Motorcycle Babe

Waking up for School

Gabriella

The alarm didn't wake me; the ache behind my eyes did.

I lay flat on my back, staring up at the white ceiling fan spinning in dizzying, slow circles. Months of recovery, months of isolated homeschool assignments at my kitchen table with my mom hovering over my shoulder, and it all led to this. First day back in a real school. First day back in the world.

Every morning since the accident started the same way—a brief, terrifying second where my mind was completely blank, reaching into the dark for pieces of a life that felt like they belonged to someone else.

I forced myself up, my feet hitting the cold floorboards. In front of the closet, my hands hovered over the clothes hanging on the rack. Jeans. Black shirt. Denim jacket. Safe choices. The kind of choices the girl in my old photos made. But as I pulled the denim over my shoulders, the fabric felt too stiff, like a costume I hadn’t quite grown into yet. I knew who I was... mostly. It was just the details that felt slippery, like trying to hold water in my hands.

I grabbed my bag and stepped out onto the porch into the humid morning air, stopping at the edge of the driveway.

Right on cue, a sleek black sports car pulled up to the curb. Tyler stepped out, sun-bleached hair perfectly styled, his varsity jacket slung casually over one shoulder. The school's star quarterback. My boyfriend. The one constant everyone insisted made sense.

He was halfway up the driveway, smiling as he reached for me—and then the sound hit.

It wasn't just noise; it was a low, guttural vibration that started in the asphalt and rattled straight up through the soles of my shoes. A motorcycle engine, sharp and aggressive, tearing down my quiet residential street.

My stomach plummeted before my brain could even process what was happening. My pulse spiked, a sudden, hot flash of adrenaline shooting straight to my fingertips. My body reacted instantly—muscles tensing, lungs locking up—as if braced for an impact that never came.

Right as Tyler reached my side, the black bike roared past my house, cutting sharp and close to the curb.

Raven Rider.

She wore a worn leather jacket, her short, dark curly hair tucked up underneath her helmet.

She didn't look at us as she banked hard around the corner at the end of my street, leaving the sharp, bitter scent of exhaust hanging in the morning air. But my heart was hammering against my ribs so violently it felt bruised.

My mind scrambled to latch onto what Kyle had told me during one of his home visits while I was still bedridden. “She wasn’t always like that,” he’d said, trying to fill in the blank pages of my memory. “Sophomore year, before her dad died, Raven was student government, straight A's, ambition pouring out of her. Then she just... snapped.”

I didn't remember any of that. But standing there on my own driveway, my hand was trembling at my side. My brain was screaming that I knew that sound, that I knew the exact weight of the air when she was near, even if the stories Kyle told me felt like fairy tales about a stranger.

Tyler's arm snaked around my waist, pulling me firmly against his hip, his grip a little tighter than usual as he watched the empty corner where the motorcycle had disappeared. He planted a kiss on my temple—possessive, heavy, familiar.

"God, she drives like a lunatic," Tyler muttered against my hair, his jaw tight. "Gonna end up wrapped around a telephone pole one of these days."

"Hey," I murmured back, forcing my lips to curve upward as he opened the passenger door for me. He smelled like expensive cologne and laundry detergent, a safe, clean smell that should have grounded me. So why did my skin prickle under his grip?

I slid inside, resting my head against the cold glass as he backed out of the driveway and headed toward our usual coffee shop.

We pulled up behind the line of cars at the drive-thru, and there she was. Raven was leaning against the outdoor pickup window, her helmet resting on the counter beside her. Without it, her short curls tumbled wildly around her forehead, framing the faint, jagged scar running down the side of her face that no one ever dared ask about. She was laughing with the barista—careless, sharp, effortless.

My eyes locked onto the line of her throat, tracing the dark ink of a tattoo peeking out from the collar of her shirt. A sudden wave of heat coiled low in my gut, heavy and suffocating.

Then, as if sensing the weight of my gaze, Raven stopped mid-sentence.

She turned her head slowly. Across the asphalt, through the tinted glass of Tyler's car, her dark eyes locked directly onto mine.

She didn't smile. She didn't smirk. She just looked at me—deep, intense, and searching, as if she could see right through the glass, right through the lie of me sitting in Tyler's passenger seat after months of hiding away at home.

My breath hitched.

When we pulled up to the window a minute later, the barista was already holding out two iced drinks with a polite smile.

"That'll be—oh, wait," the girl blinked, checking her screen. "Never mind. The girl on the bike took care of it."

Beside me, the air in the car instantly chilled. Tyler didn't snap, but his jaw set hard, his posture going rigid as he accepted the cups. He didn't say a word to the barista, just rolled up the window and pulled out onto the main road toward school.

The silence in the car was heavy, suffocating.

"You didn't have to take them," Tyler said quietly, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the road. It wasn't a yell, but the flat, controlled tone was a warning. "She's just trying to get under my skin, Gabriella. I don't want you interacting with her."

I looked down at the plastic cup in my lap, feeling the condensation soak into my palms. "It's literally just coffee, Tyler."

"It's not just coffee and you know it," he replied, turning into the school parking lot and putting the car in park. He turned to me, his expression softening just enough to look like concern, though his gaze remained firm. "I'm just trying to protect you. You're still recovering. You don't know how people around here are anymore."

He reached over and kissed my cheek, but the heat from Raven's gaze was still burning behind my eyelids.

"I'll see you at lunch," he murmured.

I grabbed my bag, pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the crowded pavement. The bell hadn't rung yet, but as I walked toward the front entrance, my eyes immediately began scanning the lot—searching past the sea of familiar faces for a black motorcycle and short, dark curls, my body moving on an instinct my mind was still desperately trying to comprehend.