by Hazel Parker
Fitz nodded, either unaware of the direction I was about to take this or doing a good job of hiding his awareness.
“Where is your motorcycle right now?”
“Brooklyn. Not far from the subway. Why?”
I turned to him, a smile on my face.
“Want to help me relax?”
Chapter 9: Fitz
My motorcycle usually helped me relax.
Though it was really a rocket of transportation, a metallic horse upon which I rode, the equivalent of my own personal cavalry, it had always acted more as something that I used to calm my nerves after a long day at work. Some people used it to be invigorated, some people used it for status, and some people used it to send a message, but despite the loud VROOM VROOM that any acceleration produced, it was almost like white noise to me.
Tonight, though?
Tonight, that motorcycle was going to get me excited to do something I hadn’t done before.
It was going to be the vessel upon which Amelia and I could actually explore our relationship.
Naturally, we weren’t going to talk much while actually on the bike. But I knew that the bike would help Amelia with whatever she was going through. It would either thrill her and make her scream with delight, or it would overload her so much that she wouldn’t have any energy to feel stressed about. Either way, this would go a long way to helping her out.
Gerald tried to yell for me when I left the office at seven, but I ignored him. I knew I’d get an earful from him but seeing Amelia had made me go through my own reflection the night before, and I was already leaning in a direction that Uncle would not approve of.
As soon as I escaped Rothenberg Banking, as if becoming Clark Kent transforming into Superman, I ditched my banker’s clothes in a bathroom stall and put on my Savage Saints cut. The two-piece suit, black tie, and button-down white shirt vanished in favor of a navy-blue t-shirt and my black cut. I still kept the glasses, but that was only because my contacts were at home—and nothing needed to stand between me and my bike.
The only fallacy in this analogy was that Clark Kent emerged as Superman seconds after stepping into the phone booth and could get into the action immediately. I went from Thomas Fitzgerald, relatively anonymous banker at Rothenberg Banking, to Fitz, secretary of the growing Savage Saints...and would now ride the subway like everyone else. It was like Superman had busted out of the booth but then needed to get on a cross-country flight to get to Metropolis.
Still, I had energy, I had confidence, and I had a smile that could not be removed as I rode the subway all the way down to Brooklyn. I thought of how the ride would go, specifically how Amelia would respond to it. Something Marcel had mentioned and that several other club members had confirmed was how much a woman could get off just from riding a bike—literally. They spoke of how, once that happened, even if they didn’t get off completely, they’d want you so bad that the rest was just easy work.
I didn’t want to say that that was my explicit goal with Amelia.
But…
I was attracted to her, she was attracted to me, and we kept telling each other that work prevented us from being anything more. Why did we have to accept conditions like that? Why couldn’t we just have fun like two young adults? We might have been a little older than, say, Marcel, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have fun like him and Christine.
The subway came to its abrupt stop in Brooklyn, and I pushed through, unusually aggressive about getting out of the station. I slithered through people moving too slow for my own tastes, including many of the locals, and took the stairs two at a time. When I got outside, I jogged at a steadily increasing pace toward Brooklyn Repairs. I nearly ran over a few people, and though this was very unlike me, it was also very unlikely that I would get another chance like this again.
I busted open the door at Brooklyn Repairs, finding only Uncle in the back, working on his laptop.
“Fitz?” he said, surprise in his voice. “The hell you doing here?”
“Just going for a ride.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I got my hands on the handlebars and started to flip my right leg over the bike when I saw Uncle step out, his arms crossed, a bemused grin on his face.
“You’re going to pick up a girl, aren’t you?”
I nodded, not even bothering to hide it.
“Goddamnit, first Marcel, and now you,” Uncle said. “I should have known.”
“Hmm?”
“What do women love more than anything else? Bad boys. There couldn’t be anything more bad boy than being an MC member. Especially an officer.”
I put my hand on the key, preparing to start the engine.
“Are you going to stop me?”
“Stop you?” Uncle said. “No, I want to stop Richard. I want to stop Kyle. You? You’re a grown-ass man. Just remember, I will call out your ass if pussy starts affecting your ability to be our secretary.”
I haven’t gotten “the pussy” yet. And even if I had, I want more than anyone else to be seen as a legitimate member of this club, not just an investor.
“You got nothing to worry about,” I said, a statement that made Uncle scoff as I turned the engine on. “Besides, there’s no club business tonight.”
“There’s always club business!” Uncle shouted, but I was already gently moving the bike around the shop and to the garage. I opened up the front door as I put my helmet on. Uncle put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me. “Just don’t do anything too stupid, OK?”
I shook my head, let gravity take the bike to the street, and then rode out, heading back toward Manhattan and Amelia’s place. Uncle tried to shout something to me, but it quickly became inaudible as the roar of the engine took over.
I smiled as the wind brushed past me, the feeling of being in open space took over, and the freedom that I associated with the bike came back. Even when I hit slower traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and into Manhattan, I still felt free. I was not at a cubicle, and I was not crunching numbers about another investment. I was living. I was breathing real air. I was Thomas “Fitz” Fitzgerald, the man, not Thomas Fitzgerald, another one of hundreds of employees.
I rode down to Amelia’s place, parked the bike, and sent her a message to let her know I was there. I waited for her to come down, but after three minutes, I felt a small amount of fear that she was not actually going to be there. She had said that she would be home by now, but it was Rothenberg Banking; that world demanded constant availability, from the first-year analyst to the CFO of the company. And such availability had to be fulfilled at the snap of a finger.
I looked down at my phone.
“One sec,” she had written about three minutes ago. She definitely got called in. It’s something I should have foreseen coming. Oh well. It—
And then my jaw dropped when she stepped out.
She looked nothing like the employee that I saw every day at Rothenberg. She wore sunglasses, a low-cut tank top, tight blue jeans, and cowgirl boots. I know it wasn’t exactly an artful description, but she just looked so goddamn fucking hot. And I’m the one getting to drive her around. Holy shit.
“Damn, Amelia,” I said, not bothering to hide my admiration for her body.
“Wouldn’t want to get my work clothes ruined while I did this, now would I?” she said as she walked over. She put her hands on the motorcycle, which was still on. She pet it like it was a tiger that would bite her at any second—tenderly and gently, but never with such force as to possibly upset it.
“You gonna get on?” I said.
She looked up at me, smiled, and looked back down. She’s nervous. She needs some confidence to get on this bike.
“You can do it,” I said, trying to pump her up. “I promise you’ll be safe. If it makes you feel better, if we get in a wreck, I’m more likely to get hurt.”
I had no idea if that was true or not. It sounded like a good thing to say.
“That’s sweet,” Amelia said, which I knew wasn’
t a true statement. “I’ve just never done this before.”
“Might as well push yourself, right?” I said. “If you’re not going to take some time off from work, you ought to at least give it something new to invigorate it.”
“Yeah, I know…”
I put my hand on Amelia’s arm.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Amelia bit her lip, swung her leg over the bike, and squeezed my rib cage hard—so hard that I had a little bit of trouble breathing. But I loved knowing that she was depending on me to both keep her safe and give her the ride of her life. I could have fallen hard for the complete control I had in this spot, but mostly, I just loved that Amelia trusted me.
It was something, I realized, that I didn’t have at Rothenberg. I had professional relationships, but I didn’t develop true connections with anyone. I certainly didn’t have it with Gerald, and I definitely didn’t have it with my peers that I was competing with.
Maybe that’s why I wanted to quit my job. The Savage Saints might have mocked me endlessly and teased me for being too rich for their blood, but their teasing came out of forming bonds with me. I had a chance to develop real friendships with those guys.
At Rothenberg, there weren’t any real “-ships” of any kind. It was just a place where green mattered most.
“Ready!” I shouted.
Amelia squeezed extra tight. I closed my eyes for a second.
And in that second, I knew the answer to my future.
“Let’s go!”
Amelia screamed as I accelerated the bike. I admittedly sped up a little faster than I normally would have, but it wasn’t like I went from zero to sixty. I just hit thirty and stayed there. Amelia’s arms felt like a straitjacket on my chest, but it was the kind that I would wear every day if I could. I tried to talk to her, but she kept screaming and burying her head into my back. At some point, I gave up and laughed at the sensation.
I drove her up and down Manhattan, taking her past Central Park, up to Harlem, and back. We went around Wall Street, but I took care not to actually go through it, worried about coworkers seeing her. I didn’t care if they saw me, because I’d already made up my mind in that regard.
As the sun descended, Amelia slowly gained more comfort. Her arms never left my chest, but her screams turned into laughter. Her terror turned into excitement. She even—I may have been imagining this, but I was pretty sure I heard it—started to emit some quiet moans of pleasure. It sounded like she was trying to make it so I wouldn’t hear, but it was pretty clear what kind of sounds she was making.
The motorcycle really is a vessel of getting a woman off.
“Parking in Manhattan is going to be a bit of a bitch,” I said. “But if you trust me, I can take you out east.”
“Let’s do it!” she shouted. “I love this!”
Now that was an Amelia I had not seen before—an Amelia who screamed and shouted with joy. This Amelia was unbridled and unfiltered, but in the best sense of the word. She wasn’t having to ream someone for failing to do their job. She wasn’t having to express her frustration with her peers. She was just...happy.
I didn’t want to think of how long it had been for her since she had such a feeling. I also didn’t want to think of how much time would pass before she had that feeling again in the future.
Hopefully, the answer to both was not that long. But at the very least, I could make sure that was the permanent answer to the second question.
I drove her up through Long Island, taking her until the bright lights of Manhattan were but a distant glow and the predominant sound was now just quiet neighborhoods and the occasional car passing by. I pulled off at the first beach that I knew of, parked the bike, and let her get off. When she did, she appeared to spend several seconds trying to let the vibrations wear off.
“That’ll be there for a while,” I said. “You get used to it.”
“It feels so...good,” Amelia said. “Is that weird to admit?”
“Not at all. I tell some people it’s like getting a massage. A different kind of massage, and not everyone likes it, but if you do, yeah, it feels pretty good.”
Amelia smiled. I put my arm around her and walked her to the edge of the beach. It was a calm, clear night. A half-moon reflected on the surface, brightening the beach. The waves were at low tide at the moment, allowing Amelia and I to go pretty deep out before the water started to tickle our feet and ankles.
“Nice to get away some, huh?”
“For a bit,” Amelia said.
Man, she can’t even unwind when she’s in Long Island. She needs a break.
I moved my hands to her back and started to massage her. She leaned back into me, practically collapsing into my arms.
“My God,” she said.
Her traps were so tense, I didn’t know if they could get any tighter. It felt less like massaging muscles and more like massaging an iron bar.
“You definitely need a vacation.”
Amelia took a deep breath in through her nose, let it exhale out of her mouth, and repeated the process.
“I know.”
So she does realize it.
“But I can’t quit. I just can’t.”
“No one’s saying to quit, I’m saying—”
“The two are the same to me,” she said. “I don’t mean quit like quit the job. That’s even worse. To me, taking time off is quitting. It’s acknowledging that I’m not good enough for the job. It’s a softer kind of quit.”
Oh, no.
Hearing Amelia didn’t make me think that she was a tough cookie. It made me even more convinced than ever that she was effectively brainwashed while working at Rothenberg Banking. To take vacation time meant she as a quitter?
If that were the case, then I was about to be the quitter of quitters.
“You say that as if your life is your job.”
“It is,” she said, seeming to find nothing wrong with that statement.
“But—”
“When you’ve had the childhood I had,” she said, “you realize you have no choice.”
She placed her hand on mine and turned to me. She did not let go, even as our hands dropped to the side.
“My parents have always expected nothing less than perfection from me. When I played softball as a kid, if I had four hits in five at-bats, they’d go over the one time I struck out. If I came home with six A’s and an A-minus, they’d ask me about the A-minus. Getting into Princeton wasn’t an accomplishment; it was expected. This is just a continuation of that process. It’s where I’m comfortable, Fitz.”
“Comfortable?” I said. “Did you see yourself yesterday? You were crying in the elevator.”
Amelia lowered her eyes from me. I didn’t call her out on it, but I didn’t need to ask her why she had done that.
“I don’t know what happened in Shanghai, but I do know this. You keep working like this, and you’re going to collapse. You have a reputation unlike anyone else at Rothenberg, and while in some ways, that’s good, in others…”
“I know, I know,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “But I don’t know what else I’d be if I didn’t have this job.”
“Hey,” I said, squeezing her hand.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were watering. It hurt me to see her like this, but I knew we needed a talk like this if she was ever going to help herself.
“No one’s worth is tied to the worth of their work,” I said. “I know, I know, that sounds like some silly Instagram post. But how do you think I stay sane at work? I recognize that I have a life outside of it, and I try and maximize it.”
And, when the time comes, I make a certain decision.
“You should take some time off, join a volunteer organization, just do something. Something that you know, one hundred percent, will not get you a promotion, will not get you more money, will not make you look good in the eyes of Ben.”
“But my parents—”
“Is this what this is about?�
�� I said.
It came across much more as an accusation than I meant it to. Amelia bit her lip.
“I know you’re right,” she said, brushing her hair. “I am scared to do it, I guess. Scared to defy my parents. Scared to feel like I threw away all these years—”
“Good news: you didn’t,” I said. “I don’t think you need to quit Rothenberg by any means if you don’t want to. You’re fucking good at your job, Amelia. I’m just saying, recognize you have a life outside of this.”
Amelia dabbed away a single tear from her eye. Her hands went to my hips as she looked up at me. A sinking feeling came over me.
“You know, I always knew that you were good at being calm and chill,” she said. “But I didn’t know how sweet and kind you were. And you know, that makes you very attractive.”
I laughed and tried to find the right response.
But just before I could say something stupid, I realized something. I realized what the best response was.
No words. Just action.
I put my hands on her cheeks slowly, admiring her beautiful face and eyes. I leaned forward, in no rush to increase the speed or intensity of this moment. Just inches from her face, I closed my eyes.
I kissed her.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, she pulled back.
“What are we doing?” she said with a laugh. “We’re coworkers! This is...this is...oh, fuck it.”
She threw her hands around me, now not just kissing me but aggressively making out with me.
And suddenly, as we tumbled to the beach, we were soon about to be doing a whole lot more than just kissing.
Chapter 10: Amelia
Relaxation felt great but throwing caution to the wind felt even better.
It helped that I was horny as hell from that bike ride. It had escaped in the form of emotion, but as soon as Fitz had kissed me, it transformed back into arousal. Fitz said something about if I was sure if I wanted to do this here, but I couldn’t have cared less.
We were far removed from anyone who would have worked at Rothenberg Banking. And on top of that, it was a Tuesday night, not a Saturday night. If someone from my company were here, then there were many ways to plausibly deny what had happened.
