Page 12 of Brash for It
I pull off.There’s a two-pump station near the split on highway fifty-eight that always smells like hot rubber and cheap coffee.The bell over the door slaps when I push through.The old man at the counter looks me over and nods like we’re soldiers trading salutes.
“Hot,” he says.
“It’s Carolina.”
He flicks his eyes toward the cooler.“Cold’s in there.”
I grab a water, slap cash down, don’t take the receipt.Outside, I lean on the bike and drink half the bottle in six swallows.A kid in a minivan points at my patch through a smeared window.His mom pulls his hand down and mouths sorry at me.I raise the bottle in a lazy toast.She smiles like she got away with something.
Back on the road, the trees thicken, Croatan forest and swamped out ditches in some spots crowding the shoulders.The air shifts—fresher, wetter, speckled with salt if you breathe deep enough.
I do.
I hit highway twenty-four heading into Cedar Point and the whole world opens before I take the left into Cape Carteret.Bogue Sound spreads out in front of me next.Tourists litter the road with their rental SUVs and bad choices.I weave through them clean, head on a swivel, eyes cutting angles and finding exits.You ride like the other guy’s an idiot and you live longer.
I could go all over the bridges to the beach.Instead, I drop off by a public boat ramp most people ignore once the day’s done.The gravel crunches loud in the quiet.A couple of trucks sit with empty trailers, straps flapping lazy in the breeze.Someone left a bait box cracked, the smell of shrimp hits in whiffs.
I kill the engine and the sudden silence presses.The ocean’s not loud here on the sound side.The sound talks low, a long exhale under the rasp of marsh insects.I swing off the bike and walk to the end of the dock.The boards flex under my boots.A crab pot bobs, its rope ticking against a cleat like an impatient finger.
I breathe.In through my nose, out slow.My heart steps down a rung.
When I’m riding, my thoughts line up.When I stop, they get ideas.They tiptoe in and start rearranging furniture.
My brothers all settling down.I’m happy for them.It’s not a lie.Seeing a brother find a soft place to land doesn’t take a damn thing from me.It doesn’t.It just makes me asks questions I don’t want to answer.
Do I want that?
The word itself feels like a splinter.I touch it and pull back.
I can picture pieces.Not all at once—never all at once—but flashes.A woman’s laugh coming down the hall while I kick off my boots.A second coffee mug left in the sink, lipstick print like a red thumbprint.A light on in a back room because someone fell asleep reading.A voice asking,You coming to bed?And mine saying,Yeah.In a minute.And meaning it.
Then the flash burns out and leaves the afterimage, how it actually goes.How soft turns into leverage.How love becomes a ledger.How partnership becomes a set of unbalanced scales.How trust turns into a choke chain someone wraps around your throat, gentle at first, then tighter when you step wrong.The last time I tried it, I ended up at the bottom of a hole I dug with my own hands, throwing dirt on myself and calling it a garden.
Maybe I didn’t pick right.Maybe I don’t know how.Maybe I do know how and the knowing is the problem.
Wind skims the water.A shrimp boat moves like a slow prayer in the channel, deck lights sketching an orange ladder on the surface.From somewhere down the dock, laughter spits out—a group of guys late to load a cooler into a little john boat, their work shirts still on, caps turned backward like the night is theirs to own.They don’t look at me.Good.I don’t feel like being a story in someone else’s memories tonight.
I pull the Zippo and a smoke from my pocket.The flint sparks, flame tiny and sure.I cup it and drag.The first hit digs hooks in my lungs and I let it, because I’m not pretending to be better than I am.The ember glows, a little candle in my hand.
Do I want that?
The question won’t let go.It sits with me on the dock, legs swinging over the water like a kid.
Maybe the better one is: Could I keep it if I did?
I don’t know how to be half-anything.I tried once.It went bad slowly to start with.Worse when it went fast.The patch demands the whole of me.The road does, too.A woman who wants a man home by dinner every night will hate the way I leave.One who says she doesn’t mind will, eventually, they always do.The ones who swear they understand mean it until the first time the phone dies on a run and I don’t check in.Suddenly understanding looks exactly like accusation.The work’s not nine-to-five.The club’s not a hobby.My life isn’t a house with empty rooms ready to rent out.
Headlights roll slow over the lot—a truck turning in, then choosing the far side and clicking off.Night fattens.Mosquitoes audition for dinner on my wrists until I flick them off and they get the message.
“Hell,” I mutter, smoke curling out right with the word.
Truth is, I’m not brave.People think not settling is bravery—some kind of lone-wolf bullshit, the man too wild to be tamed.
It’s easier, that’s it.
Not better.Not worse.
Just easier to keep your hands empty than to have something in them break and bleed all over you.
