“We got time,” I breathed, handing him the keys like I was offering a holy object. “Be gentle.”
“I only know gentle,” he countered, and for a second the hard line of his mouth became a curve.
He tuned with two fingers and a listening ear, the way old ladies tune choir notes with a hum and a squint. The Ninja settled, purr dropping into a register that stroked my thigh instead of rattling it; the whole bike relaxed like a child whose braids were finally done. He turned the key back to me with a micro-nod. “You good.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, tucking gratitude under my tongue like a lozenge to save for later.
He gathered his tools, ghosted toward the stairwell, and then paused without turning. “Don’t let the city hear you too loud,” he cautioned, the sentence floating back on the salt air. “She’ll get jealous.”
Tony exhaled like a man at the end of a cigarette and slapped his palms together. “Okay! Y’all ready? Or we need to, like, play an intro track? ‘All My Life’ on low?”
Ro smirked, palms rubbing down his thighs to clean the grease that would never fully leave. “No track,” he answered, the sky catching the words and saving them on a cloud. He turned back to me and everything in his face stood up straight. “We roll one more corner, Rae,” he promised, stepping close enough that his breath warmed the shell of my ear. “Just one more. Then we talk to God.”
The wind lifted the hair at my nape and stroked it like a mother who had forgiven me for things I hadn’t confessed yet. The ocean thumped its approval against the cliff. The city kept sparkling. I looked at Ro, at the napkin folded neat in his pocket and the chain around his neck and the grease on his knuckles, and I felt something inside me uncoil—a ribbon, a vow, a thread that had been waiting since I was fifteen and he first taught me how to tuck my knees when the road bent ugly.
“Okay,” I breathed, voice steady. “One more corner.”
We pulled our helmets down and the world narrowed again but didn’t shrink. Ro swung onto his Yamaha R1 and fired it up. The engine barked then settled into a proud rumble that made the concrete remember what thunder felt like. I climbed onto the Ninja, the seat embracing the spread of my hips like it knew what work they did for me; the bike purred, low and content, ready to go where the truth would be spoken out loud with no apology. Tony hustled back to the Civic and jammed the camcorder strap around his wrist, wiggling on his seat like he was a kid about to see fireworks for the first time again.Somewhere beneath us, the Pacific rehearsed another slap against the rock, then delivered it with the confidence of a choir on its best Sunday.
Ro looked over his shoulder, visor up for one last minute, eyes lit with something that made my knees weak even when I was already sitting. “You got me?” he asked, not pleading, just confirming everything.
“I had you before you knew how to ask,” I returned, my voice a smile he could keep in his pocket for later.
“Fo’sho,” he grinned, visor dropping with a click that sounded like a door closing gently behind two people who were finally ready to be inside. He rolled forward, slow at first, then quicker, then the right amount of fast that tells the road you respect it and still you plan to win. I fell in behind him and the two of us arrowed off the slab and onto that skinny pencil-line of service road, climbing one last switchback toward the roof where the vows would hear the ocean, the city, the helicopter, the gossiping palms, the moths, the neon, the sirens, the prayers of aunties, the bass from a passing Monte Carlo, and all the other witnesses that make up a neighborhood when it decides to show up for love.
As we rose, the air cooled enough to make my breath feel bright in my chest. The horizon cracked open one more inch; the chain on his Yamaha R1 sang a new, strong note that harmonized with my Ninja’s steady hum and the hum in my ear hissed once, then cleared, as if even cheap wires knew to hush now that the truth was about to step into the light.
The last curve spit us into a quiet stretch where the streetlights took turns going dim like they were conserving grace, the ocean smell still hanging in the air as a low. We rolled into the little strip off Hawthorne where neon buzzed its tired blessings—liquor store on one end with posters peeling off the glass like old rumors, pawn shop on the other flashing“GOLD, CASH, NO QUESTIONS” in a red that could never pass a lie detector, and wedged between them a storefront church with hand-painted letters that refused to quit: “APOSTOLIC HOUSE OF GRACE”. The O in Apostolic leaned like it needed a shoulder to cry on. Tonight, it got mine.
Ro let his Yamaha R1 idle down, engine purring hot and satisfied, then clicked the kill switch and let his night climb on top of us. The air changed when the motors cut—like somebody pressed a finger to the city’s lips and whispered, “Hush.” He pulled his helmet off in one clean line and shook a little rain of sweat from his hair, the streetlight catching on his gold rope chain, on his cheekbone, on the tiny nick near his jaw from that thing earlier he promised me wasn’t really a thing. My helmet came off slower—careful with edges, careful with baby hairs—and the breeze slid over my scalp like it had been waiting its turn.
“You good?” he rumbled, stepping into my space the way men do when they’ve built a house there without permits and dare you. His fingers hooked into the waistband of my Tommy crop where the hem met the skin of my middle, the soft that no one got to shame.
“Boy, I’m brand new,” I breathed, letting a grin crawl up before I could make it behave. “You rode that last turn like you was trying to make the wind hurt, baby boy.”
He laughed low, that warm gravel sound that always knocks my knees a half inch toward the ground. “Wind ain’t my competition,” he teased, tipping my chin with a knuckle. “She my witness, shawty.”
“Then let her testify.” I murmured, pressing my forehead to his chest for one slow count, inhaling salt, motor, and the drugstore cologne he wore like stubborn joy.
Doors chimed behind us and Toothpick Tony slid out the liquor store with a Gatorade and a grin that knew the wholeplot and still asked for spoilers. That man always found a store near us. The toothpick bobbed like it paid rent in his mouth. “Ayyy, brujita and Bike-Boo,” he whooped, keeping it just under cop volume, “y’all ready to get holy or we doing this rehearsal style again?”
“Mind the business that pay you.” I tossed, eyes laughing while my hand patted down my pockets to make sure I hadn’t lost the lip gloss that kept pretending to be loyal. “You got that camera charged or you gon’ be out here filming on imagination?”
“Battery at ninety-eight,” he bragged, palm on his flannel pocket like a man swearing in. “I’m Scorsese, baby. And tonight? Y’all the masterpiece.”
Ro cut him a look that landed between brother-love and threat. “You don’t hit record ‘til I tap you,” he warned, voice flat enough to iron. “No redlight accidents.”
Tony snapped a salute so sloppy it almost turned into a dance move. “Copy. Red light on hold. Spirit-led cinematography only.”
We turned to the church and the church turned back. Fluorescents hummed inside like old bees, and incense hung in the doorway trying to fight off the beer perfume wafting from next door. A string of Christmas lights drooped across the entry—green, red, and one tragic yellow that couldn’t decide which team it loved more. The door stuck a little at the bottom, then gave, and the cool linoleum air met the outside heat like two aunties hugging after a fight.
Inside, the sanctuary was fifteen folding chairs, a pulpit made from a kitchen cabinet on cinder blocks, a portable keyboard with three busted keys, and a fan with a wobble that testified louder than the pastor. The walls were textured like popcorn ceilings had migrated. A hand-lettered sign above thepulpit read “GOD CAN DO IT” and somebody had underlined “CAN” three times, like the Lord needed coaching.
A door to the back creaked and the preacher shuffled out in black slacks and house shoes, and a robe thrown over a white shirt that still held the wrinkle memory of the hanger. He carried a Bible that looked like it had been read at kitchen tables and bus stops and in hospital hallways when doctors started saying phrases that end in stage. He stopped when he saw us and let his gaze do the measuring—over my crop top, the bamboo earrings big enough to catch a blessing, the Forces under thrift-store satin that was trying its best; over Ro’s chain and crease, over the glove prints still ghosting his knuckles.
“Evenin’,” he greeted, voice lined with smoke and funerals. “Y’all the ones who called?”
Ro stepped forward and the chain winked once like a co-conspirator. “Yes, sir,” he answered, not flinching, not fronting. “We come to make it right.”
