“You love me?” I nudged, needling him the way girls do when they want the truth to stand up and take its oath in public.
“I love you,” he returned, no hesitation, no play, the words full as a plate and simple as a prayer. “Fo’sho.”
The com spat a tiny pop like it was witnessing. I breathed in hard enough to taste the oil in the air and breathed out the fear men always taught me to keep in my teeth so it wouldn’t run away. His blinker-tapped right and we slid into a turnout that looked like any other—chain-link swung wide, dust blooming under our tires—then wound us up a narrow service road that climbed the cliff like somebody had scribbled a line there with a pencil and the city never got around to erasing it. We switchbacked twice, then three times, night air turning from warm to cool to the kind that tastes like it used to be ice somewhere further inland. The chain-link gave way to a break in the wall, and suddenly we were on a flat slab of cracked concrete that had once been part of something official and now belonged to the kids, the ghosts and the mannish little boys.
Ro killed his engine the world rushed in to take the sound’s place—the hush of waves far below, the occasional tick-tick-tick of cooling metal, the high whine of the mosquitos that made a fool’s attempt at my visor, the distant hiss of freedom. I shut mine down and the quiet doubled itself, then steadied, the kind of hush that isn’t empty, just polite.
We pulled our helmets off and hung them on our mirrors like two planets with their moons in place. My hair fell out the clip and tumbled across my shoulders in a glossy sheet that still smelled like cocoa butter and the mango spray I’d stolen twospritzes of at the beauty supply. The cheap night air climbed my neck, and I shivered even though I wasn’t cold.
Ro stepped in and tucked his hands into my open denim jeans like he belonged there more than keys, his palms warm against my hip that had memorized his fingerprints back when we were fifteen and stupid and kind. “Look,” he hushed, chin tipping toward the horizon where the ocean had lost its mind trying to be infinite and the sky had forgiven it. I looked. The city fanned out to our right like a mess of jewels on a dresser, everything we could never own doing its best to seduce us anyway, beads of light strung along streets the way aunties string pearls across throats that have known too much yelling and not enough apology. A helicopter hovered over somewhere that didn’t deserve the attention but got it anyway, its searchlight combing a block like a mother that won’t stop checking on a baby who already fell asleep.
“It’s a lot,” I exhaled, and the words walked out of me like a girl who had finally set her own bag down. “Makes you feel small without making you feel less.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, forehead nudging mine, nose brushing cheek, voice catching that small crack it gets when the boy inside the man panics about being seen. “I want the vows to hear something bigger than us.”
“The what?” I blinked, pulling back just enough to find his face in the half-dark, the moon stunting behind a smudge of cloud like it had somewhere else to be.
He smiled like he’d been caught and didn’t mind the handcuffs. “Relax,” he coaxed, thumbs drawing two slow haloes on my hips. “We ain’t at the part yet. But we gon’ be. On hood.”
“You tryna get extra’d out on a service road?” I ribbed, even as my pulse start-drummed its little beat in my wrist. “You ain’t got no shame.”
“Not when it comes to you,” he countered, raw enough to make me bite the inside of my lip to keep from leaking. He slid a hand into his back pocket and tapped a small square there—napkin folded into a little white secret. “Hold this for me in a minute.”
“Tape and tinsel,” I muttered, trying to brace myself with jokes and failing. “You cheap.”
“I’m humble,” he corrected, playful turning tender. “God likes humble.”
I didn’t argue because sometimes you let a man’s theology stand if it’s gonna walk him toward the altar instead of away from it. I leaned into his chest and let the night climb my back with careful, cool fingers, my cheek fitting that spot under his collarbone that always felt pre-carved. Below us, the waves slapped rock and laughed about it, the ocean a big bully with a crush.
A beat-up Civic with mismatched fenders rattled up the service road and both of us turned without flinching because we knew that cough like kin. Toothpick Tony rolled to a stop and killed the engine with more drama than necessary, then emerged with his camcorder cradled like a baby he was prepared to drop if it got him a better angle. “Ayyy,” he whooped gleefully, wind snatching the last y off his tongue and throwing it at the cliff. “Y’all look like a music video up here! Total meets Hot Boys!”
“Keep your voice down,” Ro urged, not harsh, just protective, arm tightening around my waist. “You attract cops with all that performing.”
Tony dimmed himself two watts and shuffled closer, head on a swivel like the air might be recording us back. “Battery at ninety,” he reported, tapping the camera as if it could feel the love. “Tape rewound. We crisp.”
“You film nothing until I bless it,” Ro reminded, low and final, the sentence a key turning in a lock.
“Ten-four, Captain Covenant,” Tony chirped, tucking the camera to his chest and chewing the toothpick like it was a good-luck charm with splinters. He threw me a wink that held more reverence than clown. “You look like the whole future, Rae. For real.”
“Don’t jinx me,” I murmured, even as I reached out and squeezed his forearm in thanks. His foolishness had weight; sometimes a clown is a strong pillar in the crowd.
From the shadows by the stairwell, another shape unpeeled itself from the concrete—the kind of silhouette that doesn’t belong to danger but knows its first name. A tool roll glinted at its feet, and when the figure bent, the light caught the metal. Jinx stepped forward with that quiet he wears like a fitted cap, the brim pulled low over eyes that do too much math to waste energy on blinking. “Your chain’s singing,” he observed softly, voice as flat as a photograph but not unfriendly. “Heard it back on the main. You run it like that to a preacher, you gon’ stop the vows to pick your sprocket out the ditch.”
Ro lifted his chin with a grateful grunt and took half a step toward him. “You bring it?”
Jinx flipped the roll open with a lazy flick and the new chain gleamed like a thin, expensive snake. “Always,” he answered, then angled a look at me that wasn’t invasive, just curious. “You cool if he gets his hands greasy before he gift-wraps your forever?”
“I like my men honest,” I returned, amused, pride stoking in my ribs like a hot coal. “Grease tells the truth.”
Jinx’s mouth twitched, which for some people is a chuckle, and he crouched by the Yamaha R1 Street Bike with surgeon patience. “Gimme six minutes,” he murmured, already loosening, tightening, measuring with the intimacy only a manand a machine understand. “Maybe eight if your boy wanna talk his feelings to the axle.”
Ro crouched next to him and worked while I watched, my heart doing that quiet clap women do when men they love earn their keep under the hood of the world. Tony panned the camcorder in teases—up to the city, down to the water, across our bikes like chrome was a gospel—and then tucked it away again, hands surprisingly still for someone who lived loud. Above us, the helicopter wandered off to a fresh sin; below, the waves kept auditioning for a role they already owned.
Jinx finished in seven, wiped his hands on a rag that used to be a shirt that used to be a night out, then straightened and rolled his neck like a man coaxing out tomorrow. “You owe me,” he stated, not greedy, just honest ledger keeping.
Ro clapped him in—forearm to forearm, pull-and-bump with a real smile in it. “I owe you,” he affirmed, the words stamped, notarized, filed.
Jinx’s gaze slid toward my Ninja and softened a fraction. “Your idle’s a little high,” he noted, almost shy. “You wanna keep her from drinking too fast, keep her cool on the slow roll. We got time?”
