CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SECOND RIDE
438 Words
Three weeks passed. She went on the second ride.
And the third. And the fourth.
By the fourth Sunday she knew the names of the men who rode with them — Cord, who was watchful and said little to her but was never unkind; a giant called Hatch who baked bread on weekdays and had opinions about sourdough starter that rivaled her own; a young one named Marco who had grown up two streets from her and remembered her father. None of them treated her like a guest anymore. None of them treated her like one of them, either. She existed in a category of her own, which she was accustomed to.
What she was not accustomed to was Rafe.
Specifically: the version of him that existed on those Sunday mornings, on the open road, before the town woke up. He was different out there. Not softer — he was never exactly soft — but less armored. He talked more. Not constantly, not carelessly, but in the way that a person talks when they have decided to trust the listener.
He told her about the club — not the Route 9 thing, not the parts that would make her step back, but the weight of running it. The eighteen men who depended on the Saints for work, for community, for something that functioned like family when their own had failed them. The decisions that kept him awake. The ones he'd gotten wrong.
"You don't have to justify it to me."
"I'm not justifying. I'm explaining."
"What's the difference?"
"Justifying is for people who think you've already decided. Explaining is for people you think might actually listen."
She had held that for the rest of the ride, tucked it away with Dutch's card and the other things she was accumulating that she wasn't sure what to do with yet.
· · ·
After the fourth Sunday he walked her to her car. They stood in the early light outside the garage and she could feel the moment shifting — the particular gravity of two people standing close, neither moving away.
"I'd like to see your kitchen sometime."
Of all the things she'd imagined him saying, that was not one of them.
"My kitchen."
"You talk about it like it's a place that matters. I want to see a place that matters to you."
She looked at him for a long moment. The street was empty. The garage was quiet. Somewhere a bird was being optimistic about the morning.
"Tuesday. We're closed Tuesdays."
He nodded. She got in her car. She was three blocks away before she let herself smile.
- Writer
