Page 20 of Redline Baby

"She's a menace with excellent tire-pressure instincts."

"That's the best kind of menace."

The check comes, and neither of us reaches for it with any real urgency, which I take as a good sign.

Neither of us is trying to end this.

I win the small, wordless negotiation over the bill mostly by being faster, and Kit protests exactly as much as manners require and not one word more.

Outside, in the parking lot, under a sodium light that turns everything a little orange, he stands with his hands in his pockets, rocking slightly on his heels.

For a second, neither of us says anything.

It isn't the itchy, must-fill-it silence from the bar.

It's just quiet. Comfortable.

New, and already easy.

"This was good," Kit says, like he's a little surprised to be saying it. "I mean—you're good to talk to. That's not—I talk to people all the time, obviously, that's kind of my whole thing, but this was—"

He stops, laughs at himself, shakes his head.

"I don't know what I'm saying. This was good."

"It was good," I agree. "We should do it again."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He nods, mostly to himself, and there's a small second where I watch him actually consider that—not deflect it, not turn it into a joke, just let it be true.

And I think, watching him stand there in the orange light with his hands shoved in his pockets and something like real ease sitting on his shoulders for once, that I would very much like to be the reason that keeps happening.

"Night, Soren," he says.

"Ride safe, Kit."

He laughs at that—a short, surprised huff—like it's funny that I'd say it to him of all people, the fastest thing on two wheels Ni's ever seen.

Then he gets on his bike and goes.

I sit in my truck for a minute before I start the engine.

Chapter 8. Kit

Soren picks the bowling alley, which is not what I expected from a man like him.

"You strike me as a nicer restaurant guy," I tell him, sliding into the passenger seat of his truck, because he offered to drive and for once I didn't argue, even though I really like riding to places. I feel naked without my bike. "Not a rented-shoes guy."

"I contain multitudes." He pulls out of my apartment lot, one hand loose on the wheel, completely unhurried the way he does everything. "Also, it's Wednesday. Nobody's there. I like empty places."

"Should I be worried you're taking me somewhere no one will hear me scream?"

"Only if you're a genuinely terrible bowler." A ghost of a smile.

He's right about it being empty—the alley's got maybe two other lanes going, a group of teenagers three lanes down shrieking over something on someone's phone, the low mechanical rumble of the ball return machines under everything. The carpet is the specific ugly of every bowling alley carpet in America, all melted geometric shapes in colors that don't exist anywhere else. It smells like shoe spray and old popcorn.