Riley doesn’t blink an eye. Her family is even more well off than mine, but she’s always been exceptionally adaptable. Floating into scenes and places like she’s always been there. Effortless and beautiful—that’s Riley.
Reid is shirtless and wet. He’s using the detachable shower head in the back of my van to wash his bike, but our bikes are clean—we haven’t used them since Colorado. Everything makes sense once I spot his tripod in the corner. He’s fucking taking pictures for Instagram.
“What is he doing?!?”
Riley is shocked. I don’t blame her. That was my reaction the first time I encountered his ‘marketing strategy’ too.
Pictures of a half naked Reid with his helmet covering the majority of his tanned face assaulted my eyes while I scrolled before bed one night. He first started doing it after discovering the phenomenon of motorcycle accounts. Apparently, lots of people have a thing for a man in a helmet.
That was the day I discovered I was also one of those people. Desperately, I wish I had blocked him or something before I saw that shit. I haven’t been able to scrub it from my mind since. Every so often, weakness overtakes me and I take a peek at that account like some junkie.
Seeing him take the pictures is a different experience entirely…a tortuous one. Riley is out of the car already, and I catch a glimpse of her pink dress out of the corner of my eye. My mouth hangs open as Riley opens my door and pushes it closed. “You’re drooling.”
“I am not,” I whisper-scream.
We walk towards Willa, and Reid still doesn’t notice us. Thankfully, his next pose doesn’t quite deliver the way he expected, and he looks like he’s in a cheesy car wash commercial. It’s enough to break me out of my trance and tear my eyes away from his glistening torso.
“Why are you washing an already clean bike?”
His smile almost takes me out at the knees—it’s still laced with flirtation. Even though it’s aimed at his followers, my stomach still flutters. He bends down and picks up a fox racing shirt.
“Can you snag a couple of me with this?”
I grab his phone and start getting ready to snap a few. At least I’ll be able to stare at him through the camera lens unabashedly.
Riley quips, “Come on, stud. Are you gonna put it on?”
Honestly, I forgot she was here for a second. We both look at each other as we wait for Reid to put on the shirt. He has other plans and folds it so that the iconic fox racing logo is facing out and tosses it over his shoulder like that’s just how it naturally fell.
One of his legs comes up to rest on the edge of his bike, and he looks back at me while he flexes his biceps as he pretends to clean his dropper post.
He’s winking as he asks, “Do my arms look good?”
“They look fine, diva.”
Making fun of him is my only defense against the blush that is overtaking my face right now. I’m so hot and bothered that I’m certain I won’t be able to pretend it’s from the heat.
Reid struts himself around his bike posing in various ways for the next few minutes as I snap photos and do my best to avoid looking too closely at his body. He tosses me the fox t-shirt and winks.
“I’ll sign it for you, if you want.”
I want to be mad, but I climb in the back of Willa and see that he’s laid out all of my gear for me, and that my bike is tuned exactly the way I like it. He even greased the chain for me. I’m scared to ask if he actually slept in my bed or not last night. I’ll smell it on my pillows if he did. It’s not exactly easy to wash your sheets on the road—we have to plan for that sort of thing.
Once I pull on my knee pads and the rest of my gear, I feel much better. They’re my armor in more than one sense of the word. Riley climbs in the van and looks me up and down.
She’s smiling. “Okay, this is much better. You look like biking barbie!”
Riley hasn’t seen the van. Well, she’s seen it on facetime, but never in person. She immediately walks to my bed, and it’s obvious Reid did sleep there. He made the bed, or he tried to—it’s slightly off kilter and rumpled. There’s a small folded note on my pillow.
My best friend smiles back at me and grabs it before I can stop her. I damn near tackle her to the floor trying to grab it out of her hands. It doesn’t matter what the note says—I cannot handle reading that right now.
She realizes I’m serious and puts it back on the bed, but I catch a glimpse at the words on the front. It says ‘Blondie’ in big sloppy letters. My heart twists involuntarily.
“I’m gonna leave you to this. I’ll see you at the race!”
“Are you coming to the qualifier?”
“I’ll come to yours. I’m gonna go lay in the sun for a while.”
