Page 51 of Brash for It
“Good plan.”
I glance down at his gloved hands.“Kellum?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for letting me decide.Not just doing it for me.”
He tips his chin.“First mate, remember.”
“And for the ride.”
“Anytime, darlin’.”He taps my helmet with a knuckle.“Text me a dot if you need me.”
I grin.“A dot.”
He waits until I’m inside and Trina is behind me at the desk making a face that says she’s got me.I stand for one extra breath, palm on the cool top of the counter, feeling steadier than I did an hour ago.
I’m not trash.I’m not a sinner.I’m not in need of someone’s forgiveness because I haven’t done wrong.I’m the one holding the wheel.And for once, the water looks calm enough to leave the harbor and still wild enough to be unexpected.
By five, I’m outside pretending to check a hangnail and actually scanning for him.When the rumble threads into the day, I feel that now-familiar drop in my shoulders like a heavy bag put down.He parks, kicks the stand, holds the helmet out.Our hands brush.It feels less like a movie and more like clockwork.Beautiful, reliable, and safe.
“Yo captain,” he says, low.“Where to?”
“Home,” I reply, because I want a porch that smells like ash and safety and maybe cinnamon if he’s got that gum in his pocket.“But the long way.”
“Long way it is.”
We take two wrong turns that aren’t actually wrong to get there.I count mailbox flags—down, up, up, down—until I’m out of breath from a laugh I didn’t expect.
At the house, the porch is just a porch.No car.No man.Just two shadows on the rail where a pair of moths decided to die dramatic last night.I sweep them off without ceremony.
Inside, the air smells like coffee and dish soap and us.I set my tote on the chair, pull out the notebook, and flip to the page where I wrote today’s plan.I addcertified mailed keyswith a box and then check it like I’m getting extra credit.I addcall county about harassment filebecause I want the wordspaper trailto be a spell against future anxiety.
Kellum watches from the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, quiet.“Good day,” he says finally as a statement not a question.
“Good day,” I echo, meaning it in my bones.
He cooks without comment.I slice tomatoes like I’m auditioning for a commercial where women are allowed to be competent in kitchens without being smarmy about it.We eat sitting across from each other at the table like it’s something we have done for years.It’s perfect.
“It’s funny,” I mutter, head on his shoulder, eyes on the street that is exactly as interesting now as it was yesterday.“A few months ago, if you’d told me my car would show up like a ghost and a biker would come get me and I’d call the post office my saving grace, I would have laughed.”
He grunts.“If you’d told me I’d stand on my porch not breaking a man’s nose while he ran his mouth and that I would feel like I did the right thing letting him breathe for another day… I would’ve laughed, too.”
“We’re very funny,” I state.
“ Hilarious,” he says, tone utterly dry.
I tip my face up.“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Do you ever want to hit back in other ways?”I grimace.“Like, petty ways?I want to mail him a box of live crickets.I want to sign him up for a magazine called ‘Being a Better Person.’I want to do dumb shit, ugh.Childish.But sometimes I can’t help but live in Pettyville.”
He huffs.“Nothing wrong with ideas.We just pick the ones that help more than they hurt.You already hurt him the right way.”At my look, he adds, “You didn’t go with him.That was his goal.”
I sit with that.It scratches at something that feels like shame and then finds the place under it that feels like pride.“I didn’t,” I speak more to myself than him.
When the bugs start their full-throated chorus of night songs, we go inside.In bed, I curl how my body wants to, not how habit insists.Kellum’s arm is there like a rope tossed up from a boat to a dock.I pull it around me myself because I can.
