🔥 The Next Part 🔥
An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from The Last Train Home by Milo Hart
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This bonus chapter takes place on Luca and Theo’s wedding night, after the epilogue of The Last Train Home. It contains major spoilers and very explicit sexual content (18+), and it runs hotter than the book. Read the novel first for the full experience.
A Monday wedding in a closed diner. Forty feet of Station Street. A green Ford, a bench seat, and the 11:40 coming in on time. Explicit content — 18+.
The Next Part
THEO
We got married on a Monday because I’m closed Mondays.
Four o’clock, in my own dining room, with the chairs down and one long table shoved together down the middle the way I do it Sundays. A judge from Hartsfield who eats my patty melt once a month did the talking. Dana stood up for me. Luca asked his mother, and Miriam cried from the first word to the last without making a sound, the way she does. My father sat at the head of the table in a necktie he made Bev tie for him. Bev cooked. She wouldn’t let either one of us near the line. Marcus ran plates in a white shirt somebody had ironed for him, and Gus sat on stool one with his back to the whole thing, because he said he’d been to enough weddings and he’d watch this one in the pie case.
No rings. We’d talked about it. Luca’s hands are in water half the day and mine are on a flat-top, and neither one of us wanted a thing we’d have to take off to work. He had a guest check in his shirt pocket instead. Green. My pad. RULE FIVE in my capitals, and under it the date, and under that, in his, YES.
The judge asked did I have anything to say. I said, “I do,” because that’s the part you’re supposed to say. Then I said, “I’d like it on the record I asked first,” and the whole room laughed, and Luca put his face in my shoulder in front of forty people and stayed there.
That was the wedding.
By eleven everybody was gone. Dana took my father back to Maple Court in her car, which he hates, because she drives like she’s carrying eggs. Miriam took the leftover cake in her quilted carrier. Luca washed the last rack himself. He wouldn’t let me. I dried. Then he hung up his apron, and he looked at me across my own kitchen with his tie off and his collar open, thirty-six years old, and I watched him get ready to say something nice.
“Get your coat,” I said.
“It’s eleven o’clock at night.”
“I know what time it is.”
“We’re going somewhere? Theo. It’s our wedding night. There’s a bed upstairs. It’s got a rail. I was told I’d be holding it.”
“Coat, Lu.”
He got his coat.
The truck was where she always is, under the one lot light that works, along the side of the building. She’s got two hundred and nine thousand miles on her. She still pulls left. He’s quit telling me it’s a forty-dollar fix. He’s started telling me it’s a feature.
I drove her across Station Street. That’s the whole trip. Forty feet. I parked in the station lot facing the platform, nose to the tracks, in the same space as the last week of August fourteen years ago. I’d measured it in my head a thousand times. I got it within a foot.
I cut the engine. I rolled my window down. It was cold for October; the air came in smelling like leaves and diesel.
He looked at the platform. He looked at me.
“Oh,” he said. Quiet.
“Yeah.”
“You said you weren’t doing the next part in a truck.”
“I said it in a parking lot in Hartsfield with you half in my lap. I meant it then.” I put my arm along the back of the bench seat. “I’m a married man now. I’ve changed my position.”
He laughed. It went out the window into the dark and came back off the platform, and I thought, I’ve waited fourteen years to hear that out here.
“You planned this,” he said.
“Since the day you wrote yes.”
“You never plan anything. You plan pot roast.”
“I planned this.”
He slid across the bench seat. Not fast. He took his time over it, the way I’ve taught him, and I watched him do it, and the vinyl creaked under him exactly the same as it did when he was twenty-two. He stopped with his thigh against mine.
“Tell me what you want,” he said. “Out loud. You’re the one who made it a rule.”
I’ve gotten better at that. I’m still not good. I looked at the platform so I’d get through it.
“That first night you came across this seat like there wasn’t a steering wheel. You had both fists in my shirt. I had my hand on the small of your back, and I didn’t do one other thing with it, because you were leaving at six-ten.” I made myself look at him. “You’re not leaving. I want you in my lap. I want to take you apart on this seat, slow, with the window down, and I want you to come with nobody’s hand on you while you look at that platform. Then I want to do it again.”
He didn’t say anything for a second. His ears had gone. They still do.
“That’s a lot of words for you,” he said. His voice had dropped.
“I practiced on the hood filter.”
“Kiss me first.”
I kissed him.
It was nothing like the first time. The first time he missed and got my chin, and kissed like he talked, too fast and all over the place. Now he knows where my mouth is. He opened for me right away, slow, his hand coming up flat on my chest the way it does when he’s telling me he isn’t going anywhere. He tasted like Bev’s cake and the coffee he’d had at ten, cream first. I got my hand in his hair. It’s going a little gray over his ears now. He’d hate for me to put that in writing.
He came across into my lap with one knee on either side of my thighs, his back to the steering wheel, his head bent under the roof. Fourteen years ago he’d had to crouch. He still did.
“You’re too big for this truck,” he said into my mouth.
“I’ve been this size since you were nine.”
“Then the truck’s too small.”
“Truck’s fine. Get your jacket off.”
He shrugged it off his shoulders and let it fall on the seat behind him. Then the tie, which was already half gone. His shirt was a white one Miriam bought him for the day, and I unbuttoned it from the top with one hand while I held him by the hip with the other. I didn’t hurry. I pushed the shirt off his left shoulder. There are eleven freckles on it. I put my mouth on the first one, and then on the next one, and he made a sound and rocked down against me.
“Theo.”
“I’ve got eleven of these to get through.”
“That’s my line. I’ve got eleven tricks. You’ve got one speed.”
“That’s right.”
I counted every one with my mouth. He was hard in his good pants before I was halfway, grinding down slow on my thigh, his breath going short over the top of my head. By the eleventh he had both hands braced on the roof of the cab and his head tipped back against it, and the windshield was going white.
“Pants,” he said. “Please. I’m asking.”
“I heard you.”
I got his belt open. He lifted up on his knees so I could get them down, and it took both of us and some swearing, because there’s no room in that cab for a grown man to get out of his trousers and never has been. He ended up with them off one leg and around the other ankle, laughing, and I didn’t care. Then I had him in my hand.
I know him now. That’s the thing. Fourteen years ago I had him in my fist for about two minutes and spent twelve years living on it. Now I know how he likes it on a Tuesday afternoon with the sun in, and how he likes it at four in the morning before he’s had his coffee, and how he likes it when he’s been at Maple Court for nine hours and doesn’t want to be anybody’s chef. I know where the old burn is on his thumb and the new one on his wrist. I know he’ll push into my hand three times and then stop himself, like he’s being greedy.
He pushed into my hand three times and stopped himself.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Not tonight.”
“Do what?”
“Ration it.”
His eyes came open. He looked down at me for a long second, lit up green from the signal light on the platform.
“Okay,” he said.
Then he quit holding anything back, and I got to watch it.
I’ve told him I like watching. I haven’t told him how much. He fucked into my fist with his hands on the roof and his mouth open, and I held him by the root and let him, slick from what he was leaking, thumb going over the head every time he came up. He talks. He’ll always talk. Most of it isn’t words, at that point. Some of it was my name, the long one. Some of it was “God, the seat,” because the springs in that bench have been going since before either of us could drive and were telling the whole station lot.
Then I took my hand away.
He made a noise like I’d lifted his wallet. Same noise he made the first night upstairs, the first time I did it to him. I’ll never get tired of it.
“Theo.”
“There’s a bottle in the glove box.”
He stared at me. Then he started laughing again, helpless, forehead dropping onto my shoulder.
“You put lube in the glove box.”
“Saturday.”
“With the registration.”
“Under the registration. I’m not an animal.”
He had to twist all the way around to get it. I had my hands on his bare ass while he did it, and I took my time about that, too, and by the time he had the glove box open he’d given up on the latch twice.
I don’t wear anything with him anymore. Haven’t since a Sunday in December with every light on. I got my belt open and my fly down and myself out, and he looked down at me in my good pants with my shirt still buttoned to the collar, and he said, “You married me in that shirt,” like it was the most indecent thing he’d ever seen.
“Give me the bottle.”
He gave me the bottle.
I opened him up slow. That part I’ll never rush. Two fingers, slick and warm from my hand, with him up on his knees over me and his hands back on the roof, and I watched his face do it. That pinch between his eyebrows first. Then it letting go. Then his mouth falling open, and the breath going out of him on a long shaky sound when I found the place and stayed on it.
“Like that,” he said. “Exactly like that, don’t— no, don’t change it, I’m not giving you notes, I swear to God, I’m only telling you—”
“I know what you’re telling me.”
“I’m telling you it’s good.”
“I know it’s good.”
Three, when he asked. He asked properly. He’s gotten good at that. He asked with nothing to trade, with his forehead down against mine and the windows fogged solid, and I gave it to him, and he shook.
Then he reached down and took hold of me himself, and he looked at me. Asking. Fourteen years ago he would have just done it.
“Go on,” I said.
He sank down on me.
Slow. All the way. I felt every inch of him take me, hot and tight and slick, and I had to put my head back against the rear window, in the same spot I cracked it the first time, and breathe.
He stayed there. Seated all the way down, his weight in my lap, his arms gone around my neck. Neither of us moved.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“We’re married.”
“I was there.”
“In your truck. In the lot. Theo.” His voice cracked. “I was so scared that night. You don’t know. I’d never wanted anything in my life the way I wanted you, and I got on that train anyway, because I thought if I stayed I’d be some kid from a diner. I’ve been some kid from a diner for two years. It’s the best thing I’ve ever been.”
I didn’t have anything to put next to that. I put my hand on the small of his back instead, the same place as the first night. Flat. Holding him down against me.
He felt it. I watched him feel it.
“There you go,” I said.
He came apart a little, right there, before I’d moved an inch. He put his face in my neck and his whole body shuddered, and I held on.
Then I moved.
I can’t do much in that seat. I’ve got fifty pounds on him and no room. So I didn’t try to do much. I held him by the hips and rocked him on me, slow and deep, a little at a time, and let the bench do the rest. That seat has had fourteen years to learn the two of us. It gave and came back, gave and came back, and he rode it, and every time he came down I was all the way in him.
“Look out the window,” I said.
He turned his head. The platform was empty. The bench, bolted down, with the armrest in the middle. The vending machine with the OUT OF ORDER sign. The clock said 11:34.
“I watched you get on a train from right here,” I said. Low. Into his ear. “I listened for the 11:40 for three years after. I’d be in the pit with my hands in the water, and I’d know the second it stopped. I’d find a reason to be at the window.” I pushed up into him, slow. “Then you got off it. And you walked across the street. And you sat on my stool and leaned left.”
“Theo—”
“I’m telling you where it is, Lu. Same as always. You don’t have to do a thing to get it.”
He sobbed. Once. Then he started moving on me in earnest, and I let him, and I held him down with my hand on his back so he couldn’t go far.
He wasn’t doing anything clever. I’d have known. He was just taking it, the way he took it the first time upstairs, all of it, nothing for the judges. His cock was hard and wet between us, dragging on my shirt, my good shirt, the one I got married in, and I didn’t put a hand on it. I’d said I wouldn’t. He knew I wouldn’t.
“I can’t,” he said. “Theo, I can’t, not like this, you’re not even—”
“Yes, you can.”
“I need—”
“No, you don’t. Look at the platform.”
He looked. I felt it start in him. I know it the way I know when a fryer’s about to come up to heat. His thighs went tight on mine. His fingers went into the back of my neck.
And out in the dark to the east, down past the grain elevator, the 11:40 blew for the crossing.
He went rigid.
“That’s—”
“Yeah.”
“You timed it.” He was laughing and crying at the same time, his breath coming in pieces. “You timed it, you timed it, you absolute—”
“I’ve had a schedule on my wall for thirty-nine years. I know when the train comes in.”
The light came first. White, down the track, getting bigger. Then the sound under it, the rails singing, and the whole lot started to shake. The truck shook. The bench seat shook under him. The windows buzzed in their frames, and the air freshener I’ve had on the mirror since the Clinton administration started swinging.
He came with the train coming in.
Nobody’s hand on him. Eyes wide open on that platform. It took him from somewhere deep and went on, and on, pulsing hot between us across my shirt, his whole body clamping down on me so hard I lost the rest of my rhythm and quit trying to keep it. He shouted. I don’t think he heard himself. I don’t think anybody on that train heard him, either, but I’ve got a lot of respect for the engineer if he didn’t.
I let go.
I’ve done that quiet my whole life. I didn’t do it quiet. I came buried in him to the hilt with both arms around him and my face in his chest and his name coming out of me, the short one, over and over, and the 11:40 going by six feet from my bumper, so loud the cab rang with it.
The doors opened across the way. Nobody got off.
The train sat there, idling. We sat there.
Then it pulled out, east, toward the city, and took the noise with it. The quiet it left behind was enormous. The windows dripped. The air freshener swung, slower, and quit.
He was still in my lap. I was still in him. Neither of us made any move to change that.
“Nobody got off,” he said, finally. Wrecked.
“Nobody had to.”
He lifted his head. He looked at me, and there wasn’t anything on his face for anybody. No book. No camera. Thirty-six years old, his hair stuck to his forehead, his good shirt hanging open on one shoulder, and his mouth swollen from me.
“Was that your plan?” he said. “The train?”
“That was the whole plan.”
“You’ve been timing it.”
“Every Monday since you said yes. I came out here and sat.”
“By yourself?”
“I had a stopwatch.”
He put his forehead against mine and laughed until he was shaking with it, and I felt every bit of it where we were joined, and I held on.
We did it again. I’d said I wanted to. I said what I want out loud now; that’s the rule.
The second time I put him on his back across the bench, with his head on his own jacket against the passenger door and one leg hooked over the seat back, and I had to fold up like a lawn chair to fit and get my knee on the floor mat. He laughed at me the whole time, right up until I was in him again, and then he quit laughing and held on to the door handle with one hand and the back of my neck with the other.
Slower that time. No train. No plan. Just the two of us and the springs and the window down, and his heels in my back. He came with my hand on him, because he asked for it, and I came after him with my face in his neck, and he said into my hair, “Yes, Chef,” and I laughed so hard I nearly put us both in the footwell.
“You’re not funny,” I said.
“I’m a little funny.”
“You answer to dish.”
“I answer to husband,” he said. “Try it.”
I tried it. It came out of me rough, like most things that matter do. He shut his eyes like I’d handed him something warm.
It was ten of one when I drove us back across the street. Forty feet. She pulled left. He’d given up on getting his pants back on and sat there with my jacket over his lap and his bare feet on the dash, and I didn’t tell him to get them down.
The sign was off. I’d shut it off at eleven. The D still stutters when it’s on. He’s never fixed it. I’ve never asked him to. Some nights I think he leaves it for me.
I parked her under the lot light, along the side of the building, where she always is. I cut the engine. Neither of us moved to get out.
“Can I ask you for something?” he said.
“Ask.”
“Don’t ever sell this truck.”
“Wasn’t going to.”
“I mean it. When she dies, she stays here. Put her up on blocks. Plant tomatoes in her. I want to be ninety and sit in her and look at that platform.”
“Lu.”
“I’m asking.”
“She stays,” I said.
He looked at me in the dark.
“That’s it? That’s all I get?”
“It’s a truck, Lu,” I said. “She stays.”
He leaned across the bench and kissed me, slow, with the windows fogged and his feet still on my dash. Then he picked up his shoes in one hand and his pants in the other and walked across my lot to my back door barefoot, in his wedding shirt, with my jacket around his waist like an apron.
He had his own key out before he got there. I watched him use it.
I sat there one more minute by myself, in the truck, with the window down. Across the street the platform was empty. The clock said 12:52.
I didn’t look at it long. I had somewhere to be.
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