“After thebarbecue.”
“Oh. I… uh… drove Jessa here.So…”
“So, we’ll drive herhome.”
I stared athim.
“Then I can take you for that ride on mybike.”
I wasn’t smiling anymore. I was very careful not to smile, to hold onto some dignity about this, when all I really wanted to do was jump up and down. And jump on him. “What ride on yourbike?”
“One you asked me for, foreverago.”
“You saidno.”
His dark eyes held mine. “Changed mymind.”
That night, after Jude followed me across the city on his bike and I dropped Jessa at home, then dropped off my mom’s car at my place, I got on his bike. He had an extra helmet in his saddlebag that fit me well, but I didn’t really want to think that he kept it there for all the random chicks he took on his bike. Instead I let myself believe he put it there that day because he wanted to take me for a ride thatnight.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been on the back of a guy’s motorcycle while we ripped through the city… but it was thebesttime. My chest pressed to his back, my thighs snug around his hips, my arms wrapped tight around his waist as the bike rumbled beneath us. A few times, when we stopped at a red light, he put his gloved hand on my thigh, his thumb stroking back and forth… and that small caress made my heart race faster than the rush of racing down the street on his Harley in thenight.
After we’d driven over one of the bridges into Richmond and down a bunch of the empty roads between the farms that bled right into the city, and then back over the water into Vancouver, he pulled over and asked me, “Should I take youhome?”
It was getting late, probably near midnight. I had to work tomorrow. But I said, “No.”
So he took me to his place instead; the apartment he still shared with Jesse, Brody andZane.
“The guys are probably still at Dylan’s,” he said as he held the door open for me and we stepped into the darkapartment.
“You kept this place while you were on the road?” I knew they had; Jessa told me they’d sublet it to some guys they knew, and reclaimed it as soon as they cameback.
“Yeah,” he said, dropping his jacket and keys on a table. “Just seemed easier than having to find a new one and store all our shit somewhere. The rent’s decent.” He turned on a lamp in the living room. There was a pair of panties on the lampshade, and he tore them off and whipped them at Zane’s bed. “Fuck.” He threw me an apologeticlook.
I just slipped off my jacket and dropped it next tohis.
Then he went to wash his hands, which was both cute and probably a goodidea.
“Sorry it’s not much,” he said, when he rejoined me in the livingroom.
“I don’t care.” I didn’t. If he only knew what my house looked like… It was barely a step up from the dumpy trailer we’d lived in until I was sixteen and we’d moved into the city. “It’s got goodenergy.”
He chuckled as he cleared some clothes off his futon. “What, like the smell of dudes and the ghosts of old takeoutboxes?”
“No. Like good male energy.” I looked at him; he was staring at me and I just shrugged. “I likeit.”
He gathered some takeout containers off the coffee table and dropped them in the kitchen. “This shit is Zane’s and Jesse’s. I’m really not this much of apig.”
“I know.” I could see thatmuch.
Where Zane’s corner of the living room was pretty chaotic, his blankets tossed on the floor, pictures of naked women torn out of magazines tacked to the wall, his bedside table crowded with baggies of weed, dirty ashtrays, a giant bong and some empty beer bottles, Jude’s was much neater and cleaner. No naked girls on the wall, just a Harley-Davidson poster featuring a gleaming motorcycle. He’d even made his bed, sort of, the blanket laid hastilyovertop.
“You still into Good Charlotte?” he asked as he went over to the stereo. The tone of his voice told me there was no way in hell he hadany.
“You still into Rage Against the Machine?” Ireplied.
He glanced at me. “Meet somewhere in themiddle?”
“Sure.” I sat down on his futon, glancing at the band posters on the opposite wall, in the little dining room area that was crowded with music equipment. “Just no Pink Floyd. It makes mesleepy.”
