Kyle really wasn’t much of a person to collect a lot of things, except for the fact that he had an abnormally large number of books, some of which he thought it was unlikely he would ever read again. This was a good time to clean out his collection, but that was going to be a slow part of the process. After several evenings he’d culled his collection considerably, and the Friends of the Wychbold Library benefited from a big donation to their monthly used book sale.

As he got into the preparations to move, he kept coming across little things that needed to be done that were big time wasters. Right in the middle of the whole show he realized he hadn’t talked to Rianna, the art gallery owner in Ann Arbor who had several of his photo prints for sale. He really hadn’t been doing much with the project since he’d gotten involved with Chelsea, but had spent a few evenings at enhancing some photos he’d taken of the landscapes where they did their shoots when he hadn’t been able to find anything better to do.

“I’ve been meaning to call you,” Rianna said when he introduced himself. “Just today I sold two of your prints. Do you think you could send me another half dozen?”

“Sure can,” he said. “I have some already done, and all they need to do is to be printed. I can probably get them done in the next few days.”

“Good. If you can make up a few more, there’s an art fair down in Toledo right after the first of the year. It would be nice if you could be there for a meet and greet.”

“Rianna, I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m not going to be available for it.” He went on to explain about his new job and when he would be moving, and then went on, “I’d still like you to handle some of my prints, though. Just because I’m going to be in Colorado doesn’t mean I can’t mail them to you.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear you say it. I don’t think they’re ever going to be big sellers, but there is certain type of customer who likes them.”

“That’s all I ever wanted out of it,” he told her. “At least this move to Colorado is going to mean the opportunity for some different landscapes to work with.”

“I’ll be looking forward to seeing them,” she said. “You do some interesting things with your photography.”

The conversation went on from there for a while, but the upshot of it was that Kyle had to take three evenings and a Saturday out of his limited time to work up more photos and have a number of them printed. They were too large for normal photo printers and had to be done at a specialty shop in Fort Wayne, but at least he could send the files down there electronically. While he was at it, he printed a couple of his favorites, reasoning that the walls of his new apartment could use a little decoration, too.

While he was working on them, he dug out his one of his favorite photos of Chelsea and gave it his typical enhancement, too – it was one he had taken while she was wearing the black latex swimsuit, standing knee-deep in the water and looking out into the sunset. He had his doubts about it since he knew it would remind him of her, even though she was unidentifiable in the photo even before he enhanced it. If nothing else, it would be a dynamite piece of art for his new living room. At the last minute, he ran off a second copy of it, and included it in the collection he sent to Rianna.

A couple of days later, Rianna called back and said she loved the swimsuit shot, and loved the different direction it took his work. Maybe, she suggested, he ought to think about exploring that new direction a little more. Kyle told her he’d think about it, but he didn’t tell her that it seemed likely there wouldn’t be any more pieces that involved Chelsea, so there was no telling where that would come out.

All of this put him a little behind in his preparations, but nothing he couldn’t heal by working harder. By the end of the week before Christmas, he had almost everything packed up and was nearly living out of a suitcase and having to eat his meals out – not that he didn’t do that often as it was.

On Friday night of that week he drove into Bolivar to pick up the rental trailer he’d use to take the Triumph to Colorado, and the first thing the next morning he towed it out to the storage shed. He carefully loaded the little sports car onto it before stacking the seats and the trunk of the car with things he’d taken from the apartment. That meant that the next morning all he would have to do would be to hook onto the trailer and go.

With that done, there was nothing to do but to get into the pickup and go to his parents’ house. He still didn’t want to do it because he didn’t want to face the scene he knew could still develop, but he’d said he’d do it and he thought he needed to keep his word.

By now his time was getting tight to make it to his folks’ house by noon. Even by driving over the limit a little, it was still took him over two hours to get there.

A little to his surprise his parents were happy to see him; at least his mother was, and his father seemed civil, so either he’d gotten over his snit about Chelsea or was still trying to keep it covered up. Either way, Kyle didn’t mind.

His mother never really raised the topic, except to say once that she was sorry that she’d had to move away. Kyle didn’t notice any particular reaction out of his father when she said it, and he agreed that he was sorry things hadn’t worked out. The rest of the time they mostly talked about his new job, which he wasn’t being real specific about, and about relatives and other such things. Of course, his mother pestered him about finding a girl, getting married and giving her some grandchildren, but he’d expected that – not that he really liked her pestering, but maybe she understood that his move to Fort Collins was a step in that direction.

The two hours he’d planned on stretched into a relatively pleasant three before Kyle knew he had to be getting back on the road. Even so, he was happy to point the pickup back toward Wychbold. The meeting had gone well, better than he had expected, but he’d known he was walking on eggs and presumably his father had known the same thing. While he still loved his parents, he wasn’t sure how much he still liked them, especially after the snotty phone call he’d gotten from his father back in October. Someday things might be different, and if and when he got married they might well be, but for now, perhaps it was best to have the love at a comfortable distance; the nearly fifteen hundred miles seemed comfortable enough.

It was after dark before he got back to his apartment, which was so barren and stacked up with boxes that he didn’t feel like he could call it home any more. There were still a few things he could pack that evening, but not much, so he thought he might as well call Chelsea to let her know he would be leaving in the morning. Now that he thought about it, he realized that he hadn’t talked to her in a week.

A little to his surprise she picked up on the first ring. “Kyle, it’s good to hear from you,” she said. “How have things been going?”

“Pretty well. I didn’t know if you’d be home or what, or maybe out on a date or something, but I thought I might as well try to call you.”

“No, no date,” she said. “In fact, I haven’t had one since the one we talked about. So are you going to be leaving soon?”

“Tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of kids coming over to help me finish loading, but since it’ll be Sunday morning there’s no telling how much dynamite their parents will have to use to get them out of bed that early. As soon as everything is loaded, I’m hitting the road.”

“I’m going to be leaving pretty soon myself. I have to admit that I’m a little excited about seeing my parents again, and a little worried about it at the same time. So did you go see your parents like we talked about?”

“Yeah, I got back a little while ago. It went better than I expected. At least, everyone stayed away from subjects that might be a little touchy, like you, for example.”

“That’s good news, Kyle. At least you left the door open for the future. I hope I’ll be able to do as well.”

“Chelsea, we’ve never really gotten into the subject, but you haven’t been getting along very well with your parents either, have you?”

“No, and you’re right, I don’t like to talk about it. It goes back to college, Kyle. I, uh, did a few things they weren’t happy about, you know, kids trying out their wings kind of things, and somehow when we talk sooner or later they come up again. I got tired of hearing about it but hope enough time has passed that it won’t be quite as much of an issue.”

“Chelsea, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s all right with me, but what happened?”

“Well, there was this guy I was living with, and to look back on it, they were right, he was something of a jerk. My folks, well, they’re a little on the religious side, if you get what I mean, and for a while they didn’t miss a chance to rub my nose in it. It pretty well turned me off their brand of religion. I remember enough about it to make the right kind of sounds when I have to be down here, but I try to not let myself get cornered about it.”

“I never picked up any religious leanings out of you.”

“I think I’ve managed to wash most of it out of my system,” she replied. “It’s a subject I try to stay away from. The heck of it is that I know I’m going to get an earful of it while I’m with them, and I’m going to pretty much have to say the right thing or they’re going to be right down my throat about it.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell them about Chastity White. That really would set them off.”

“It sure would. In fact, I think that’s at least part of the reason why I started doing the website in the first place. I mean, just rebel from them, to prove to myself that I’m my own person, and not their little clone. That’s part of the reason I’m keeping this trip short. If they can be civil, then I’ll be. If they can’t, then Arlington seems like about the right distance away from them, if not farther. I hope I’ll at least be able to keep the door open with them, but it’s going to be their choice whether I do or not, and I don’t think Chastity is going to be an issue. Kyle, do you realize I haven’t had a swimsuit on once since I’ve been down here?

“Not once?

“There hasn’t been any reason to, of course, but I think either I’m getting sick or growing up, though whichever it is, I’m not sure I like it. Thank goodness I have a big backlog of Chastity White photos, or I’d be in trouble. I’m not going to like having to go back to doing selfies, and even then I’ll have to go a long way from here to do them.”

“Have you even ordered any new swimsuits?”

“I’ve been keeping my eye on sale prices but there really hasn’t been anything interesting to me. I’ve gotten out the sewing machine and made a couple. They have a really neat fabric store near here, and there have been some materials that have caught my eye. I guess that’s something I’ll have to do when I hit some really slow days this winter.”

They talked for a while longer – it was always fun to talk to Chelsea, after all. Their topics drifted off into the books they’d been reading – well, that she’d been reading since Kyle hadn’t had much time to do any reading since he’d come back from Colorado. The conversation drifted on for almost an hour before they tired each other out and called it a night. She promised to call him after she got back to Arlington so he could tell her how the trip home had gone.

It wasn’t until after Kyle hung up the phone that he realized something: from the way she’d talked, she didn’t figure on their getting together to do more Chastity White photos. He didn’t think she’d mind if they could do it, but apparently she thought it was unlikely since she had been talking about doing more selfies. And at that she might have been right. Any attempt to get together the last few months had been stymied, and she’d said earlier that the chances of being able to do it in the spring didn’t look likely.

By now Kyle had come to the conclusion that while they would more or less remain friends, if only because of the secret about her they shared, being lovers was probably dead, and her little passing revelation tonight was only another nail in the coffin.

He didn’t even feel sad about it; it was just an uncomfortable fact of life.

By now his apartment had been mostly packed up; about all that was left to tear down and pack was his bed. Even his computers had been broken down, and the more critical pieces carefully boxed, but he still had his tablet for e-mail and the like. There wasn’t a great deal he could do this evening, so more or less as an afterthought he turned the tablet on and thumbed around until he got to a weather report. He’d been keeping an eye on it, and it had looked promising for his trip, but now he was starting to pick up some hints of a winter storm that would be hitting the plains in a couple of days. That could be an issue, he thought, but there wasn’t much he could do about the timing now. He hit a couple of websites just for something to do, but gave it up early, shut the tablet off, and went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

His alarm went off early. He got up, got dressed, and went to Becky’s Café for breakfast. In recent months it had become his regular breakfast spot, and he remembered being there with Chelsea on several occasions. The waitresses were friendly and knew him by name, and he was just a little bit sorry that this would be his last breakfast there.

While he was there, he called over to find out if the kids he’d arranged to help him were up and running. They were, so he agreed to meet him at the apartment in half an hour. While he’d expected only the two young teenagers, the guys brought their sister along with them – she was just barely old enough to drive them, but she was a big help in getting stuff out of the apartment and out to the truck. There weren’t many big items to move, but those had to go out first so smaller things could be packed around them.

All in all, it only took a couple of hours to get everything was loaded. He and the kids all took one final pass through the apartment to make sure that nothing was left behind; he gave each of the kids a twenty for their efforts, and they seemed glad to have it.

Finally, there was nothing left to do but go. He went out to the storage shed, hooked up the trailer with the Triumph sitting on it, checked the connections and the tie-downs, and that was that. He got in his truck and started driving.

He’d come to Wychbold right after he got out of college, and for the most part the job had been good to him. He had done a good enough job to be put into a much better position, so he had no complaints there. But all in all, his stay in Wychbold had mostly been boring, except for the short period he’d had with Chelsea, which had been wonderful. Now that she was out of his life, he was glad to be leaving and on his way to the start of a new life.

Getting out to Fort Collins was easy, navigationally speaking. He only had to go a few miles to get to the interchange for the Indiana Turnpike, which was also Interstate 80, turn right, and in about twelve hundred miles start looking for I-25. He’d had some fairly recent experience with long trips from when he’d gone down to Arlington and back to move Chelsea. He thought that if he didn’t have the trailer with the Triumph, he might have been able to make a very early start and drive straight through in well under a day. None of those conditions applied, and he wanted to take it especially easy with the trailer and its load.

Even though it was the holiday weekend, the traffic on the turnpike was lighter than he had expected. He was aware that the pickup was towing about the maximum load that it should, and it seemed sluggish, so he mostly kept it under the speed limit and in the right lane while cars and semis buzzed past him at what had to be something just under warp speed. He’d been over this road before – most recently to go to Midway to fly out to Colorado – so he was content to sit back and take his time.

The traffic was also pretty heavy as he got into Chicago, but lighter than it had been on his earlier trip, possibly because it was late on a Sunday morning. He was uncomfortable with Chicago, even to drive near it. While he wasn’t exactly a small-town boy, Chicago seemed too big and cramped and dirty to him, and he was able to get through it without stopping and without even any hairy incidents. The traffic lightened up a bit after he was out of town and crossing the Illinois prairies. This was new country to him now, and he paid some attention to the farms and mostly open fields he could see from the seat of the pickup.

Even before he’d left on the trip, he’d decided that because he was towing the Triumph he didn’t want to have to drive much after dark, and this was right around the shortest day of the year. It had been bright and clear when he’d left Wychbold, but as he moved west it started to cloud up, and it was totally overcast as he got near the Mississippi River. It was getting dark as he crossed the high bridge over the river, and he figured he’d had enough for one day. He soon found a good motel with a “Vacancy” sign lit, so he pulled in there, taking up a couple of parking spaces, and paid what he thought was a pretty high-dollar figure for a room for the night. However, there was a good restaurant in the motel, nothing fancy, but it was convenient.

While he ate, he pulled out his tablet again to check the weather forecasts. Tomorrow looked all right, but the next night and the day to follow looked more than a little iffy. In fact, it was pretty clear that the winter storm that he’d noticed on the forecast the night before was going to be hitting in the western plains, and he doubted he wanted to try to fight it, especially while he was towing the trailer with his treasured Triumph.

After a little fussing around with the map program and weather info, he decided that Grand Island, Nebraska was about as far as he wanted to push his luck the next day, and if the storm proved to be as bad as forecast he might be stuck there for a while. While he sat there at the table he checked out motels near the Interstate in Grand Island, chose one, and made a reservation for two nights just in case.

Because of the oncoming storm he decided to turn in early so he could get up early the next morning; he was tired anyway, so it wasn’t much of a decision. He was up before it was getting light in the morning, had his breakfast at the motel restaurant, then checked the rig and the tie-downs on the Triumph carefully before getting back on the road.

He kept moving steadily along, only making stops for gas – the truck was using a lot having to haul the load on the trailer. Once when he stopped for gas he went through a drive-through to get a couple of hamburgers, but he ate them while he was driving west. By now the trees were thinning out, and as he crossed western Iowa there were a lot of hills that really made the pickup struggle, and that made him glad he wasn’t going to try to go over the mountains with it.

He didn’t realize it until much later, but he thought surprisingly little about Chelsea. She was mostly an issue of the past for him, now, and the West seemed to offer new opportunities for him. That it was the height of the holiday season hardly crossed his mind; this was no holiday for him, but something bigger in his life.

After he got through Omaha the sky ahead of him started to get really ugly. He kept pressing steadily on, but he was counting the miles until Grand Island now. He was glad to get there when he did, since there was a strong wind pushing flakes of snow, and he was sure more was to come. He checked into the motel, then went back out and parked the rig so he was facing downwind as much as he could to try and limit the snow that would drift around it. He checked again to make sure everything was buttoned up tight then went to find dinner at a nearby restaurant. It was snowing heavily when he walked back the short distance to the motel.

When he got up the next morning there was white all over the place. Traffic was moving, but slowly, and the snow was still coming down. He was very glad he’d made the precaution of arranging for two nights, because there was no way he wanted to be on the road in those conditions. When he went to breakfast he found a couple of truckers complaining about the same thing, so that just confirmed his suspicions.

He didn’t have much to do during the day, which offered the prospect of being boring until he happened to go to a Michigan writer’s website he’d enjoyed in the past. It had been long enough that there wasn’t just one new book on the site, but three, so he spent the day either in the restaurant or in his room catching up on the latest tales. That evening there were stories on the local news of how bad the storm had been and how it had plugged up the highways.

Things seemed better in the morning, so he carefully cleaned most of the snow off of the truck and the Triumph and got on the road again. He was eager to get to Fort Collins now, and eager to get on with his new life.

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