Page 34 of Brash for It
She stands beside me without touching for a long time.Then her knuckles graze mine, tentative like a question.I let my hand turn so our fingers can tangle, just enough to prove the point: you’re not alone on the edge of anything.
“Ready?”I ask finally.
She squeezes twice.“Ready.”
Back on the bike, everything clicks faster.She knows the moves now, or maybe her body does and her head’s not trying to talk it out of them.When I roll on the throttle, she leans first.When I shift my weight for a curve, she’s already there, a half-breath ahead, like we invented the route.Wind sneaks under my sleeves.Night peels the day off both of us, layer by layer, until the part that needs quiet finally gets some.
I take side roads on the way home.Houses appear, then don’t.A dog chases us half a yard and reconsiders when the engine tells him who we are.A porch light flips on and off, like someone’s forgetting what they wanted to look for.Kristen’s helmet rests lightly between my shoulder blades now and then when we accelerate.I could ride like this until morning and not resent the sunrise for crashing in on my private party.
Instead I point us home because endings matter and I don’t want this one to lose its shape by dragging out.When we roll into the drive, I wait for the heavy to come back, but it doesn’t.I kill the engine and the night closes in around us with its silence.
She slides off, unstraps the helmet, and turns to hand it to me.Her hands aren’t shaking.Her eyes are steady.
“How’s the head?”I inquire wanting to know if she cleared her mind too as I hang the helmets on their hooks.
“Quiet,” she says, almost surprised.“Good quiet.”
“Good.”I reach past her to the door.The key slides in and the lock turns easily.Inside, the air smells like the leftover heat of the day and the lemon cleaner I use when my mother’s voice gets too loud in my head about sinks being clean.I flip the lamp, a soft pool of light spilling over the table and the map on my living room wall and the stupid chair I still haven’t replaced.
I expect the post-ride comedown to hit her—adrenaline drop, little shake, the crash you get after holding your breath for too long.Instead she turns in the doorway and braces her hand against the frame like she needs it to steady a thought, not her body.She looks at me in the way people do when they’ve decided on something.
I wasn’t sure what she had made up her mind about.But I couldn’t stop the smile playing on my lips at the fire that sparked in her eyes being back home.
“Kellum,” she whispers.
“Right here.”
She crosses the space between us in three quick steps and puts her mouth on mine.It’s not timid.It’s not shy.It’s not a question.It’s an answer she tried out on the ride in her head.Her fingers climb my shirt, catch in the shoulders like she wants to drag me down to her height.I let her because I want to meet her exactly where she is.
Her mouth tastes like salt and wind and the cheap ChapStick she keeps in that new tote like a treasure.The first brush is a shock—hot through the fatigue—and then it’s a drag, slow, confident, like she’s trying to measure the shape of me with the softest part of herself.
I should back up.I should say something practical and ugly that breaks the spell and puts us on opposite sides of a line.I don’t.I’ve had a bad day and a good ride and a woman who learned how to lean just asked for something without apologizing for wanting it.I’m hard but I’m not made of stone.
I kiss her back.Not the way I do with women who are looking for a patch and a story to tell a friend.Not the way I did with women who wanted my mouth to prove something to themselves about men like me.I kiss her like she’s the only thing on the table.Slow, deep, taking my time like I have some to take.Her breath stutters, catches, evens, breaks again.
When I finally pull back, she chases me half an inch and then blinks up, dazed but not lost.I rest my forehead against hers to get my own breathing under control.
“I don’t expect anything from you,” I explain, because a man who doesn’t lay ground rules ends up pissed off at a woman for his own shortcomings in not communicating where he is from the beginning.
Her smile is small and sharp.“We’re both adults and consenting ones at that.”
It’s almost my line from last week thrown back in my face, almost as a dare.It makes the corner of my mouth twitch.“You been practicing that?”
“Maybe.”She rises on her toes and kisses me again, deeper, like she’s memorizing this moment for us both so I can’t forget it.The drag turns into a pull.The pull turns into something with teeth.Her fingers slide under the edge of my shirt, flesh seeking contact.
I let it go as far as it should—no further.When I feel the moment start to tilt, I turn us.My back hits the wall.My hands frame her jaw, then slide down the elegant line of her throat, over the fluttering pulse, across the warm weight of her through the cotton.She shivers.It’s not cold.It’s relief.Her mouth breaks on a gasp against mine.
“Easy,” I murmur, and it’s not a warning.It’s a promise.
She breathes the word back at me like oxygen.“Easy.”
I edge us toward the couch without breaking.She comes because I’m taking her there and because she wants to see what happens when we run out of wall.We land, not graceful, half-laughing into the cushions, me caging her with my arms.
Her hands are in my hair.My lips sweep the hinge of her jaw, the hollow under her ear where women carry every bad thing anyone ever said and call it posture.She makes a sound that is not polite.I swallow it and give her back a better one.
This is not sex.Not the kind that counts in the way I mean when I say sex.It’s a fire that burns fast and clean because the wood is dry and the wind is right.I move down, mouth at her throat, hands sliding her shirt up that new, soft cotton that isn’t trying to sell anybody a lie.She lifts under my palms like the tide.I take my time.I don’t make her wait, not really, but I don’t rush because rushing makes the world smaller and I want this to be big for her.Big and simple and completely hers.
When I slide a hand under the waistband of her leggings, she doesn’t tense.She lets me in.Warm, wet, welcome.Her breath stutters into my shoulder, catches, breaks again.I work my fingers the way I work anything that matters—attention, patience, pressure where it pays.She arches, gasps my name like it’s something meant to be said out loud.The sound claws down my spine and takes a seat in my ribs, satisfied.
