by A. J. Downey
“Nothing.” I shook my head and asked, “You listening?”
“I’m listening,” she said.
“Oh, yeah? What’d I just say?”
She parroted back what I’d told her with a serene smile and I nodded.
“Good.” I nodded and went through the last of it and handed her my spare helmet. She took it between her hands and took a fortifying breath. I smiled and asked, “You got a bandana?”
“For what?” she asked.
“Keep the road grime and bugs outta your grill.” Her eyes widened in the side-view mirror and I laughed, handing her back a spare of mine, an indigo blue one. She wrapped it around her nose and mouth, outlaw style and I handed her back a pair of clear-lensed safety glasses. She slipped them on over her eyes and got settled, her arms tentatively going around me. I picked up my sunglasses off my tank and put them over my eyes.
“Better hold on tight, now,” I told her, thumbing the switch and starting up the bike. Her arms snaked around my chest and I pinched the material of the black bandana scattered in crosses and brought it up over my own face. It was just preferred when hitting freeway speeds to have the thin layer of protection on my face.
I kept it slow and easy for her down her street and felt her stiff posture ease slightly against my back. See, yeah, it’s not so bad, I thought back at her and felt her look up at the tall buildings as we passed between them. At the last stoplight before the freeway on-ramp she called out to me, “Where are we going?”
I grinned and called back, “For the second-best ride of your life!” as the light turned green and I steered us through the intersection smoothly piloting the bike in a lane change to the on-ramp.
“Oz?” my name was a question, the alarm in her voice unmistakable and I just called back, “Hold on!” in response. Her grip on me tightened, the bike growled like a tiger in a cage, wanting to be let out and I twisted the throttle and we were all free.
I loved riding at freeway speeds. There wasn’t a single damn one of my troubles that could keep up with me at sixty or seventy miles per hour, the wind washing over me, chasing off the black shadows of whatever mood whatever bullshit brought on.
It swept over and around us, the sun beating down on us, the music from my sound system loud and bass heavy, bright and enthusiastic, as we swept past cars and trucks at an easy glide. I checked on Elka, her eyes closed, her long brown hair whipping in the wind and smiled.
She was eating this up and I just knew it. I just knew there was something about her yearning to get free like this and even though she was afraid, I was just so damn proud of her in this moment. I reached back and gave her knee a squeeze and a bubble of laughter erupted from her as she nodded in the mirror, the material of the bandana I’d loaned her plastered to her hidden smile. Her eyes sparkling through the protective eyewear like I’d never seen them do.
I’d probably go through some kind of hell to see her eyes do that again and thought to myself it was a good thing I probably wouldn’t have to.
The ride wasn’t too bad, some traffic drawing it out the closer we got to DC, but overall it wasn’t too bad at all.
I turned down the music and pulled up to the curb a block or two down from our final destination where the parking wasn’t too bad and killed the engine.
The music ceased and the quiet left behind was almost deafening until the little city sounds managed to backfill things. The sound of a passing car’s tires on the street, the shudder of a light breeze in the trees lining the sidewalk. Little things that slowly filled the absence of the rumble of the bike’s engine.
“That was… wow,” she said and laughed a bit unsteady.
I smiled and nodded, pulling my bandana off my face and going for the buckle on my chinstrap.
“Yeah? You like that?” I asked.
“It was amazing, but where are we?”
“DC,” I said simply, and she gave me a light smack on the shoulder of my jacket.
“I know that, smartass… but why are we in DC?”
I grinned at that and said, “Ah now that you’re just gonna have to wait and see. Come on, now, watch the pipes getting down.” I held out an arm for her to grab onto to help her get off the bike and then followed suit, heeling down the stand and tucking both her helmet and mine into one of my hard-case saddlebags and locking them away.
“You good?” I asked her as she handed me my safety glasses back and tucked my borrowed bandana in the top of her purse.
“I’m good!” she said brightly, and I worried for half a second that she was just tellin’ me what I wanted to hear rather than the truth.
“You sure?”
“I’m fine, Oz!” She rolled her eyes and declared, “I’m better than fine, actually. I’m feeling pretty good.”
“Oh yeah? How’s that?” I asked, locking the hard case and joining her on the sidewalk. I pointed in the direction we were headed, and we fell into step beside each other.
“I went over to my dad’s the night before last and we had a good talk,” she said.
“Yeah? That’s great.”
“It was,” she nodded as she said it, her face thoughtful, but serene. “I think he was afraid that…” she paused, and I stayed quiet and just let her talk. I mean, she was talking, for real this time. Not some superficial bullshit. She was really opening up here and it surprised me… caught me off guard in a way I hadn’t expected. I mean, wasn’t the whole purpose of this exercise to somehow make her better? Make her feel better? Get her back on some even footing again so she could handle what came at her next? I mean… whatever that was.
“I think he was afraid still that I would be next. That I would do something to myself and that he would be all alone.” She pursed her lips rubbing them together slowly and I stopped and looked at her. She stopped with me and looked at me quizzically.
“What?”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t have done that,” I said.
“Done what?” she asked softly. “Killed myself?”
I nodded.
“I tried once,” she reminded me.
I nodded again, slower this time.
“Yeah, and you’re not that girl anymore,” I reminded her.
“No, I’m not the same girl as I was before,” she said, agreeing and I shook my head.
“No, you’re not, you’re someone different now, but that’s part of life, isn’t it? You go through some shit and it changes you. You go through some more, sometimes heavier, sometimes just the same kind of heavy but some different shit and it changes you some more.”
“Yeah,” she spoke quietly, her eyes softly unfocused as she stared past me.
“Point is, it’s up to you on how you let it change you. Some of how things can change you is out of your control, but some of it? That’s all you, baby. So, you gotta decide that for yourself. You know?”
“Not this, this isn’t in my control.” She said shaking her head. “Anyway, back to the conversation with my dad.”
“What about it?” I asked her.
“I was trying to thank you,” she said.
“Me?” I asked, putting us into motion, into a slow stroll again. We were coming up on it. The place I’d planned to bring her.
“Yeah, you… if you hadn’t insisted on this ride, I probably wouldn’t have gone over there,” she said. “I didn’t have any of the protective clothing you asked for but I thought Mia might and so I went over there to go through some of the boxes in our old room which led to my dad and I talking over pretzels.”
The little smile that curved her lips at the mention of the pretzels led me to think there was a lot more there to unpack.
“What’s a bar snack got to do with this talk?” I asked and she laughed.
“It’s this thing my family does,” she explained as I put my hand on the door handle to the National Gallery of Art. She explained, not really here but in her childhood home’s kitchen, sorting shit out with her family and it sounded… nice. Definitely wasn’t somethi
ng that happened in home like where I grew up at. We didn’t do none of that Leave It to Beaver June Cleaver, shit.
She finished her story and I said, “That sounds really good, actually,” when she sort of woke up to where we were.
“Holy shit, Oz… is this where you wanted to bring me?” she asked and her eyes lit up again, just like when she’d let go and had fallen into the rhythm of the ride. Pride swelled in my chest at putting that look on her face twice in such a short span of time.
“Yeah. I figured you took the time to do something I loved, and turnabout is fair play or some shit… you like art, so I thought you might like it here.”
She stared at me silently, mouth slightly open and the look she gave me was almost familiar. Like I’d seen it recently, I just couldn’t place where. She turned back around and then this way and that way, and I smiled waiting on her to choose where we went first.
“They have Verrocchio on special exhibit,” she said, a hint of awe in her voice. “Can we start there?”
I grinned and said, “It’s all you, baby. We can start wherever you want.”
She barely suppressed an excited squeal, reached out and took my hand, and dragged me into the museum. It’s not like I resisted at all. It was my idea in the first place… and just like with her Jane Austen movies, she made this shit fun.
16
Elka…
I let the art history nerd part of my major shine bright like a diamond, excitedly indulging in my passion, telling Oz everything I could remember about any given artist we encountered that I knew anything about. I held nothing back, not even the most trivial pieces of information. He indulged me in every bit of it, too. Listening with rapt attention, an amused smile gracing his full lips.
“You know a little bit about everything up in here, don’t ‘cha?” he asked and I smiled.
“Art is life,” I said, throwing my hands wide.
He laughed a little and shaking his head said, “You know, all that tells me is you need to get laid!”
I scoffed in a I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that kind of way and hands on my hips, without even thinking, I blurted out, “You volunteering?”
His face lost that easy smile as he contemplated me, and I rushed out before he could answer, “That’s what I thought.”
I went to turn, but he stopped me with a hand on my elbow. “Hold on now,” he said. “It ain’t like that. I just… I guess I didn’t think you were interested.”
I swallowed hard, and dredged for something, anything, to say and finally said, “It’s been a while. Sorry.”
God, Ellie! Lame! Lame, lame, lame, lame, lame!
He gave a lopsided grin and let my elbow go. “Ain’t nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “I like that you’re honest. It’s like whatever comes to mind comes right out your mouth.” He laughed at the look on my face, which probably looked a lot like I’d been sucking on a lemon.
“That’s not typically an admirable trait,” I said bitterly.
“Is for me,” he declared.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It was a stupid thing to say, I’m not looking for a relationship at the moment.”
“Me either,” he declared. “I don’t need none of that.”
“Good, case closed,” I said with a false brightness.
He chuckled. “Not so fast,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t appeal to me, Ellie.”
I sort of froze. “What did you just call me?” I asked.
“Sorry,” he said immediately. “I don’t know where that came from.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said. “It just surprised me is all… Mia used to call me ‘Ellie’ all the time. Since she was a toddler, actually. She just couldn’t grasp ‘Elka’ and kept saying ‘Ella’ and it eventually evolved into ‘Ellie.’ I… I kind of miss it, actually.”
“Then if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep the tradition alive,” he said and I smiled and nodded.
We meandered through the museum as we spoke quietly, reflecting and telling stories about our childhoods. It was nice, despite the low key sting of rejection from earlier and I was surprised to find that any advances that Oz would have made weren’t unwelcome in the slightest… that it was just the opposite, in fact.
As we walked slowly, shoulder to shoulder, I wished for a deeper intimacy. Realized I missed it with a fierce ache in the center of my chest. It’d been some years since I let any man close and I hadn’t realized how effectively Oz had slipped between the plates in the armor I’d donned my heart in after my last serious relationship.
“You okay?” he asked after a moment of my staring sightlessly at a Monet.
“I don’t know how to say it,” I said shaking my head.
“Say what?” he asked and I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t know how to explain how I am feeling without looking like either a complete lunatic or pathetic as hell and neither one of them are a good look, you know?”
He stopped me again with a hand on my shoulder and turned me away from the painting to face him.
“Just say it like you do everything else,” he said. “I judge you so far?”
“Not out loud,” I said with a faint smile.
He smiled a little bigger and said, “Same for you when it comes to me.”
I laughed slightly, and shook my head, cheeks heating with embarrassment.
“It’s cool, you ain’t gotta tell me,” he said when I couldn’t work up the courage to say it. “Just know I’m good to listen, anytime you need it.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“No problem,” he said and we turned back to the painting on the wall.
“I would love to work on a Monet,” I murmured absently, and I felt him looking at me. I turned and he stared at me and I stared back, and it was definitely a moment. The kind of moment that steals your breath and mutes your words like snuffing out a candle flame. The kind of moment with weight and promise. The hesitation, the pregnant pause, the universe holding its collective breath as if it doesn’t even know what is going to happen next.
It was a moment that hung like the moon in the sky, both of us staring at each other, neither of us ready, both of us wanting, and finally he was the brave one. His hand came up gently and touched the bottom of my chin and he slowly brought his mouth to mine. I let my eyes close as his breath brushed warm against my lips and finally, soft as silk, his lips brushed mine.
I swallowed hard and kissed him back, trying like hell not to swoon. It was one of those earth-shattering kisses. One that left you feeling light-headed, one that curled your toes, one that left you practically levitating in your shoes.
“That alright with you?” he asked quietly, taking a half step back.
I flicked my tongue over my lips, tasting him, and nodded silently not trusting my voice.
When it finally came, it was confused as I murmured, “I thought you weren’t looking for a relationship.”
He chuckled and stared hard at the Monet in front of us.
“Just because a man ain’t lookin’ for a particular thing, doesn’t mean that thing don’t find him,” he said.
I nodded, transfixed by his profile which was much better than the painting and said, “So… um… what now?”
He turned back to me and smiled and asked me, “You hungry?”
I smiled and grasped for the safe topic and nodded. “Famished.”
“Got anything against hotdogs?”
I grinned. “Sounds fabulous.”
“K, come on. There’s a stand over at the Mall that’s fuckin’ awesome.”
I nodded and took his hand automatically and he gave mine a gentle squeeze, curving his fingers around the back of it, holding it back as we slow walked through the museum headed for the exit.
That lighter than air feeling returned with every step we took and it felt nice. Really nice. New, sure, but right.
Finally, after so very long, that was it… something felt right.
W
e were still both nervous, though. Both careful of one another. We had lunch, we talked about everything… well, everything except the possibility of an ‘us’ for the moment. We rode back to Indigo City and he stopped in front of my apartment, close to the same spot against the curb that he had arrived at that morning.
The sun was beginning to go down, the shadows lengthening between the buildings and I hopped off the back of his bike, pulling the safety glasses off my face and handing them over as the engine of his motorcycle ticked and cooled in the muggy eighty-degree heat of the summer evening.
“You, um… you hungry?” I asked him. After all, lunch had been some time ago. We’d walked the Mall, had taken photos with our phones and had been in no rush to return home. My feet positively ached in my sister’s boots and I was ready to get out of them, but if he maybe wanted to stay a little longer…
He reached out a hand and twined his fingers between mine, swinging our hands lightly between us, a charmed semi-smile on his lips. I waited for the smart-ass comment to fly from those lips and I wasn’t disappointed.
“Yeah, but not for food… your pussy on the menu?”
I blushed to the very roots of my hair.
“You sure?” I asked softly. “I have it on good authority this bitch be crazy.”
His smile got bigger. “Yeah, but your kind of crazy is easier to deal with,” he said gently.
“Oh yeah? How’s that?” I asked.
“Your kind of crazy just needs a little reassurance every now and again. It doesn’t get pissed off for no reason and it doesn’t hit, or make shit up, or any of that shit.”
I think I felt myself pale as the implications became clear. I wasn’t about to ask him, however. I didn’t want to ruin the mood. Still it was on the tip of my tongue… your ex-wife used to hit you?
He pulled me closer and slid his hands against my ass and I threw a leg over the front of his bike, taking a seat in front of him even as he scooted back to make some room. Both of us sat there kissing quietly, falling carefully into each other, taking things slowly despite the barely contained passion in each touch. Hands sliding beneath coats, against ribs, over backs, hinting at diving beneath tees, the desire of being skin on skin mounting.