The office park was about ten miles away. Since she was so tense, he’d taken his time, trying not to freak her out. When he pulled into the park and slowed, she finally started to relax. He rode into the center of the park and pulled up in the cracked lot of one of the dead, single-story office buildings.
He killed the engine. As he had when he’d helped her on, he held out his arm, and she used it for balance while she swung her leg over and stepped away from the bike. Then he kicked the stand down and dismounted.
Her hands had been shaking when she grabbed his arm. He was worried that this project wasn’t going to go so well. But it was up to her. He’d keep an eye out and try to make sure she didn’t get hurt.
He took off his helmet and set it on the low brick wall lining the sidewalk. She was staring at the bike, her arms crossed over her belly.
“Analisa—you okay?”
She turned and smiled. Her pale eyes were wide, though. “Yeah. Just…that felt different than I thought it would.”
“Different how?”
“Scarier. Faster. It felt faster than a car.”
“Yeah, you get a lot more sense of speed. That’s one of the great things. I wasn’t going that fast, though.” Not even ten miles over the speed limit. He’d felt like he was crawling. “You still want to do this?”
“Yeah. Yeah.” She shook her head and shoulders like she was shaking off a chill, and then she took her phone out and started filming. “What’s first?”
“First, you learn how to pick up a bike. You should put that away. You need to focus on me.”
“I’ll just take a few seconds every now and then. Wait—what?” She looked around her phone. “Pick it up?”
“Riders lay their bikes down. It happens to everybody at some point. You have to be able to put it back on its wheels, even when you’re on your own. If you can’t do that, you should never ride.” He went to her and pushed her gently back a couple of steps, then walked to the bike and rocked it to its side, putting it down as gently as he could. It was a little bike, but it still weighed more than five hundred pounds. He didn’t want to look like a weak suck in front of the cute girl, either.
He got it down with minimal fuss, then subtly rolled his shoulders. Analisa stared suspiciously at the downed bike. “It’s got to be heavy.”
“Little less than five-fifty.”
She laughed. “You’re nutty if you think I can lift five hundred pounds!”
“What, are you nothing but a weak little girl?” He smirked and hoped that she’d take the teasing in the spirit he’d meant it.
She did. “I am not! I work out! But come on!”
“Look. There’s a trick to it. I’ll show you. You want to sit on the side of the saddle, just on the edge, so you can move the seat under you when it’s time.” She didn’t move, so he held out his hand. “C’mon, it won’t bite.”
She put away her phone and took his hand, her fingers curling around him with what felt like trust. They were both wearing riding gloves, but it still felt good to hold her hand. He pulled, and she came. When he got her seated right, he said, “Now grab the handlebar, down low, and with your other hand you’re gonna grab the back fender.”
He went around to the other side of the bike and then showed her how to move her body to get some momentum in the downed bike and then rock it up to its wheels. She got it up on the first try, grinning and laughing, but she overbalanced, and it started to tip over the other way—which was why he’d come around to that side. He stopped it and got it set on its stand again.
“That was AWESOME!” she shouted, throwing her fist into the air.
He laughed and then rocked the bike back down. “Okay, do it again. When you can do it three times in a row without me rescuing you, I’ll show you the controls.”
She was pretty thin and didn’t offer much in the way of ballast, so it took her a few times before she didn’t need to be rescued. About half an hour after the first time he’d laid it down, she finally made her three times in a row.
Nolan’s shoulders were fucking sore. He’d been laying the bike down easy that whole time, trying not to fuck up one of Muse’s rental bikes, and trying not to look like a pussy in front of Analisa. To say he was relieved when she got the hang of it would be an understatement.
She looked pleased with herself, flushed and lovely. “Now what? Can I get on?”
“Not yet. Come here, and I’ll show you the controls.” He realized he hadn’t asked her something that potentially was important. “Can you drive a stick?”
“Yeah. I drive a Mini Cooper. Six-speed.”
He grinned. What a girl car. “Okay, good. That’ll make this easier, if you understand how a clutch works.” Pulling her to stand right in front of him, he pointed to the left pedal, at their side. “Left foot: gears.” He kicked the gear shift with his boot. “First is lowest, then neutral, then second, and so on. Left hand: clutch. You have to engage the clutch by squeezing and releasing here”—he leaned around her and put his hands on the handlebars, squeezed the lever on the left—“before you change gears. They work together, though. You’ll be able to feel when it engages—like you can with your feet in your car. With me so far?”
Staring at his hands and mimicking with her own hands, she nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good. He set her to the side and mounted the bike. After he fired it up, he nodded to his right. “Come around the other side.”
When she did what he’d asked, he said, “Right is brakes. Right foot: rear brake.” He kicked it. “Right hand: front brake. You don’t want to engage the front brake first—it could put you over the top of the bike. If you’re going fast enough, it could even bring the bike over with you. So always brake the rear first. Foot, then hand. The right hand is also the accelerator.” He revved the engine to demonstrate.
Again, she studied his hands and feet, mimicking his movements. But she hadn’t said anything for a while.
“You got it?”
Her eyes came up to his, and he thought she looked a little freaked out. “I think so. I won’t know till I try, right?”
“Right. You ready to try?”
“I think so. How do I balance?”
“You ride a bike, right? A bicycle?”
“Sure.”
“Do you have to think about balancing?”
She frowned. “No—I guess not.”
“This is more stable than a Schwinn. Don’t think about balancing. Just be balanced.”
“Um, okay.”
Nolan killed the engine and dismounted, and Analisa came around to the same side. She took the handle grips in her hands and swung her leg over. He couldn’t help but notice her cute little ass as her leg went over.
Looking at her feet, she asked, “How do I start it?” Nolan guessed she hadn’t been paying attention when he’d started it. Either time.
“It’s a newer bike. You don’t have to kickstart it. Just kick the stand back, then hold the clutch in and turn the key.”
She did, grinning at him when the engine roared up.
“Okay, good.” He spoke up over the throaty engine. Even little Harleys made a ruckus. “You remember the gears?”
She nodded and moved the bike into first gear, then throttled. The bike moved forward, lurching a little, but she got it moving.
And then it all went to hell. Nolan wasn’t sure how, maybe she’d missed the gear, but she did something, then freaked out about it, looking down at the pedal. The engine sputtered, and died, the bike jumped, and then it was going over.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” she yelled.
Shit, he thought while that was all going down, and he ran forward just as the bike crashed to its side. Analisa made an awkward jump, getting clear of the bike, but wheeling backward until she landed on her ass.
He went to her first, squatting at her side. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’m not hurt. Except my ego.”
Standing, he held out his hand
s. She took them, and he helped her to her feet. “No sweat. I told you everybody drops their bike. Just pick it back up and we’ll try again.”
She walked over to the bike, her arms crossed over her chest, and then just stood there, staring.
“Analisa? Okay?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t do this. FUCK!” She kicked the bike, taking a good swing at it and landing with a solid clang.
“Hey!”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Spinning on her heel, she stormed off to the side and plopped down on the brick wall next to Nolan’s helmet.
He rocked the bike up to its wheels—half an hour ago he might have shown off and deadlifted it, but he was too sore for that game now—and walked it back to the curb. Checking it over, he saw that the damage wasn’t much. Just a little dent and a few scratches.
He stood the bike and went over to the girl, who was about as curled up as she could be. She wasn’t crying or anything—just folded over, her head almost touching her knees.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She looked up, and her expression was sad. “That was so scary. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I jumped out of a fucking plane and wasn’t as scared as I just was. How is that possible? It’s so stupid! I’m gonna die—like soon. What is there left to be afraid of?”
He squatted on the sidewalk in front of her and, not thinking about it, put his hands on her knees. “You jumped out of a plane?”
She smiled a little. “Yeah. Tandem, but yeah. It was on my list. It was pretty cool.”
Nolan was beyond impressed. “Well, first, jumping out of a plane is about the most metal thing I can think of. I don’t have the balls for that shit, so it you already did that, then I don’t think you have to worry about anybody thinking you’re chicken. And second, if you ask me, dying isn’t the scary thing. Hurting is the scary thing. What happened just now wouldn’t have killed you, but it could have hurt you. I get why you’d be scared of that. It’s a lot easier to die than it is to hurt.”
Now her eyes got a little glittery, but still she didn’t cry. “You’re right. I’m most afraid of the hurt. And you just made that sound like it wasn’t backwards.”
“I don’t think it is backwards.” He squeezed her knees and then dropped his hands, letting them dangle between his thighs. “Look. There’s no shame in not wanting to ride on your own.”
“But riding a Harley is on my list! I have to finish my list! I have to!”
Nolan wondered what it was like to know your time was short. Would he do what she was doing, and try to live everything all at once? It seemed to him like it took a special strength to demand to have your whole life no matter what. And maybe there was a kind of blessing in knowing the end was coming, knowing that you had to get a move on and get shit done.
He smiled a little. Havoc had been in his life only a short while, but he knew that the man he considered his only father had grabbed life by the balls every day. That was what this girl was doing, too. He guessed it was what you did when you really thought you could go at any time.
“You did ride a Harley. You rode out here with me.”
For a second, she gaped at him, as if that hadn’t occurred to her. “That’s not what I meant, though, when I made my list.”
“I’m not big on rules. And anyway, it’s your list. Seems like it can mean whatever you want it to mean. You said you did a tandem jump—that means you were strapped to a more experienced skydiver, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Was it on your list to do a tandem jump or just to jump out of an airplane?”
She blinked.
“You rode with me. Tandem. Seems to me that’s ‘Ride a Harley, check.’”
They stared at each other, and then she grinned. “You are so awesome.”
He grinned back, feeling well pleased with himself. He didn’t think he’d ever talked like this with a girl. He liked it. “Well, thanks. You want me to call and get somebody to come pick you up so you don’t have to ride back?”
“No. I want to ride with you. If that’s okay. Will you still take me home? I know it’s far.”
“Less than a hundred miles is nothing. If you’re good with it, I am, too.” He stood and held out his hand; she took it and came to her feet. Then she threw her arms around him and hugged him hard, pressing her whole body to his. She was still wearing her helmet, and it made the embrace a little awkward, but he hugged her right back. Even through her jacket and his kutte, he could feel her tits, low on his ribs.
After a second, her helmet wasn’t the only thing making the hug awkward, and he set her away before she noticed. Jesus, he was disgusting. Getting a boner for a sick girl.
“You want to head back now?”
She nodded, and he picked up his helmet, holding it so he could adjust himself in his jeans without her seeing.
He hoped.
FOUR
Riding with Nolan out to the office park had been like a rollercoaster—scary and wonderful all at once. Analisa’s heart had been going a billion miles a minute, and every time they took a turn and the bike tipped toward one side or the other, her stomach jumped and spun, but she’d liked it, too. He had a good body, really firm, and she’d felt good sitting so close behind him, with her arms around him.
She’d been nervous, though, about riding on her own. The ride with Nolan had made her more nervous about going solo, not less. She’d had no concept at all about how powerful a motorcycle was until she’d ridden with him to Fontana. She felt stupid now, but she’d never thought about the fact that she’d essentially be sitting on a car engine, something powerful enough to keep up on the freeway—to blow the competition away, even.
So by the time he’d parked and started giving her her first—and, it turned out, last—lesson, she was already freaking out and trying not to show it.
Well, that had gone great, then. Not.
Now, on the ride to Malibu, she wasn’t nervous. But she was still ashamed. Even though Nolan had been great and patient and had made a decent argument that the whole project hadn’t been a total failure, she still felt like a wuss for losing it like she had. But fuck! that had been scary. She could feel herself want to shake even now at the memory.
Still, this ride was a lot better. Longer, too, and she couldn’t think of a single thing wrong with that. She liked this guy. She didn’t know much about him, but she thought she wanted to. There were definitely some items on her secret list he was currently the top candidate for. And she thought, being a biker and all, he might be able to help her with a couple of others, too. Her father would have a whole herd of cows about it, but that was his problem.
As they got into LA County, the traffic, of course, got ridiculous. For a while, they coasted in the stop-and-go. And then Nolan looked over his shoulder at her.
“Do you trust me?” he yelled over the rumble of the Harley engine.
“Yeah!” She said it without thinking about it, but for the moment it was true—because what could he do that was untrustworthy here on the 10 in traffic?
He pulled into the space between the lanes and took off, doing probably only thirty or so, but with the nearly-stopped cars on either side of them, so close she thought she could reach out and touch them, it felt like they were going a hundred at least.
For a second, she was terrified, and she clutched Nolan even more tightly. But then she realized that she did trust him. Hard on the heels of that thought was the one that said that this was fun—that the sensation of speed was wonderful, not unlike the rush of falling through the air. And he was right—she wasn’t alone. She was with him, he was in control, and she trusted him.
She threw her head back and laughed. He laughed, then, too—she could feel it on her hands, his hard belly shaking.
Feeling liberated and exhilarated, she wanted to mark this moment for her movie. And she realized that she hadn’t taken any footage of her failure to learn to ride. So now, she carefully let go of Nolan with one hand and fished
in her jacket for her phone. He noticed, his head turning a couple of degrees, but his attention was on the road, where it should be.
With one hand, she set up the video function and then held the phone out as they rode between the cars, getting several seconds of her and Nolan and the wind and the roar on the freeway on a California autumn afternoon.
She laughed and laughed and held on with her other hand for her dear, short life.
~oOo~
Nolan set his helmet on the bike. Analisa had bought hers, so she had it dangling from her hand. He looked up at the front of her house—well, her dad’s house, whatever—and just stood there.
Today & Tomorrow Page 3