Page 12 of Cassie
He promised her she was ready.
All she had to do was follow him. Trust him.
“I do trust him,” she muttered, pushing the still-quiet bike out of the garage and letting it glide to the bottom of the slight incline. Tug’s hand moved, and she heard the overhead door behind her closing.Bastard. He held her remote and had used it to cut off any path of retreat.Moving forwards from here.
Shaking her head, she frowned down at the tank of the bike, nestled between her knees. The posture now comfortable after hours of time spent sitting on the bike.Bastard. Leaning over, she checked the petcock.On. The bike she’d bought was older, with a carburetor instead of fuel injection, but thankfully a starter button because those kickstart levers looked like the very devil to deal with on the videos she’d watched. Tug called her bike a classic and told her it matched her beauty. Something she’d laughed at until she was breathless, sides aching from the unaccustomed activity.
Focus, dammit. She needed to follow the mental checklist Tug had drilled into her if she expected to hold her nerve today.
Key. She reached and twisted it, waiting for the lights to glow on the dials attached to the handlebars.On.
Neutral. Leaning the bike slightly to the right, she pulled in the left-hand lever, engaging the clutch as she used the toe of her boot to push down a lever by her foot, watching one of the lights go out. She tucked her toe underneath the shift lever and pulled it up slightly. The light came back on in confirmation.Neutral.
Chin up, she looked at Tug and waited for him to nod, and then hit the button with her thumb. The rumble of the bike no longer surprised her, and she was ready for the way the machine seemed to torque between her legs, moving in a way that told her it was more ready than she would ever be to hit the road.Started. Hand to the clutch again, toe to shifter, tap down, putting the bike into first gear. It jolted slightly, and her stomach leapt into her throat.
I got this, she reminded herself, hearing Tug’s voice in her head as encouragement, and she swallowed hard.
Tug gestured her forward, but he didn’t move, his bike taking up all the space across the end of the driveway. Slowly, as he had taught her, she released the clutch, trying to feel the moment when it engaged and rolled the bike slowly forward. The engine on Tug’s bike started, the echoes from his exhaust pipes bouncing off the surrounding houses and fences. Her heartbeat chased the rhythm, speeding up. Ignoring that, at a snail’s pace the entire way, feet alternately dangling or padding to keep her balance, she eased to the end of the driveway, gliding the bike to a stop at least five feet away from Tug’s.
“Ready?” he called, pitching his voice to be heard over the engines, reaching up to do his own manipulation of his bike’s controls. At her nod, he moved forward smoothly, leaving the end of the driveway looking suddenly huge and open. Easily navigable.
“I can do this,” she told herself as she carefully engaged the clutch again and rode into the street, trailing behind him. Before she realized how far they had come, she watched him pull into the parking lot and followed, gliding to a stop next to him as she put her feet down to balance the bike. She knew she had a broad grin on her face when she asked, not even caring if she squealed a bit, “Did you see me?”
“Good job, baby,” he called over the noise of the engines, then he killed his bike and put down the kickstand. Leaning back on his seat, he put his feet up on what he called highway pegs. “Now. Ride some more. Get it, Cassie.”
With a nod, she released the clutch cautiously and rolled away, eyes plotting her path, picking out landmarks she could use to navigate by. That large oil spot could be one end of a figure eight, and the flattened leaf the other. She could use the place where the individual parking space lines joined the row to make a weave pattern like the one she had found online.I can do this, she thought.I really can do this.
***
“Yeah, but I still feel like a fraud,” she told Tug, hearing him laugh on the other end of the line.
“You ain’t no fraud, Cassie.” She imagined him shaking his head, grease-stained fingers going up to smooth that damn mustache. “A newbie, but not a fraud. You’ve got bit by the bug, sure as shit.”
“I just feel absurd,” she said, twisting to look at herself in the mirror of her bedroom. It would be her first time riding solo on the street, and he was insisting she needed to wear all her leather garments, even the chaps. He wasn’t able to ride with her today, and she didn’t want to wait, wanted to already be “in the wind” as he called it.
The woman who looked back at her from the mirror looked far different from the one she normally saw. This one wore her hair up and back, revealing her face. She had on black square-toed boots, a black leather jacket, black leather chaps over tightly fitting jeans, and to top it all off, black leather gloves that covered her arm up past her wrist. She had goggles to put on with her helmet, which would complete her outfit.
“You’ll have all your skin someone gets stupid around you and causes a wreck. Skin’s hard as fuck to grow back, Cassie. Wear the fuckin’ gear, honey.”
That was something she liked about Tug. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, didn’t placate her or talk down to her, didn’t worry he would trip her into an anxiety attack. He was just himself, all the time. You could always know what you were getting with Tug. Riding with him over the past weeks had shown her the kinds of stupid behaviors people exhibited in traffic, and she knew his concern was valid.Listen to the man. She had less than two hundred miles of experience under her belt, while he had thousands and thousands.
“I will,” she said softly, and he huffed a laugh in her ear.
There was noise in the background where he was, a rising roar of voices shouting greetings. Laughter of his friends nearer to the phone and she heard someone call his name. “Gotta go, Cassie. You ride safe, yeah?”
With a giggle, she said, “Will do, boss.”
She saluted herself in the mirror, already moving to disconnect the call when she heard him say with a smile in his voice, “Shiny side up.” Her reflection’s answering smile surprised her, and she studied her face for a moment before turning away.
Her route, approved by him, was to head through downtown and south for about thirty miles on one of the main state highways. Her assignment, provided via text this morning, was to gas up at an unfamiliar place, and then stop for food on her way home. It should be about an hour total, maybe a little more depending on how slowly she rode.
I can do this. That had become her mantra, and with Tug’s encouragement, she believed she could.
Sitting in the center lane at a red light near the downtown courthouse, she was looking up at the signal when she first heard the noise. A low rumble, it sounded like a train approaching, and she expected the pavement to begin shaking underneath her feet. Whipping her head to the right, she saw a long double-line of motorcycles pulling to a smooth stop, their light having gone red and impeding their progress.
Eyes flicking between the light—the left turn lane had a green, she would be next—and the mass of motorcycles, she had a moment to register that every rider she could see was looking at her before the light in front of her went green. Feigning nonchalance, she nodded her head at the lead riders as she smoothly released her clutch. She was filled with equal amounts of fear and excitement when they nodded back at her.
Holy cow, that was a lot of bikes, she thought, working her way up through the gears and looking ahead to the next set of lights, keeping track of the cars on either side of her at the same time.Like…a bunch of bikes. Lined up two-by-two as they had been, there were probably forty rows, which meant at least eighty bikes.Holy cow. The right lane ended just ahead, and she slowed slightly to allow a car to slide in ahead of her.
