“Even from us guys,” he finally said. “Have you ridden on a bike before?”
I scoffed but caught myself from letting it become too bad. Instead, I just calmly shook my head and said no.
“Just hold on tight and follow the weight of my body,” he said. “If I lean left, you lean left. Same for right. Don’t overdo it. If anything, try and do it a little less than I do. I’ve got good control of it. You’re probably going to feel like we’re going way too fast for safety’s sake, but I promise I’ll go the speed limit and I promise nothing will happen to you. Do you have any questions?”
Oh, I had hundreds about how I would know if we were safe, what would happen if we crashed, how safe was motorcycle driving really, and so on. But all of them weren’t questions of genuine interest, but just fear. Michael had given me no reason to distrust him so far, so I decided to just nod my head.
Still…
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Too late now.
He hopped on the bike and revved the engine to life. The sound of that, even though I’d heard it far too many times in my life to count, still felt like something of a kick to the gut. I was confronting the very symbol of what had killed my sister.
But it was time to form new associations and new memories. It was time for me to connect a bike not with Jason and Kristina, but with something happy and cheerful in my life. At worst, I just wanted to hear a bike and not feel anything. If I could reach that point, then this alone would have been worth it.
Slowly, I moved around and hopped on the bike. I put my arms around Michael, but he kept motioning me forward. I got close enough that I was practically smothering him, and he was still telling me to get close. If not for the presence of the bike, I would have wondered if this was a move on his part to make me feel physically aroused.
“It’s like your body needs to mold with mine,” he said. “If you lean back or keep distance, that throws everything off. Hug me like...”
He didn’t finish that sentence. It was probably for the best.
But he didn’t need to say anything, really. The gentle vibration of the bike, in conjunction with my arms already around him, was making me feel certain things about Michael that I had only felt in brief flashes up to that point.
“You ready?” he asked once he was satisfied with how close I’d gotten to him.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said in a half-mumble.
He backed the bike up out of the parking spot.
“Last chance to get off.”
You do this, everything you’ve ever thought about bikers, about Kristina… does it all go to waste?
Or does it represent growth?
You can answer that by answering the same question you’ve asked yourself about Michael for ages now. Hot?
Or attractive?
“Let’s go already.”
Michael took my cue. The motorcycle jerked forward, my arms squeezed harder around him than they had any man, and I let out a scream as the bike rolled down the road.
Michael was absolutely right. It felt like we were going dangerously fast. Everything around me went by in a blur, and I wanted to beg him to slow down. The only reason I didn’t was that my screaming was preventing me from doing so.Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid!
Every time we took a turn, I overreacted. I tried to tell myself to calm down, but I truly thought we were going to die. Michael was going to hit someone or something because he was driving so fast, and we were going to somersault through the air, and we were going to crash…
And then, slowly, very slowly, my nerves started to cool down. Maybe I had just burned so much energy screaming like a little girl, but there came a point where I didn’t have anything left to scream with—or about. And as a result, what had started as outright terror slowly morphed into a thrilling excitement.
Soon, I was the one yipping in excitement. I was the one who relished the feeling of the wind brushing heavily against the one. I was the one that was loosening my grip ever so slightly with Michael, just enough so that I could punctuate certain moments with a hug. Slowly, I started to gather my bearings of where we were.
We actually weren’t in Springsville anymore. We had ventured out to one of the roads leading out of town, and it looked like we were going to the highway.
“Are you taking me there?” I shouted, slightly nervous that Michael’s promise to stay at the speed limit would test what I thought he meant.
But with us going what I would guess was over forty miles per hour, there was no chance that he would hear my words. I just held on tight and held out hope that we’d come to a stoplight so that I could ask him if we were.
