Chapter 6 – Synchronization
1183 Words
Jax
The engines came alive, heat and sound bleeding into the dark like a promise no one intended to keep. I leaned forward on the Ducati, gloved hands settling into familiar tension, spine loosening as my body aligned with the machine beneath me.
Clad in all black. When I found black as my color, it changed many things. For instance, I like to merge with night. The darkness of the night brings peace to me and when I ride, disappearing into the night makes me feel I’m a part of the night.
No colors worth remembering.
The air smelled like fuel and scorched rubber. Men circled their bikes, voices loud, movements sharp with impatience. Everyone here thought speed made them dangerous.
They were wrong.
Danger came from knowing exactly how much you could push before something snapped.
Engines revved. The asphalt answered with reverberations.
A hand lifted.
Dropped.
The bike surged.
The world collapsed into motion.
Tires screamed as we tore forward, the sound sharp enough to cut through bone. I leaned into the first turn, heart rate spiking in time with the engine, adrenaline hitting hard and clean. The streetlights blurred into streaks of gold and white, curves coming fast enough that thought became a liability.
This was where everything went quiet.
Not empty — precise.
Every shift landed exactly where it needed to. Every brake bite is calculated, not panicked. I felt the other riders without looking, their proximity registering as pressure instead of threat.
One of them tried to crowd me on the left. Rookie mistake.
I let him think he had space.
Then I took it away.
Acceleration flattened everything unnecessary. The bike responded instantly, obedient and alive, a living extension of my body. Wind tore past, ripping sound from the world until all that remained was speed and control and the narrow ribbon of asphalt demanding absolute attention.
This wasn’t recklessness.
This was discipline at velocity.
The finish came the way it always did — suddenly, without ceremony. Engines screamed down, momentum bleeding off in controlled deceleration. Men shouted, laughed, argued. Egos collided harder than metal ever did.
I rolled to a stop, killed the engine, swung off the bike.
My heart was still racing.
My mind was calm.
That was the point. My gang cheered and high fived. I won. They won.
Winning wasn’t only the best part of the race. The adrenaline rush it surges through me is unmatched with no amount of money. The money is just a bonus.
I didn’t wait for the arguments to settle down and to see who’d win the argument.
I didn’t linger. Didn’t wait for anyone to prove something. I rode out alone, letting the city thin as streets narrowed and lights dimmed.
By the time I turned toward the neighborhood, the adrenaline had burned clean, leaving restlessness in its wake. The kind that never fully went away.
I slowed automatically as I entered the street.
Not because I had to. Because this place demanded containment.
As I coasted forward, the Ducati humming low, my gaze flicked toward the house next door without conscious decision.
Lights off.
I passed it without stopping.
Inside her house, Glenn stood at the stove, a wooden spoon paused mid-stir. I didn’t know that, not exactly — only that later, when I replayed the night without meaning to, I could place the moment.
The sound of the bike always came first.
Low. Controlled.
She didn’t turn fully. Just shifted, glanced through the window like she was checking the lawn, the sky, anything but the reason her attention sharpened.
I rolled past.
Dinner continued.
This became routine.
Not daily.
Not predictable.
Just often enough to register.
Mornings were quieter.
Some days I was already outside when she stepped out with a travel mug in one hand, phone pressed to her ear, voice clipped and efficient. She moved like someone who had learned to compress time, to stack tasks without complaint.
She noticed everything.
Even when she pretended not to.
Our eyes met once — briefly — and she gave a nod that wasn’t friendly or dismissive. Just acknowledgment. I returned it without slowing my hands as I wiped down the bike.
No words.
Other days, the garage door lifted just as she backed her car out. A flash of her through the windshield. The faintest tightening of her jaw when she caught me looking.
Sometimes I was gone before she came out.
Sometimes I came back late, engine subdued, and saw the glow of her upstairs light through the slats of my blinds.
I didn’t look long.
Didn’t need to.
I went about my life.
Midnight races.
Long rides with no destination.
Minor accidents I ignored until stiffness forced me to stretch them out.
Nights that ended too late and mornings that came too fast.
She went about hers.
Early starts.
Business calls.
A kid who laughed too loud and slept too lightly.
A house that ran on systems, not impulse.
We didn’t intersect.
We overlapped.
On nights when the adrenaline didn’t quite burn off, I’d pause in the kitchen with a bottle of water, stare at nothing for a moment longer than necessary.
Sometimes her house was dark.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
It didn’t change my night.
Didn’t slow me down.
But the glance happened anyway.
Once, I caught myself adjusting my route home slightly — not enough to be intentional, just enough to pass her house at a speed that let me see without being seen.
I didn’t think about why.
Across the lawn, she stood at the sink longer than necessary some nights, listening to the quiet, waiting for a sound she told herself meant nothing.
When it came, she pretended she hadn’t been waiting.
That was the rule.
I noticed the routines, the way I noticed flaws in machinery — without judgment, without curiosity that asked questions. Just patterns forming where there hadn’t been any before.
She always checked the door twice before bed. Always paused at the back room before turning off the lights.
She never lingered outside after dark. I never rode loud on this street. Never left the bike where it could draw attention.
We adapted.
Not to each other.
Around each other.
The canvas incident didn’t change that. It just made the awareness sharper.
She didn’t avoid me afterward. Didn’t seek me out either. The distance stayed exactly the same, which told me more than either reaction would have.
Control mattered to her. So did efficiency. That was the problem.
I caught her watching once, or maybe she caught me first — hard to tell. She was cooking, body angled toward the window just enough that the glance looked accidental.
I smiled to myself and rolled the bike out anyway.
Not to show off.
Just because it amused me. The pull wasn’t an attraction.
Not yet.
It was recognition. Two lives running on different fuels, aware enough to notice the other without needing to collide.
Speed and structure.
Adrenaline and vigilance.
Background noise.
And the thing about background noise was this:
You didn’t hear it until it stopped.
- Writer
