“It was. Because you were already planning your first exit.”
I kill the engine. The silence that rushes in is louder than the highway was. xev bellringer ride
He taught me on this bike—his hands over mine on the throttle, his chest pressed to my back, his voice a low rumble through the helmet intercom. Easy. Feather it. Trust the lean. I’d learned to feel the bike as an extension of his body first, and mine second. “It was
“Then why?”
I turned it. The engine coughed, then purred. I sat there for a full minute, listening to it idle. Then I pulled my hair into a loose ponytail, zipped my leather jacket to the throat, and rolled out of the driveway without looking back. Highway 128 unspools like a dark ribbon through the coastal hills. By eight, the fog has burned off, and the air smells of eucalyptus and asphalt and the distant salt of the Pacific. I keep the speed at sixty—fast enough to feel the vibration through the handlebars, slow enough to hear myself think. He taught me on this bike—his hands over
Afterward, I trace the scars on his knuckles—old ones, from his father’s house. He traces the road rash on my hip—new, from a fall I took practicing alone last fall.