Page 6 of Brash for It
“I’m fine.”
He studies me a beat, then nods and slaps my shoulder like a punctuation mark.“We’re pulling a run down toward Salemburg in the morning.Stud needs some parts.You in?”
“Yeah.”Riding solves things talking can’t.I push away from the table.“I’m getting some air.”
I take the back door out into the night.The air wraps around me, lip of cool threaded with summer’s last heat.The security light hums.The moths keep beating themselves stupid against it.I cross the lot, thumb the fob, and the bike’s lights blink slow, sleepy.I swing a leg, settle on the seat.The leather’s warm from the heat of the day it holds on to.I breathe in grease and oil, old sweat and the ghosts of miles.
I could ride.
Right now.
No destination, just lines on the highway and shadows of the dark bleeding down to black water where the sound and river mouth kiss.I could leave the noise behind and run parallel to something that pretends to be peace.
Instead I sit and listen to the night talk.Pine tips hiss overhead.A frog chirps from somewhere dumb and wet.Out there, houses had whole lives—kids asleep on couches, TVs blue and stupid, men and women who know exactly who will be next to them when they wake.
Good for them.
I’m not built for it.Not because I can’t.Because I won’t.
I think about the broad tonight.If she’s somewhere out there hoping I’ll wake up different, she’s wasting her time and mine.People don’t wake up different.They wake up who they are and spend the day deciding whether to lie about it.
I don’t lie.
I don’t settle.
I don’t soften when someone asks me to.
The only promise I make is the one I keep—tomorrow, I ride.And the day after.And the day after that.The road doesn’t ask questions.It just waits for me to answer with speed.
I answer every time.
Two
Kristen
The ocean is loud tonight,waves crashing hard enough against the shore that the sound carries all the way up to the deck.I lean against the glass door, sipping wine I didn’t buy, in a house I couldn’t afford in a hundred years.White-washed wood floors.Floor-to-ceiling windows.Art pieces that look like smears of color but probably cost more than my car before it died.This place isn’t mine.Nothing here is mine.
Except him.
At least, I thought so.
Brian’s voice filters down the hall, low and distracted, talking to someone through his earbuds.He’s always working late, always got someone calling, needing him.That’s what he tells me, anyway.And I want to believe it, because believing is easier than pulling at threads.If I tug too hard, I’m afraid the whole blanket will come apart.
I should be grateful.Twenty-four and living in an oceanfront house most people only see on magazine covers.Traveling anywhere and everywhere in luxury.He pays the bills, keeps the fridge stocked with food, has cleaners and cooks come for to care for the day to day, and leaves a credit card in my wallet like I’m a kid with an allowance.All he asks is that I look good, be available when he wants me, and keep the house from feeling empty.
And I do.For the last four years, he is my life.I wake up based on when he expects me to be somewhere.If he’s out of town and doesn’t have me accompany him then I have scheduled spa days per his instructions.I have fillers and Botox and every facial cream available to me.Look pretty, that I can do.Love a man who is empty, that is becoming harder with every passing day.
Still, something’s wrong with him.
I see it in the way he looks through me instead of at me.The way his phone never leaves his pocket unless he’s holding it.The way he smiles at texts that aren’t mine.
I take another swallow of wine, let it warm me on the way down.I try to tell myself it’s nothing.That I’m overthinking.That Brian chose me.Out of everyone he could have, he picked me.
But the pit in my stomach says different.
The sliding door rattles as it opens, and he steps onto the deck.White button-down untucked, sleeves rolled to his forearms, tan skin golden under the outside lights.He looks like money.Like control.Like the kind of man who doesn’t lose sleep.
“There you are,” he says, slipping his phone into his pocket.Always the pocket.Always out of reach.
