Page 122 of Roadrunner

The motorcycle idled in the center of the garage. Arthur’s notebook was on the workbench beside the empty coffee cups. The three cardboard boxes were broken down and stacked against the wall.

Years in those boxes.

Running now.

Running because the right time had finally arrived and the right time had a name and the name was Arthur.

I looked at the two of them standing in the garage with their fists still touching.

I stood up from the steps.

I went inside.

That night the garage was empty except for a drop light and the Evo. Arthur was in the office with homework.

“You’re staring,” he said.

“You’re dirty,” I said.

He looked at my mouth. “You used to like that.”

I stepped in. He kissed me like he was still deciding if he was allowed, then decided. Grease on my jaw. He stopped first.

“Not here.”

“Then where?”

I said otherwise with my hands in his belt and then I let him go. We finished that part of the night two feet apart and breathing like we’d run.

Arthur’s door closed at nine. Martina’s light went dark a little after.

I found him at the kitchen sink washing his hands like the grease was a conversation he was still having.

I turned the water off.

He looked at me.

There was nothing left to decide.

We didn’t make it farther than the hallway. His mouth on mine tasted like soap and metal. I got his shirt over his head and put my palm on his chest and felt the day leave his body in one long breath.

He backed me against the wall the way he had once backed me against a doorframe, except this time the house was ours and the boy down the hall was asleep and nobody was coming to take the night away.

He undressed me slowly.

Not claiming. Reading.

The drop light from the garage still lived on his hands. I kissed his knuckles and tasted work. Goosebumps rose along my arms. I did not joke it off.

“Look at me,” I said.

He did.

When he pushed into me it was quiet. Intimate in the way a whisper is intimate. No Jeep. No wall we were stealing. Just a hallway and a man I had loved since I was too young to know the word and a body that remembered him without being asked.

He moved careful, then certain. We found our rhythm, and maintained a slow, steady pace for some time, watching each other as we did.

I came, in waves, like I hadn’t before. My body shuddered, from the tips of my toes to the back of my neck, just where it met my skull.