Page 25 of Honeyfires

When I pulled up at four-thirty, she was already outside, emerald dress, slightly-mussed hair, watching the parking lot entrance.

"Hi," she said, a little breathlessly.

"Hi yourself." I held out my spare helmet.

She eyed it the way you eye something you've decided to trust against your better judgment. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"First time on a bike. Questions before we begin?"

"Just one." She took the helmet. "If I scream, is that normal?"

"Very common. Considered good form for a first-timer, actually."

"Okay." She held the helmet up and stared at it. "How does this—"

"Here." I took it back and settled it over her head, my fingers finding her jaw to adjust the strap. She went very still under my hands, watching me through the lifted visor with those enormous blue eyes. I caught the chin bar and tilted her face up slightly to look at her very directly and very seriously.

"You're going to hold on," I said. "Lean with me in the turns. Don't fight the bike."

"Don't fight the bike," she repeated solemnly.

"Move with me."

"With you," she breathed. "Got it."

She climbed on behind me, and her arms came around my waist, and her chest pressed against my back, and her thighs settled against mine, and I sat very still and had a very direct conversation with my own nervous system about operating heavy machinery.

My nervous system was not particularly receptive.

She pressed closer when the engine turned over, making a small involuntary sound I felt more than heard, and I gripped the handlebars and stared at the road ahead and thought: I am a decorated veteran and a trained crisis responder and I am going to drive this motorcycle in a safe and controlled manner if it kills me.

I rode like someone's grandmother. Every turn calculated and restrained. Every acceleration contemplated three times. Because she was holding onto me like I was the only fixed point in a world that had suddenly started moving very fast, and I wanted to be that. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to be the thing someone held on to.

Ten minutes. The ride took ten minutes, which should have been nothing, and was, in fact, everything.

When I killed the engine in the parking lot, her arms stayed locked around me. Her helmet rested between my shoulder blades. Her whole body was trembling.

"Vera? Talk to me."

A long pause.

"I need a moment," she said, muffled.

"Take your time."

Another pause. "That was the most terrifying thing I have ever done."

"Okay."

"I want to do it again immediately."

I laughed. She climbed off, and I followed, and when I unclipped her helmet and lifted it free, her hair was wild, her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were bright with something that hadn't entirely come from the wind.

"You good?"

"I'm extraordinary." She grabbed my jacket lapels—her signature move, apparently—and looked up at me. "How do people do that every day?"

"Most people don't find it quite so—"