Page 75 of The Tiger in the Sack

Something in me unclenched so hard I almost fell over.

The evening had that September edge on it and she was in a sleeveless top and I was not going to put her on a bike without the jacket. I pulled off my jacket and held that out too.

She looked at the tattoos on my arms for half a second longer than strictly necessary. Then she took the jacket.

The jacket was big on her. She had to roll the sleeves twice. She did it without comment and without looking at me doing it, which was its own kind of privacy.

I swung a leg over the bike. Kicked it over. The engine caught on the first try, which it didn’t always do, and I thanked it silently.

She put the helmet on. Her hair did a quick choreography where most of the braids went inside the helmet and hung down the back. She climbed on behind me. One foot on the peg. Then the other.

Then her hands.

They found my waist like she’d thought about it first, committed to a placement, and executed. Both hands, flat, one on each side, just above the belt.

Every single thought I had about how to ride a motorcycle left my body.

I made them come back. I could not merge into Mehring Way thinking about her hands. I pulled out of the lot and onto the road and she adjusted her grip once on the first turn, a little tighter, and I told my cock it was not allowed to do anything.

The Rhinehaus was three lights away.

I hit the first one yellow and made it through. At the second one I slowed down on purpose and didn’t go when it turned.

I turned my head enough that she could hear me over the engine. “So here’s the thing about fake dating.”

Her face was three inches from my ear. I couldn’t see her, which was the only reason I had the guts.

“We should probably practice.”

A pause. The light went green and I didn’t take it, waved off the car behind me. “Practice.”

“Yeah. For show. Gotta be convincing.” I was nodding inside the helmet. “And there’s a place up here, past the Rhinehaus, that’s perfect for a first fake date. Real romantic. Candlelit. Very exclusive.”

“Kingman, where are you taking me?”

“An ice cream shop.”

The breath she let out against my neck might have been a laugh. I chose to believe it was a laugh.

This was where I should have stopped, and yet I did not, because my mouth decided we were doing a bit now and my mouth did not check with me first. “Which is actually genius if you think about it, because nobody we work with is gonna be at an ice cream shop on a Tuesday. I mean for a fake date you’d want witnesses, technically, that’s the whole point of a fake date, you want to get seen,” The light cycled again. I waved off another car. “So this is a terrible fake date, is what I’m telling you, strategically. There will be zero witnesses, it’s just gonna be us, which defeats the entire purpose. You know what? Forget the part where I explained why it’s a bad idea.”

“Isak.”

“Yeah.”

“Take me to the ice cream shop.”

I shut my mouth and took her to the ice cream shop.

The light turned again, and I went on the green this time. Took the right that went away from the Rhinehaus and toward Main Street, and her hands didn’t move from my waist, and that took me to the ice cream shop kept sitting in my chest like a small warm heartbeat I was going to carry around the rest of the night.

The Tippled Tiger sat between a tattoo place and a convenience store, with a chalkboard on the sidewalk that had a flying pig on it, drawn in pink chalk by somebody who could actually draw. I parked at the meter. Fed it. She was already off by the time I turned around.

She handed me back the helmet. She didn’t take off the jacket.

The bell on the door did a cheerful thing when I pushed it open. Inside smelled like vanilla and a faint chemical sweetness that was the nitrogen, and a kid behind the counter, maybe nineteen, looked up and said, “Hey, Isak.”

“Hey, Matty.”