooler.
Max turned the ignition, heard the modern engine purr to life, missed the clattering roar of the old V8. Six hundred miles to home, six hundred to Chloe. Too long apart. The truck eased down the gravel drive, turned onto the highway, and accelerated away from the sun.
Chloe stepped off the bus with her longboard in the crook of her arm, carrying her helmet by its straps. Nice of them to put a bus stop at the very top of this hill. She looked out at the view, water and house-dotted hills spreading in all directions, downtown in the distance. The sky was typical Seattle gray. The sun might come out later, might not. You never knew.
She dropped the board, strapped on the helmet, stuffing her blue locks up out of the way. She hated the headgear, it made her feel like a dork every time she put it on. On her own, she wouldn't wear it; her survival instinct never really kicked in that way. But when she'd objected to it, Max had asked Chloe to imagine her "getting the call", and the discussion had ended. So Chloe figured her instinct to stick as close as possible to Max "I don't think that's a good idea" Caulfield was a pretty good substitute for a normal sense of self-preservation.
But she wasn't Max Caulfield anymore, Chloe reminded herself, she was Max Price. Chloe chuckled, recalling the conversation which had led to this absurd name. "Max Price Photography?!" she had objected. "Nobody's gonna hire you with a name like that!"
"It'll be Maxine Price Photography," Max had said. "People who call me Max don't use my last name anyway. And Chloe Caulfield's no better, the alliteration is painful."
"Maybe we could come up with a new name? Caulpr… ew. Pricefield? That's got a decent ring to it."
"Sounds like a discount big-box store. 'You'll save a bundle at Pricefield!' No way."
"Ugh, good point. Still, seriously babe, Max Price is ridiculous. Maybe we should just keep our names."
"I kind of like that it's ridiculous!" Max said. "I always thought Caulfield was boring. And also, it's your dad's name and… I want to take it in his honor, be part of his family. I want to be a Price."
"That… makes sense I guess. Mrs. and Mrs. Max and Chloe Price. I do like the sound of that."
"Plus, come on," Max said, smirking and gesturing down at her skirt, "we both know who wears the pants in this relationship."
"Oh yeah?! We'll see about that! Gimme!" Chloe exclaimed, stripping off her jeans and attempting to steal Max's skirt. She had gotten it, eventually.
Chloe looked down the road, couldn't see anybody coming or going. Time to roll. She stepped onto the board, kicked once, and let the downhill slope accelerate her. Once she was moving, she started arcing back and forth, up a bit into side streets and slopes, managing her speed. She rolled past dense trees on either side, cut occasionally by a driveway with some big house visible behind it. It was a nice area, the sort of place you aspired to if you were into square footage, three-car garages, and "good schools". Whatever those were.
Here and there she spun the board, did a few simple tricks, just to keep her feet busy, but she couldn't get too fancy on a board like this. Reaching a flat stretch, she coasted, pulled out her phone, snapped a quick selfie, sent it to Max. Who'd be home today, at last. Chloe had been stuck in her own head for entirely too long and was climbing the fucking walls.
Max should be somewhere in the Montana mountains by now, maybe crossing into Idaho. Not much longer now.
I-90 wove through the mountains, bracketed on both sides by dry hills, sparsely covered with smallish conifers. Here and there a small town, or an isolated gas station, but even on this main route, it was sparsely-populated country. Even Arcadia Bay seemed metropolitan by comparison; it was small, but the towns on the coast were pretty close together and Portland wasn't really that far away. Out here, you were a long way from everything.
The truck hit a pothole, and the cargo in the back clattered loudly. Max looked in the rearview mirror, checking the tarp and ropes holding everything together for any signs of loosening. She'd spent an hour the previous night winching everything down at tightly as she could; the prints themselves were easy enough to reproduce, but the big frames were not cheap and a pain in the ass to put together. It would have been a lot easier if she'd had help.
The exhibitions had gone reasonably well, she'd sold several pieces and gotten some solid leads on commission work. The taste out here was different from the Seattle scene, people were interested in a bigger range of her work. She'd also worked in several shoots, making the most of the trip.
Still, it was a long-ass drive and she hated leaving Chloe behind. Coffee for one. Meals for one. Bed for one. She had a terrible time trying to fall asleep. She tried to work out how many nights she'd slept alone since Chloe had moved to Seattle, in high school. Not many. A few holidays they'd split up for (that had sucked), that one bad weekend in college, a couple of shorter work junkets. This trip had significantly increased the total.
Her phone buzzed. She glanced over at it, saw a selfie of Chloe wearing her helmet, bits of blue hair poking out the edges. Must be skating. At least one of them was having fun. Four hundred miles to home.