Ro cupped my face like it was the only thing he owned that mattered, thumbs pressing the corners of my mouth as if joy were a dangerous substance best handled with care. The kiss wasn’t long. It was deep. It tasted like winter mintsand courage, like bike oil and midnight promises, like every fast I’d ever failed, and every prayer God answered anyway. When our mouths parted, our foreheads stayed, and our breath pooled in the small, electric space between two people who had finally put down their stubbornness and picked up a yoke with two necks.
From the side door, a cough scraped the air and a shadow leaned into the sanctuary that did not belong to innocence. Leather creaked; a lighter clicked; the brief flare lit a face I had seen my whole childhood in smiles and sermons and warnings: Sal Zore. He didn’t step in proper—just enough for the smoke to write his presence on the air like a signature nobody forged. His eyes tracked Ro, then me, then the rings, then drifted to the preacher as if to ask whether he had the spine to bless a thing this messy.
“You gon’ stand on that?” Sal rasped, voice wrapped in gravel, not addressing the room—addressing Ro the way men address men when affection wears steel. “You gon’ keep what you just promised when the block starts collecting?”
Ro didn’t break our small press of foreheads; he only turned his eyes, and they darkened like a sky that had decided yes to thunder. “On everything,” he growled, no theater, just oath. “On name. On blood.”
Sal dragged smoke and killed it between his fingers like a habit he’d tried to quit and failed. “Make sure your mouth ain’t writing checks your brothers’ bodies gotta cash,” he warned, then hooked a nod toward the preacher that somehow contained respect and threat and love. He ghosted back through the side door like a man who only visits churches to make sure God still knows his address.
Jinx exhaled in the corner like he’d been holding air for both of us. “Clock on y’all,” he murmured, sliding the tool roll backunder his arm. “You need to bounce before the liquor store starts leaking police.”
“Copy that,” Tony chimed, popping to his feet, red light finally blinking to life as he panned toward the GOD CAN DO IT sign like a cinematographer who knew symbolism when it smacked him with a tambourine. “I got y’all walking out slow-mo like a Hype Williams video. Y’all gon’ be legendary in silence.”
The preacher closed the Bible with a sound I’ll hear in my bones when I’m ninety. “By the power vested in me by the God who ain’t ever lost a case,” he announced, warmth rolling back into his tired frame like a second wind, “I pronounce you husband and wife. Go in peace; come back with testimony.”
Ro slipped my ring hand onto his chest like he was docking a boat in a safe harbor. “We locked,” he whispered, a grin trying to fight its way onto his face and losing to awe.
“We kept.” I breathed, and those two words wrapped themselves around each other like ropes that had finally found their knot.
We stepped into the night. The liquor store neon gave us bad haloes, but I took them—ratchet light still shines. The pawn shop’s sign flickered like it wanted to clap. Ro handed me my helmet like a crown, then palmed my cheek for one more stolen taste of what we had just made legal in the eyes that count. Tony hovered behind the glass, camcorder a shy eye, recording the walk to our bikes like it was the kind of footage you bury in a glove box next to old tax receipts and a spare Timberland lace.
Engines woke the block again—my Ninja with a silky hum that didn’t need to brag, his Yamaha R1 with the deeper throat that makes dogs across the street reconsider their choices. Jinx drifted to the curb and tapped my tank with two knuckles, the small benediction of men who worship at altars made ofgas and chrome. “Idle’s right,” he affirmed, chin lifting a hair. “She’ll carry you.”
“She already do.” I smiled, hazel eyes catching every dumb neon and making it look expensive.
Ro threw a leg over and glanced across the lot toward the shadow where Sal had been. For a beat, his jaw worked. Then another beat, and his mouth softened like he had forgiven the world for the next five minutes. He turned to me and the look on his face carved a new room into my heart. “Rae,” he murmured, thumb brushing the ring where it circled my finger like a truth, “you mine in front of God.”
“And you mine,” I returned, voice steady and young and ferocious, “in front of everybody who thinks they got a vote.”
We rolled out shoulder to shoulder, helmets down, the red camcorder light blinking in the liquor store window like a little star that had decided to mind our business forever. A Raider-jacket kid on a BMX froze to watch us and then lifted his chin with that solemn respect kids give rockets and brides. The night swallowed our taillights and spit back salt and wind and a thin ribbon of tire hiss.
I threaded my fingers into my tank, touched the gold, and whispered the verse I keep under my tongue when the block gets loud—a gentle and quiet spirit is precious in God’s sight—and the words slid down like warm tea. In my ear, Ro’s voice cracked into the coms, low and ritual, birthdays spilling out like a roll call that made angels pause: “Dre July third. Boo May twenty-first. Tasha February eighteen.”
When he finished, he breathed once—just once—and added mine in a hush that made the night lean closer. “Nova… August twenty-third.”
“Forever.” I answered, and the road agreed by opening itself one more lane wide, just enough for husband and wife to run.
—
The ride back felt like we stole an hour straight off the calendar and tucked it in our jackets. We floated the freeway shoulder-to-shoulder until the city grabbed us again—streetlights blinking lazy, taquería smoke doing praise hands in the alley, a busted hydrant slicking the curb like somebody baptized the whole block without paperwork. Ro peeled off at La Brea like he knew a secret exit nobody else respected, then eased into a narrow lot behind a three-story stucco that had been beige once and gave up. His Yamaha R1 cut last, engine lingering in the air like the growl of a dog that still watches after it stops barking.
He flipped his visor, grinned that half-wolf, half-boy grin, and pointed with his chin at the upstairs rail. “Third floor. Don’t trip on two—neighbors be thinkin’ they own the step.”
“I’ll tip-toe,” I ribbed, swinging off my Ninja, thighs still humming from speed. “And your stairs gon’ respect it.”
He laughed low, palm catching mine, fingers lacing like we’d trained for this. The stairwell smelled like bleach and old rice, incense from somebody’s altar trying its best to fight with cigarettes and winning on the edges. A baby cried two doors down, quick then quiet—pacifier miracle. A TV leaked the end of In Living Color reruns, the laugh track bouncing off concrete and peeling paint.
At 3C, Ro fished the key from his pocket, jiggled twice like the lock needed sweet talk, then shouldered the door when it got stubborn. “Welcome home,” he murmured, not joking.
The apartment was a rectangle with opinions. Mattress low on the floor under a window that stuck half-open, blinds bent in two places like they’d lost an argument. Posters tacked crooked: Pac with his hands steepled in prayer, Snoop in blue satin, and a sun faded The Chronic cover hanging against thewall. A 13-inch TV perched on a milk crate, VCR blinking 12:00 like it refused to learn. Couch was a hand-me-down covered with a blanket that had seen both summer and struggle. Kitchenette to the left—sink stacked with bowls, two forks, one knife, one pan with a stubborn egg scar. On the counter, under a coil-burner that didn’t fully sit straight, laid a Bible with the gold letters worn soft. Sal’s handwriting in fat block letters on the inside cover: For when the world won’t make sense. Signed —S.
My hand drifted to it without thinking. “You read?”
“Sometimes I let it read me,” he muttered, flipping on the lamp with a knuckle. “Sometimes I duck.”
I traced the softened leather like it might purr. “It don’t miss.”
He set our helmets on the counter, leaned both palms to the laminate, and looked at me the way a man looks at water after a long run. “You really my wife.”
