Page 33 of Brash for It
We move.Out the door, into the cooling air.The bike waits, dark and gleaming under the porch light.I hand her the helmet.This time she doesn’t fumble.She straps it on herself, chin high.
I swing a leg over, settle into the seat, and when she climbs on behind me, her hands go right around my waist without me telling her.
Firm.
Certain.
Claiming her space.
The static eases the second I thumb the starter.The engine growls to life and the night takes us exactly as we are.The road swallows us in one clean bite.We are one with the evening and the machine.
I take the long way out of town, the one with fewer lights and more dark, where pine trees lean in like they’re trading secrets.Air’s cooler now that the heat bled off the day.It slips under my collar, fingers through my hair, scrubs the shop out of my lungs.Behind me, Kristen’s grip firms as I ease us through the first curve.Not panic.Not that clutching hold from the first time.She’s holding me like she means it—like I’m the thing you trust when the ground turns into blur.
“Lean with me,” I order over my shoulder when the next bend threatens to make a lesson out of us.
She answers by moving, no hesitation, her body matching mine by instinct instead of reacting in fear.It changes the whole ride.We fall in with the bike.Corners smooth out.Straightaways open up.We stop being parts and become one machine.
I keep the throttle steady, not revving, not babying it.You ride for the passenger when you’ve got one, teach them what they can do, but guard them with everything.Every time she exhales, I feel it through my back.Shaky at first.Then longer.Then easy.It gets into me until my own shoulders drop.
Past the city limits, the world flattens into fields stitched tight with ditches.The smell shifts—damp earth, cut hay, the faint iron of water sitting still too long.Dragonflies flicker through our headlight cone and stitch themselves away.The horizon throws a slash of brighter darkness where the sound waits.I point us toward it because water always calms my thoughts down to my soul.
We hit the high-rise bridge to cross into Emerald Isle.Far below, the water glistens.Salt rides the air and envelopes our bodies.Kristen presses closer in that instinct people have when something deep in the body recognizes a home it didn’t know it had.
I don’t talk.She doesn’t either.You don’t waste the road with words you don’t need.
On the far side of the bridge I swing us off, down toward the public ramp I like because the light’s bad and the view’s good.Gravel pops under us until I roll us to a stop at the end of the lot, front tire pointing out at nothing.I kill the engine.The sudden silence pops my ears.
The night here isn’t quiet.It’s layered.Marsh insects run their tiny chainsaws.Water whispers against pilings and tells the same story it told yesterday and will tell tomorrow, about coming and going and never being the same water twice.
Kristen’s chin rests between my shoulder blades for a second longer like she forgot she could stop.Then she lifts.I feel her breathe in deep, deeper, chasing salt.Her palms slide off my stomach slow, leaving heat through leather.I swing a leg and stand; she stays on the seat like the bike is a horse she’s befriending and doesn’t want to spook.
“You okay?”I ask, because some questions are a responsibility.
She unclips the helmet and pushes it up, hair wild where the foam pressed it.Her eyes are wide and bright in the lot light.She grins, small but wild.“I am more than okay.”
The words hit me square.I didn’t know I wanted to hear that until I did.
“Good,” I tell her, like I’m not warmed by it.“Hop down.”
She does, boots crunching as we make our way down the public access walkway.She stands at the edge of the dock and looks like a woman who just remembered she has a body.Shoulders loose.Chin up.Color in her cheeks that has nothing to do with blush.The wind plays with the hem of her T-shirt and tries to steal it; she grabs it with an absent hand, eyes on the black slick of the water like she would walk across it if it promised to keep her.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I provoke.I don’t ask often.When I do, I mean it.
She tips her head, considering.“That it feels…that life feels simple on the bike.Not easy.Simple.Like there’s only forward and lean and trust.”
“Sounds right,” I share understanding exactly what she’s expressing.
“And… I don’t know… I’m not… in my head.Not the way I was.”She gestures at the water with a small, helpless laugh.“Usually I’m listing and planning.Out there, I was just… holding you and breathing.It felt safe and something that is only ours.”
Safe.Ours.The words land heavier than most.I don’t touch it.I let it sit between us and do its work.
Moon’s not much tonight just thin and barely present.The dock boards flex under our weight, nails complaining softly.Somewhere behind us, a truck door slams and a man curses about bait.The world keeps on like it will whether we’re broken or not.
“How long we staying?”she asks after a minute.Not a whine.Logistics.
“Long enough to remember why we left the house,” I explain.
The restless thing that chased me home from the shop and then chased me from home to here is smaller now.Not gone.It never goes.But it’s contained for now.
