The front of my helmet cracked the back of his head. I wasn't used to having to think about my head being so much larger than it was.
He rubbed the back of his head, his fingers lost in his wavy, brown hair. “Yeah, just don't crack me on the back of my head.”
“You should be wearing a helmet.”
He hit the throttle and the bike lurched forward a few inches. “Was that a joke? Did the sad girl just make a joke?”
“Just an observation.”
He revved the engine again, drawing the attention of a few people getting out of their cars in the bar's parking lot.
Sawyer growled back over the rumbling engine, “I have a bad memory. You said you wanted to go by the beach, right?”
My response was drowned out in the sound of the engine as we pulled out of the parking lot.
The power of the bike amazed me, moving as if the laws of gravity and inertia didn't apply. After only a few seconds in the parking lot, I could understand the allure.
Sawyer rode carefully, waiting for a clear break in traffic before turning out onto the road. As we traveled, my fears calmed down.
Even with cars, I'd always been afraid of driving anywhere, imagining accidents even at the first mention of a road trip. Accidents were one of the main ways people had left my life, so it wasn't like I was imagining the worst just to torture myself. My father died in a motorcycle accident when I was too young to know him, or so my mother had told me.
Vehicles of any kind made me nervous. Once I was on the road, though, like when Bell and I were moving somewhere new, I got a sense of calm behind the wheel. Even highway speed didn't seem so fast—it's not that fast if you drive two miles under the speed limit. I had a valid driver's license, but getting pulled over by a cop would be as bad as an accident, because I had no idea what they'd find if they ran my name through the system.
My nightmares were deserved. An innocent person didn't have those worries.
I tightened my arms around Sawyer's torso, feeling him sway left and right as we made turns, me moving in harmony with him. It seemed very intimate, this riding a motorcycle together. I had to trust him, but he also had to trust me not to throw off the delicate balance.
My hands were sweating, despite the wind rushing around us. Was it the feeling of his muscular stomach under my forearms? Or of his strong back pressed against my chest? His body was warm, and a light sweat was forming underneath the front of my shirt, where his heat was radiating into me.
After a few minutes of riding, I was calm enough to look around more and admire the scenery. The trees looked more lush as we approached the water, and the houses turned into mansions with large lawns and new fences.
The rumble of the bike drowned out everything, until its roar became equivalent to silence in my head, drowning out the sounds of the city, but more importantly, drowning out my thoughts. I wasn't thinking about the pile of laundry at home, or what I was going to pack in Bell's lunch, or what I was going to do if she kept having problems at her new school.
For the moment, I was just a girl on the back of a motorcycle, heading to the beach with a cute guy.
When we got to the beach, Sawyer pulled into the parking area and turned the bike off. The sounds of the world returned, muted.
I let go of him and jumped off the bike, quickly yanking the front of my shirt repeatedly to get some air in there.
He rested the bike on the kickstand and swung his leg over with far more grace than I had. Reaching back, he fanned the back of his T-shirt as well. “Man, you are so hot, Aubrey.”
“Sorry.”
“Do you have a fever? Should we take you by the hospital?”
I stopped fanning my shirt and pulled the helmet off. I shook my hair out and rubbed at the red marks on my forehead that I could see reflected in Sawyer's mirrored shades.
He licked his lips. “That looks good.” He nodded toward a woman with two kids Bell's age walking by with drippy cones.
I said, “Gimme back my purse and I'll buy you an ice cream.”
It was past dinner time now, and a double-scoop cone looked like it would hit the spot. The kids with the ice cream stopped walking and stared at Sawyer. Was it the swirling seascape tattoos all over one forearm like a sleeve, or the smaller tattoo looping across the wrist of the other arm? Or were they looking at the ladies' purse he was only now taking off?
The mother shot me a dirty look and rushed them on their way. Why me? I wasn't the one with the tattoos. And besides, weren't tattoos normal nowadays? Why did people have to be such judgmental ass**les?
I looked around at the young families and silver-haired retirees on the boardwalk. There were a lot of those brown slacks rich people wore. Maybe tattoos weren't so common in this area.
Sawyer handed my purse to me and pointed to the row of shops across the street from the boardwalk. A third of them seemed to sell ice cream, but he told me the very best one was off the beaten path, just down a side street.
“You know this area well?”
“I might.”
“How? Did you grow up around here? In a la-dee-da mansion like that?” I pointed up at a house perched on the hill behind the shops. The house next to it was a glass box, but this house had a circular column with a peaked roof, like a turret on a castle.
“I did.”
“Is your family rich or something?”
Grinning, he said, “Yes, we're very rich with dysfunction.”
I gazed up at the beautiful houses again. “Must be nice to look out over the ocean.”
“Where'd you grow up?”
“Here and there. Mostly in the country.” It was my usual, vague bullshit answer, but he gave me this look that said he didn't buy it. “Ever been to North Carolina?”
“Can't say I have.”
“I spent some of my time there, but we moved around a lot.”
“Why's that? For your husband's job?”
The wedding band was tight on my sweaty finger. “Mm-hmm,” I lied. The lying didn't seem so bad when there weren't any actual words.
We had ducked down the side street and some people were coming out of the ice cream shop. The man coming out held the door for us, and he seemed to cower, shrinking away from Sawyer, with his eyes wide open and his knuckles white around his cone. The man's wife scurried past us and grabbed her husband's elbow to drag him away.
I glowered after them. “What the hell?”
“Guess I look like trouble,” Sawyer said.
“That was unreal. The guy acted like you were going to punch him.” As I looked at Sawyer, I saw a flicker of what the strangers had seen. His eyes had a hungry look in broad daylight, and his hair wasn't ponytail-long, but it wasn't cut short and conservative either. I'd made some assumptions about him because of the subject matter of his tattoos—seaweed and an octopus didn't seem that scary to me, not compared to demonic faces and tattoos designed to intimidate people. Sawyer's tattoos were artistic and beautiful, not threatening—or at least they were to me.