Confrontation Brewing Part 2
1222 Words
Rhonda snaps out of her state, coming back to the here and now. She rubs her temples with powerful thumbs, slow and pained. Her green eyes open slowly, blinking off the memory of oil, gas, and Alice. Bright light catches them, a perfect contrast to the growing dark in her mind.
"You look like you wrestled with the floor and lost," Jimmy jokes. He lets his arms hang slack, loose and uncertain.
"Maybe I did," she grunts, untying the leather apron from around her waist. Her hands work with mechanical precision, but they move almost against her will.
"You ever take a break? Or just skip straight from hard labor to more hard labor?" He shifts in the doorway, making room for the bright sun. Making room for conversation.
Rhonda shrugs, avoiding eye contact. Avoiding softness. Avoiding anything that might make her pause or question.
"So," Jimmy ventures, finding the courage to step forward. "What'd you end up doing last night?"
He doesn't expect an answer. She surprises them both by giving him one.
"I was with Alicia." Her voice has the slightest tremor, but her grip is iron and she won't let it shake her.
"Everything okay with her?" Jimmy's eyes are wide and brown, alive with questions. They follow her, tracing the tension she carries. The uncertainty.
"No," Rhonda replies. Her voice has a serrated edge, raw and determined.
He waits for more. The room falls quiet.
The silence breaks when her phone slips from the counter and crashes to the floor. It vibrates once, spinning in tight, mechanical circles. Its sound is like a sad, rattling toy, or a cricket left behind in an abandoned, human place.
She stares at it, defiant and focused. It stops.
The red sneakers make no sound as she picks up her words.
"I think the shiny suits finally got to Mark."
Jimmy raises his eyebrows, a look that falls somewhere between sympathy and surprise. His instinct is to speak, but he knows this is her show. Knows this is Rhonda's song.
"Alicia's pretty broken up about it." She answers the look and nothing else. The final words are almost a whisper, subdued as her sister. "I'm not."
It's quiet. The only sounds are the distant city outside and the close, rattling gears of Rhonda's mind.
"Think it had to do with who she is, not who she ain't." The words tumble from her lips, gritty and unfinished.
Her hands follow them. One knots with the other, twisting tight in an unbreakable grip.
It's either enough to hang Jimmy or hold him together. He takes the risk and jumps.
"Maybe she'll forgive him," he offers.
"Maybe he'll have the guts to ask her," Rhonda growls. She tucks her shirt tight, rough with her words and even rougher with her sleeves.
He laughs, the sound soft and a little empty. A little cautious.
"You think she even wants him back? After all this?"
"Right now, she wants him more than anything." Her voice is certain. There's sadness under the certainty, but she ignores it, pushing forward with an unyielding drive.
Jimmy tries again, hopeful and gentle as a summer breeze. "And what about you? Do you want him back?"
She ties her boot, the bright red one. Her silence tells him more than he expects.
When she talks again, her voice is like her breath after a hard ride. Short. Quick. Ready for the next one.
"I just want to fix it." She says it so evenly that it scares him. She says it like gospel.
He nods. Resigned to being unresigned. A truce when he's got no other play.
"She still thinkin' about that rally?" He changes the subject like a patient man changing his life. Nothing is certain, but he acts like it is.
"I am, Jimmy. And I plan to enter," Rhonda responds, her tone not matching the shift. It holds no trace of before, but it shows how much he cares. She's blunt, and he reads it as love.
He takes it as her thank you. It was. They both move on.
She's already leaving, hands around the handlebar like they won't let go until this whole thing ends. Until it all breaks, or it all is rebuilt. Until it's fixed, until she's won. She turns the ignition, wanting the comfort of one sound over another. Wanting the bike to start as easy as anything else.
"You goin' somewhere?" he calls, as if she might answer anything else.
Rhonda pauses for a second. A brief stop on a long road.
"I'm goin' to fix this," she repeats. Her voice holds up like the rest of her, through a night without rest. Through her words and Alicia's, through heartbreak and engine failure. "No matter what."
The bike rumbles to life, and so does her mission.
She stands, a tired warrior in grease-stained clothes. The day is over before it begins, but she's going to outlast it.
She snaps the shop lights off, fists clenched. Snaps them back on again. If she leaves now, maybe she won't be back before this is done. And if it is done?
"Leave 'em for me," Jimmy calls, giving her permission to get it all, everything, everything they care about. "Save me a little trouble."
Rhonda grins and does. But trouble is her stock in trade, and he knows it.
She draws one final breath, fresh air and finality.
And like a war cry, it fires her up and into action. She's lost in the need to fix things, lost in herself, her motions automatic and fuelled by grit. By love.
Her feet beat a pattern on the floor. There's a solid thunk, then silence. Thunk, silence. Left foot and right foot. Rhonda Taylor and her task.
The last thing she sees before she leaves is the photo of Alicia. It stares from the clutter like a mission statement. It’s even and clear and small. It’s the clearest thing she's got.
The thunks are the sound of her determination. A sound too stubborn for rhythm, but too stubborn for silence.
She comes back to her bike and turns it off. Turns everything else on.
Rhonda looks Jimmy in the eye, seeing more than just his doubt. She meets his challenge head on, and this time she responds.
"You know I won't quit until I've got it figured, Jimmy. I got an engine that's got more willpower than all those fancy suits." Her defiance is a little more playful now, a little more aware. "And a lot less squeak."
The sound grows more insistent. She comes back to her task with all pistons firing.
One last time.
She grabs the Taylor family jacket, running hard.
When Rhonda picks up her helmet, she's a blur of black leather and auburn resolve.
The screen lights one more time, the message flashing bright against the workbench's clutter. Bright against Rhonda's absence.
Call me as soon as you can?
She flies past her last set of doubts and hesitations, as fast as she can run, as sure as her steps and words. The early morning has the sound of a reckless thing left in its wake.
She's left herself room for nothing but answers, fast and tight and unswerving. She goes hard for all of it.
Rhonda bolts, firing on all cylinders.
- Writer
