Less than a year later, while the house was still dark and muffled with mourning, Analisa had come down with the flu that wouldn’t quit. Except it had turned out not to be flu.
So when her father told her she looked like her mother, especially now, when they both knew that she was going to leave him, too, the words had weight. So much weight that they hurt to hear.
“Daddy.”
He came up to her and smoothed his palm over her hair. “I know. It’s just hard. And I hate that you want to do this thing. You could get hurt. I don’t want to lose you any sooner than I have to.”
“We talked about this. I’m not just going to sit around and wait for It to kill me. I don’t even want to think about It. I just want to live. I want to pack as much of my life as I can in as long as I’ve got. All the things I want to do. My whole life as fast as I can. No fear. No hesitation. No regrets. Right?”
Her father smiled. “Okay. Tris is going to take you, so I don’t cause any distractions. I wish I could be there with you.”
“I could go by myself. I do know how to drive. And have a car. Which you bought me. So I could take myself places.”
“No, sweetheart. You are not going alone to a den of bikers. I don’t care how great Riley says they are or how much we like Bart. Tris is going with you—unless you’d like me to lend you Ed?”
Ed was her father’s bodyguard. He looked like Jabba the Hut and Mt. Everest had had a baby—and he had the personality of that parentage. “No Ed. Tris can come.” Her brother would probably love it and end up being a member of their gang or club or whatever they called it before the day was done.
“Good.” He kissed her temple. “Marica made raspberry crepes for breakfast. Let’s fill you up with sugar and carbs.”
~oOo~
“Is it Dad again?”
“Yeah.” Analisa read the text—the fourth from their father since they’d left the house: I called Riley. She’s on her way, says she’ll be at Virtuoso by 11:30. Wait for her before you go in.
She responded: K. Her father hated it when she didn’t respond with full words, or better yet, with the text walls he was so fond of, but he was being ridiculous.
“He doesn’t want us to go in until Riley is there.”
Tristan laughed and turned off the freeway onto Mariposa Avenue. “Because a five-foot-nothing chick is going to protect us from the big, bad bikers?”
She laughed with him. One of the coolest things Tris was doing lately was not acting like anything was wrong. Since It had come back and she’d refused the doctors’ ‘aggressive treatment plan,’ her father always gave her the sad eyes and momentous words when they were together. Tris was just her big brother, like always. “It’s like he’s expecting a clan of cave trolls to meet us at the door. And you know he’s worked with these guys—when he did Solitude Road? Bet you fifty bucks some of these guys worked that shoot.”
Solitude Road was a thinky action flick their dad had done about ten years ago. He’d played a man who’d run afoul of a motorcycle gang. They’d killed his family, and he’d taken his revenge. It had a philosophical tone, but it was violent, and their dad had made each of them wait to see it until they were fifteen. It came with a lecture about the difference between cinematic violence and the real thing. All his R-rated movies came with a pre-screening lecture. Even now, when they were both grown.
“Maybe that’s why he’s so uptight. Maybe they are cave trolls.”
“Doubt it. Riley married one. And Bart’s basically just a geek with muscles and tattoos.”
Tris pulled his Nissan Xterra into the lot at Virtuoso Cycles. “I guess we’ll see.”
They went in. The showroom was ultramodern and gleaming clean, all done in red, black, silver, and white. There were six bikes on the floor, each one unique from the others, all of them pretty. They weren’t all shiny, though. One huge bike was black matte from stem to stern. It looked like something out of science fiction, like a Transformers spaceship or something.
There was a pretty woman behind the desk, looking completely professional. And Riley was back there, too. She came around the desk with a smile and met them in the middle of the room, between the bikes on display.
“Hey, you two!” She did the Hollywood Hug with both of them. “Good to see you. You made good time.”
“Dad’s been spamming you, hasn’t he?” Tris asked.
She waved the question off. “He’s a worried dad. I totally get it. You want something to drink? Water? Coffee?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Analisa was starting to feel nervous, now that they were here. Those bikes were humungous. Why had she thought she could manage one on her own?
Then again, on the way here they’d seen an old couple, easily in their seventies, riding side by side down the freeway. She was pretty sure she at least had the strength of an old woman.
“I’ll take a water, thanks,” Tris was saying.
“Okay. I’ll send Sienna for refreshments, and I’ll call Nolan. One sec.” Riley went back to the desk.
Tris brushed his hand over the seat of one of the bikes, a sparkly red one with elaborate art on the tank and fenders that was almost like cubism. “Damn, these are gorgeous bikes. Maybe I should learn to ride, too. Be kinda lame if my freckle-face kid sister was more hardcore than me.”
“That’s already true—and it’s very lame. Ooh—burn!”
“Careful, Spot. I know kung fu.” He mimed the old Matrix thing. But he actually did know kung fu. He’d been doing martial arts since he was five.
“Whatever, dork. You also still have a shelf full of Warhammer miniatures in your room.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a girl who knows what Warhammer is, so who’s the bigger dork?”
She didn’t get a chance to strike back, because Riley had crossed the room to a door at the side, where a guy was coming out.
If that was the Nolan who was supposed to teach her to ride, he was not what she’d been expecting at all. She’d been expecting somebody that was maybe a cross between Ed and Sasquatch. Big, hulking, slow. Possibly smelly. But he was young, around her age—no, he’d have to be at least a little older to be in the club, right? Twenty-one, at least. And he was…well, beautiful. So good looking. Tall. Broad shoulders. Black hair in a nice cut, on the short side but with enough for a girl to run her fingers through. It sort of drooped over his forehead, and she could tell that he had a habit of raking it back with his hand—because he did it twice on his walk over.
He was smiling, and it was a perfect smile.
“Close your mouth, Spot. You’re about to drool.”
She snapped her mouth shut—it really had been hanging open, wasn’t that awesome—and sent her brother a dirty look. He leered back at her.
Riley brought Mr. Beautiful up and gestured toward Analisa. “Nolan Mariano, this is Analisa Winter and her brother, Tristan.”
They all shook hands and exchanged “heys.” Now that he was this close, Analisa could see that Nolan’s eyes were blue, a color and depth that was bright and dark at the same time. Swoon.
He gave her the kind of smile that told her she was making an obvious idiot of herself, being completely transparent. So she looked at Riley instead. That was no help. Riley was looking at her with the kind of momentous concern she usually saw in her father’s eyes these days.
Everybody everywhere around her wanted to protect her. They wanted her to sit on a satin pillow and wait safely still until It took her away. Well, fuck that. It was much too late to be protected. She’d be dead before her next birthday. Now her choice was to just go ahead and stop living, just sit around and wait for It to swing by and pick up her body, or to live all she could until she couldn’t anymore.
Door Number Two, please.
And you know what? Her father didn’t know her whole kick list. Nobody knew all of it but her. And looking at Nolan, seeing the humor in his smile, she thought maybe she could check off some of the stuff on her secret list, too.
Wh
at was interesting, though, was that Riley was giving Nolan the same kind of look she’d been giving her. Like she was worried for and protective of him, too.
He either hadn’t noticed Riley’s expression, or he was ignoring her. “I hear you want to learn to ride.” His voice was nice, too.
She smiled. “I totally do.”
THREE
Nolan had expected to meet a sick girl. In the days since he’d volunteered to teach her to ride, he’d googled her but come up pretty empty in the photo department—a lot when she was a little kid, dwindling to almost none after her mom’s funeral. One or two showing a girl being wheeled out of the hospital, in a big coat and a floppy hat, nothing but a freckled, round cheek showing under the brim.
In his head, he’d seen somebody little and frail, bald and brittle-looking. The girl standing in the middle of the shop stood tall and gorgeous, the very picture of California good health. Her shiny-gold hair was long and full. Her skin was dusted all over with pale freckles—her face, over her collarbones, even her hands. Her cheeks weren’t round at all. And her eyes were a blue so pale they were almost colorless. His mom had a cool ring she wore a lot, with a milky, faintly blue, translucent stone in it. Moonstone. He thought of that ring when he saw Analisa’s eyes.
She was probably five-seven or so and slender, but shapely, her hips flaring out from a narrow waist. He couldn’t see much about her chest, because she was wearing a sweater and a leather jacket over it, but on the whole, she was fucking breathtaking. Literally—he was so surprised that he actually forgot to breathe for a second.
He felt like a total perv for checking out a dying girl so hard, but damn. This gig was looking up. He wasn’t going to make a move on her, he wasn’t that much of a perv, but he’d have something nice to look at while he gave her lessons.
Analisa. Pretty name, one he’d never heard before.
“I hear you want to learn to ride,” he said, thinking that somebody should say something.
She smiled, and her eyes lit right up. “I totally do.” Looking around the showroom, she added, “Should I…do I need to buy one of these bikes?”
Nolan laughed. “Uh, no. I’ll get you a little loaner. These are show bikes. You don’t learn on one of them. And we’re not really a dealer. We do customizations and repairs, mostly.”
Her brother—Tristan—nodded toward the Indian Chief with double-flake red metallic paint under a bizarre airbrush job. Demon had customized the bike, mostly simple mods, and Trick had done the paint, trying out a new technique. It was the least custom bike in the room. “So I couldn’t buy one of these if I wanted?”
“Sure, you could. You’d have to talk with the builders, though, to work out a price. You ride?”
“Not yet. Think I might want to.”
“Dude, seriously. Learn on a used stock bike. You don’t want to lay a bike like this down.” A thought occurred to Nolan. “Am I teaching you, too?”
Analisa cut in. “No, you are definitely not. This is my thing.” She turned to Nolan. “Tris is just dropping me off.” She and her brother exchanged a look that told Nolan that Tristan had not at all planned to merely drop her off, and that Analisa didn’t care what his plan had been.
After a couple of seconds, Tristan asked her, “How are you going to get home, then?”
“You can come back and get me. Or I’ll call a cab.”
“It’s seventy-five miles, Spot.”
She flinched and gave her brother a filthy look. Nolan figured she was mad that her brother had called her ‘Spot.’ “I can get her home.”
Everybody turned and stared at him.
“Or I can,” Riley interjected, giving Nolan a serious look—more was being conveyed in this group with looks than with words. “It’s fine, Tris. We’ll take care of her.”
Her brother didn’t look mollified, but he nodded.
~oOo~
They all went back to the storage bay, where Muse kept the rental bikes parked. These bikes were mostly used by movie and television productions, but Nolan had gotten Muse’s okay to use one of the smaller ones for this gig. There were about a dozen bikes, from basic to badass, stored back here.
Analisa’s eyes lit up when she saw them. “Can I use any of them?”
“No. Some are way too big or have mods that aren’t good for learning on.” He put his hand on her back, leading her to the far corner. “These three are a good size for you. I’d go with the Superlow—the blue one.” The Superlow was a straight-up stock bike. All Harleys were heavy, but this was one of the lightest they made.
“That’s pretty.” She brushed her hand over the metal-flake tank. He smiled. Typical girl, thinking first about whether it was ‘pretty.’ “Okay. Now what?”
“Now depends on you and how adventurous you feel. We can take a lesson here, back on the service lot, just the basics for today, or we can head out somewhere with more room and take the time to get you rolling. My day’s free.”
She turned and gave him that eye-brightening smile. “How would we get out there?”
“I can ride the bike out there, and Riley or your brother could drive you. Or you could ride with me. Maybe that’s best—it’d give you a sense of what riding feels like, if you’ve never been on a bike before at all.”
Analisa answered, “I haven’t. Let’s do that.”
At the same time, Tristan and Riley both said, “I’ll drive her.”
Nolan was beginning to feel offended. What, exactly, did they think he was going to do to her? Tristan didn’t know him, but Riley should have known him well enough to know he wasn’t going to do anything shitty.
Analisa stomped her foot. “Guys! Sheesh! It’s my choice! I want to ride. Tristan, thank you for bringing me, but now get the hell out of here.”
“Analie…”
“Seriously! Get!”
“Dad’s gonna kill me.”
“Suck it up, buttercup. I’m running this show. Go! I’m fine!”
Instead of going, Tristan turned to Nolan. “Where’s ‘somewhere’? Where’re you taking her?”
It was a reasonable question, and Nolan understood his concern, so he answered, “There’s an old office park in Fontana. It’s like a little neighborhood, with streets and intersections. The whole place went under a couple of years ago, so it’s totally empty. Perfect to learn to drive or ride.”
Tristan stared at him, and then he finally nodded. “Okay. Be careful with her.”
“Of course.” He held out his hand, and Tristan shook it.
Riley, understanding that the conversation was over, put her hand on Tristan’s arm. “Come on, Tris. Let’s get a coffee before you go. You two have fun—and be careful!”
Analisa smiled and made a shooing gesture with her hands. When they left, she pulled her phone out of her jacket and held it up sideways like she was going to take a photo.
“What are you doing?” He wasn’t sure how he felt about her taking his picture.
“I’m making a movie. You know about my list and all that, right?”
He nodded, but he didn’t say anything, because he wouldn’t have known what to say. She neither looked nor acted sick, so it was getting progressively weird to think of her as a dying girl trying to complete a bucket list before she kicked.
“Making a movie’s on my list—I’m checking off something on my list by making a movie about my list. Is that meta or what?” She looked around the phone at him. “That okay?”
He didn’t see how he could tell her no—dying girl, dying wish and all. “I guess. Don’t be thinking so much about your movie that you don’t pay attention to learning the bike, though.”
“Duh. Okay, what’s first?”
“First we find you a helmet and gloves. You did good with the clothes, by the way.” She had—leather jacket, jeans, low boots.
“Okay, cool. Let’s do this!”
Nolan liked her. This was going to be fun.
~oOo~
He’d never ridden with a girl bef
ore. His own bike didn’t even have a bitch seat. But he was thinking now that he might want to get one. Because it was nice, a girl right behind him, her legs against his hips. Nolan could only imagine what it might be like to ride like this with someone he was involved with.
At first, Analisa had tried to hold herself away from him, keeping her hands on his hips. But after he made the first turn, she squeaked and wrapped her arms around his waist, hanging on for dear life. She was stiff as hell on turns, and he was beginning to wonder whether she had the balls to learn to ride. But he didn’t mind having her so close, he had to admit.
Today & Tomorrow Page 2