“I’m just out clearing my head, man,” I tell him.
“Is that why I clocked you at one thirty-nine in a sixty-five?” Handing my license back to me, he says, “Step off of the bike.”
“Unless I’m being detained, I’m good here,” I tell him, tapping my fingers angrily against the fuel tank.
My molars grind against each other as I stare blankly ahead of me, barely aware of his presence next to me anymore. For a minute, I think about peeling away from him and flying down the road.
Everything I still had left, that actually mattered to me, just fucking imploded; who cares anymore?
What the fuck do I even have left to go home to?
Donor cycle, I think with a humorless huff.
Proving my brother right should be the last thing I want to do.
Hands clamp down on my shoulders, pulling me to the side and off of my bike. I can hear someone shouting‘get the fuck off of me!’but I can’t see them. The only thing I know is that my pulse is pounding in my head like it’s on a surround soundsystem and I’m floating around somewhere outside of my body while the world is moving around me in slow motion.
I think my hands are pulled behind my back, but they don’t stay that way for more than a second or two. My body pivots and I hear that same voice shouting again.
“Fuck yourself!”
Shit. That’s me.
It doesn’t sound like me.
Something hard hits my knuckles – his face, I think – and suddenly, my own face hurts. My knees, too.
I’m on the ground.
The impact of a booted foot slams against my ribs with a sharp javelin of blinding pain that steals my breath, and I’m in the air again as something hard hits me in the face.
His knee.
Goddammit, that hurts.
My arms swing out, fists making contact with something solid only a few times before my knuckles hit the asphalt beneath me.
The taste of salt and copper fills my mouth; I’m not sure where the blood is coming from, but it feels like there’s a lot of it.
That’s not good, Tripp.
“…Anything you say…”
My chest is slammed against the ground as hard pressure hits my spine. My lungs struggle and wheeze, trying desperately to pull in any air as what I think is his knee digs into my back.
There’s a distant memory dragged closer to the surface as the world sways back and forth, side to side in front of me; my grandpa Henry’s yacht. I was only a kid the last time I saw him, but I can remember always being seasick on it. His face blurs somewhere in the distance, and I squint to try to make it out.
Not just his face. Another one, too.
I spit as I’m pulled off of the ground, a splattering of crimson smacking onto the white toe of my Chucks to join the steady drip falling from my nose.
“…Have the right to an attorney…”
My brother. Get my brother.
“…Understand these rights…”
A group of us were pulled over a few months ago in a big meet. I thought for sure, at least three of us were going to leave in handcuffs and at least another four would be ticketed. There was no way we weren’t walking away with some kind of ding to our records.
