Page 43 of The Tiger in the Sack

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“You’re going to anyway.”

“Accurate.” He chuckled and asked, “How’d you end up here? Cincinnati. Was this always the plan?”

I thought about how to answer that. How much of it was true and how much of it was mine to give right now, to a man on a motorcycle whose face I still hadn’t seen.

“No,” I said. “The plan was something more practical. More...expected.” I watched the streetlights come on one by one as the sky started to go. “But I got an opportunity to do something that actually mattered. Not just something that paid well. Something that could change things for people who needed the change.” I paused. “I know how that sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound like anything bad.”

“It sounds naive sometimes. When it’s hard.”

“Is it hard?”

“Parts of it. The parts where you’re trying to convince people that the change is worth it.” I watched the city across the water starting to light up, building by building. “But the parts where it’s working, those feel like the reason.”

He was quiet for a moment. The good kind of quiet.

“I get that,” he said.

“Yeah?”

““I’ve been doing the family business. Something they all live and breathe.” The way he said it was careful, like he was picking his way across something.

“They’ve been doing it longer. Better, probably. My oldest brother, he’s the best at it, all of it. He does this thing...he can just bring a whole....team together and get them to perform at peak levels. I’ve been trying to get out from under his shadow since I was old enough to understand it existed.”

“That’s a long time to be trying.” I could say the same thing about dance and cheer for me.

“Yeah.” He let that pause sit even longer than normal, and I didn’t try to fill it in for him. “The thing is I know I’m good at it. I know that. But knowing it and feeling it are different things when you’re the youngest and everyone around you has been doing it longer.”

“Do they make you feel that way? Your family?”

“No.” He said it fast, which meant it was true. “They’re — no. It’s just the math of it. You can love something and be great at it even and still be aware of where you fall in the ranking of people who do it.”

I thought about my dad. About standing just to the left of the frame of fame.

“I know that math,” I said.

“I figured you might.”

Something passed between us that didn’t need words. I pressed my helmeted cheek against his back for just a moment and watched the world go by in a golden glow.

He didn’t say anything, but he breathed beneath my cheek, wrapped in my arms, and for that one moment, I let everything just be. No judgements, no worries, no secrets. Just for a moment.

He steered us into a park with some beautiful open spaces and eventually parked in a lot at one end. The sign said that this area, Devou Park was only open until dusk, and we were pushing the edges of that time. But it was worth it.

We parked, got off the bike, and he took my hand, leading me. I let him.

We stopped at an overlook with a low stone wall along the edge and a view that went on forever. We both just stood there, holding hands, looking at the river, the skyline, the bridges, Cincinnati lit up and reflected in the water in a way that made the whole thing look like it was happening twice.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sure the bridge going back into the city is cool, but you’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“This is the money shot.”

He made a sound that was satisfaction and amusement in equal measure, and we went to sit on the wall with the city in front of us and the sky doing its full performance overhead, going from gold to deep blue to the first hints of dark.