Page 9 of My Veteran Biker

I finish the second terminal and straighten. "Try it now."

She gets back in the car and turns the key. This time the engine catches, rough but running.

She lets it idle for a moment, then puts it in reverse.

"That should hold for a few days," I say. "But get a new battery this week."

"I will. Thank you."

She's already backing out when I step forward.

"Francis!"

She stops, foot on the brake, window still down, but doesn't look at me.

"I wasn't waiting for you to come back," I say.

It's the truth. I bought this house because it was available and I needed somewhere to live. I didn't buy it hoping she'd show up next door seventeen years later.

But saying it out loud feels like a lie anyway because now that she is here, I can't pretend the last seventeen years haven't been shaped around her absence.

She sits there with the engine running, hands gripped tight on the steering wheel. For a second I think she's going to say something. Her mouth opens slightly, her eyes cut to mine through the mirror.

Then she puts the car in drive and pulls away.

I stand in the driveway with grease on my hands and watch her taillights disappear down the street.

My chest feels tight, my pulse too fast. I wipe my hands on my jeans and go back to the garage.

Chapter 3 — Francis

I stand in my kitchen at six-thirty holding a glass container of pasta salad and trying to talk myself out of this.

The rational part of my brain says: put it in your fridge, eat it yourself over the next three days, stop manufacturing reasons to see him.

The other part, the one that's been winning arguments since I woke up this morning, says: you already made it, you already walked over there yesterday to get your car fixed, one more conversation won't kill you.

The other part is a liar but I listen to it anyway.

I pick up the container and leave before I can change my mind.

Outside the heat hasn't lessened even though the sun is lower now, turning everything amber.

I can smell cut grass from somewhere, hear a dog barking three houses down. Normal evening sounds in a normal neighborhood where normal people live normal lives that don't include standing on their ex-boyfriend's porch after seventeen years trying to figure out what the hell they're doing.

I knock before I lose my nerve.

The door opens and Knox is there in jeans and no shirt, hair wet, water still running down his neck.

He's just showered. His chest is broader than I remember. There's a scar across his ribs on the left side, pale and puckered like it healed badly.

I want to ask about it. I don't.

He looks at the container in my hands. Doesn't say anything.

"I made pasta salad," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected. "Thought you might want some."

It's a terrible lie.