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Aurnia
He swung a leg over the motorcycle. I sucked in a breath.
It took about two and a half steps for me to realise that he was serious.
The way his motorcycle boots seemed to crack the asphalt beneath him. The way his thick, broad shoulders were stooped over like some monster. The way his eyes bore into mine, never once glancing around him. At open windows that might have snooping eyes. At either side of the street which might have cars and witnesses passing by. At the dark little alleyways where there was always a pair of eyes blinking wearily from the shadows. At Rian and Mason who were outside the shop, staring at us, and not moving.
Conor only looked at me and I knew in that moment that there was only me. No pedestrians with phones. No police. No one to stop him from doing exactly what he wanted with me. He would even ruin his friendships over me. Of this I was certain.
Whether it was to keep me safe or drive me to his apartment to fuck me or murder me in some cold, dirty river, it didn’t matter. He was getting his way. And I was helpless to it, his desire, his want, his need.
It took about two and a half miles for me to realise that I’d made a mistake.
I thought I hadn’t had a choice. I thought whatever happened I was going to end up on the back of that motorcycle. But I did have a choice: I could have fought.
I realised as the engine roared and the clouds whipped by and the streets widened beneath us that I should have. I should have fought. I should have kicked and screamed and made a scene. I should have clawed and scraped and bit. I should have made Conor drag me to his motorcycle by my hair as the asphalt stripped my skin. I should have made him bind my wrists and duct tape my thighs and stuff my mouth. I should have fought with everything I had.
Because a fighting’s chance in hell was better than what I had now: no chance at all.
I loved him.
I loved Conor. I wanted to be with him and only him and never not him. I didn’t want to go to Limerick. I wanted to stay. In Dublin. In Dublin Ink. In Conor’s arms. I wanted him to turn the motorcycle around and take me back. Take us back.
It took almost no time at all for my body to sink against his. To melt against his. To join with his as surely as if his cock were inside of me, as if the rocking of the machine beneath us was him rocking me in his arms.
As if he were taking me, making me his, making us one. Our ribs interlocked like fingers. Our hearts beat in time with one another’s. Our thighs quivered against one another’s like lips hesitant and scared and wanting. My cheek found the hollow between his shoulder blades and it was as if the space was carved from the flesh of his body just for me, as if he’d been clay sculpted and moulded for me.
As my fingers held handfuls of Conor’s leather jacket, so soft, so buttery, supple and smooth against my palms, I relaxed. I eased. I dropped my guard. At last my fingers slipped beneath the hem of his jacket, beneath the frayed edge of his thin, dark grey t-shirt. At last I splayed my fingers against Conor’s stomach. At last I held onto him. As much of him as I could get. As much as I could take without ripping him apart.
The clouds turned from dark grey to black above us, sank low to threaten us, but Conor was warm against me. We were hurtling a million miles an hour, but I was safe. We didn’t say a word to each other, but I could hear him. Even over the roar of the engine. Even over the whipping of the wind. Even over the cars screaming by in the opposite direction, their headlights in the early dusk blinding.
I don’t know which first wet Conor’s jacket: an errant raindrop or a hot tear that slipped from the tip of my chin.
Conor kept saying I was a child, a child, a child, but the truth is that I’d never really felt like much of a child. I’d been forced to grow up at a moment in my life where I wasn’t even yet capable of recalling memories. Meaning there was no time where I could look back and see something little and innocent with chubby legs or hear unencumbered laughter without an edge or taste ice cream on a warm day at the park, because there simply was none. I’d just never been a child.
Yet in that moment there on the motorcycle, I felt what it might be like to be one. To be a child. If just for a little while.
Because, put simply: I didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand why Conor was driving me wildly into the gathering storms like the only option we had together was to drive off the edge of the world itself. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t open up to me, couldn’t let me in. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just be, him and me. Loving one another. Holding one another. Driving into the night if that was what he wanted, if that was what he wanted. I didn’t understand why the end had come before the beginning. I just didn’t understand.
Isn’t that what being a child means? Looking around you and seeing nothing but question marks, mysteries, unsearched dark corners?
It took less than two and a half minutes for me to realise that something was wrong. That something was wrong and only going to get worse.
My body was so close to Conor’s during the ride that I felt everything. I knew before he flicked on his turn signal that he was going to change legs from the twitch of muscles in his left or right side. I knew when he was going to shift to a high gear by this restlessness that permeated the whole length of his spine. I knew when to lean and which way from the slightest movement of his thighs. I knew when we were going to race around a too slow car (and they were all too slow, the cars we whipped by in the gathering darkness) just by the momentary calming of his heart, like he was steadying himself to dive off an impossible height.
I knew everything in Conor’s body as if it were my own. So when the muscles along his left thigh tensed and didn’t release, I knew something had changed. Lanes were shifted, cars passed, curves in the countryside twisted and turned and yet that muscle pressed so close against mine remained like a bow pulled back too tightly, wanting desperately to be released.
Rain began to strike us like whips at the speed we were going, which only increased even as the streets grew slick. Thunder rolled around us. The rain came harder, faster and Conor’s left leg seemed to be petrified.
I blinked against the lashing rain and felt the muscles along Conor’s body like I was performing an autopsy. They’d too gone hard, unmoving. Held tense like he was expecting a blow to the gut, a sucker punch from the lightning that illuminated the horizon.
The movement of the bike grew jerky as nightfall raced after our tail. I pulled my hands from the warmth of Conor’s skin, the protection of his jacket and squeezed his arms. It was like he’d been injected with a paralysing poison. His arms were straight as boards, stiff as concrete.
I tried to shout his name, but the wind and the drumming of raindrops against our helmets stole my voice. I leaned in close and shouted again, but it was like trying to call to someone in a hurricane.
The shaking that started in Conor’s left leg and moved through his body, moved through me the same way the reverberations of the engine beneath me did, gripped my heart like a vice.
Conor was not someone to be shaken. To be moved. To be tossed about like a fallen leaf. Conor was the strongest man I knew. A boulder. A monument.
From what I could tell this quivering, this trembling of his body as the motorcycle drifted and corrected only to drift again was entirely outside of his control.
That’s when I realised that the true storm was coming. The rain and the lightning and the thunder was nothing.
I called Conor’s name again as we hurtled on.
There was no response.
