In Tandem

by Christina C Jones

  I lifted an eyebrow. “He doesn’t have to, no, but it should definitely be part of your fee.”

  “So you feel me,” Anika laughed. “I think she should charge him extra to keep his clothes on.”

  “And I think you both need to get laid,” Jules quipped, laughing at both of us. “I gotta go, see you chicks later.”

  Nik groaned. “Me too, actually. Still training Royal.”

  This time, I was the one sucking teeth, as I held the door for Jules to exit the building. “Talk about heavy burdens,” I said, thinking about fine ass Royal Taylor and those family dimples of his. “You know how many women in the Heights would knock you over for a chance to “train” him?”

  “They can have his arrogant, annoying ass,” Nik said as she followed Jules out, tossing up a wave as she went.

  Once they were gone, the entryway was blanketed in quiet again, as it had been since I came down. I stepped outside, humming a little over the feeling of the sun on my skin as I turned to look at the storefront.

  B.Spoked.

  I was maybe a little too proud of that name – a play on my own name, and the fact that it was a bike store, and the highly individualized – bespoke - nature of the products sold and services offered. Running behind Raf had planted the love of cycling in me, and it had blossomed into this: the store I used to spread that same love into others.

  Raf had never even been here.

  I pushed out a deep sigh and went back inside, into the cool comfort of the entry. As light as the sun being out made me feel, I was still tempted to walk right past the door to B.Spoked and head upstairs, to one of the three apartments there.

  On the second level, there were two apartments – the one Anika shared with Jules, and the one inhabited by my other tenants, Josiah and Noble. The top level was just one big apartment.

  Mine.

  This building was the one good thing my father had done for me that I couldn’t knock, though the circumstances around him gifting it to me were… fucked up. It was my 18th birthday, and he’d forgotten. Or maybe he just didn’t care. In any case, I didn’t see him at all, and he sauntered back home smelling – reeking – of women.

  My mother was livid.

  He spent the next months trying to get back on her good side, for whatever twisted reasons he tried to pretend were love. In the past, the way back to her heart had always been through Vaughn and me, through her children. So, at my high school graduation, he gifted me ownership of the building he’d inherited from his father, and sometimes used for his hoe shit.

  Mommy still left his ass, as soon as I moved out.

  And she was the one who’d helped, with time and money, bring the run-down building back to life. I’d never particularly dreamed of being a landlord, and especially not of owning a store, but it would have been silly to ignore the opportunity in front of me. With my mother as a business partner, I went into my twenties as a thriving entrepreneur.

  She died right before my twenty-first birthday.

  After she got re-entangled with him.

  It was fuck him forever, really.

  My musings were interrupted by the arrival of customers, looking for rain protection for riding in the city. I spent the next thirty minutes with them, as was the nature of a shop like this – sure, there were people who popped in for an inner tube, or cute decals, or colorful tape for their handlebars. But much of the time, there was something of a consultation, lots of questions and details to figure out precisely the right fit.

  I loved those customers.

  They were the perfect way to distract my mind from drifting into darkness – to keep me cemented in the positive. I had a good life. I wanted to only think about and focus on happy things, but my brain was like… a bike with an unbalanced tire, constantly drifting left without careful steering.

  I bid my customers farewell with a smile, hating to see them go. But really, I had other things to occupy me. Like continuing the gratifying task of restoring the fifty-year-old bike on the worktable in the back of the shop.

  This was always the slowest part of the day, so I felt no qualms about heading back there, knowing that I was still visible for any customer to flag me down. At the table, I stood and stared, taking in the work I’d already done and what I still had left to do, which was plenty. New seat, new tires and handlebars, a whole new paint job and brakes, refurbishing all the mechanisms.

  It was a massive undertaking, but the end result would be something beautiful.

  I probably should’ve worn gloves, and if I really cared to protect my hands, I would’ve. But bulky gloves made the job more difficult – made it harder to get into the tiny grooves and crevices, made it damn near impossible to feel what I was doing.

  Which was kinda the best part.

  So, I happily ignored the bite of sharp edges against my skin as I moved the coiled ball of steel wool over the chrome spindles. Each swipe took away a little more rust and oxidation, revealing the silver underneath – returning the wheel to its’ original glory.

  This was the task – stripping it all down to nothing before I brought it back.

  With WAWG radio on, I worked, spoke by spoke. There was zero sense of urgency, so I took my time, using a special steel brush for the nooks and crannies, working through each section of the wheel until it gleamed.

  You could say this was my happy place.

  Well… at least until the steel wool slipped, and one of those delicate strands sliced my finger open.

  “Shit,” I muttered, using my other hand to put pressure on the cut until I got to the workshop’s sink, where I carefully rinsed away the cleaning chemicals and blood before I grabbed a shop towel to clean myself up.

  “You should be wearing gloves.”

  The sound of a male voice had my head whipping, but I didn’t move from the sink. The water was still going, the radio still blasting, but I was utterly still.

  Stuck.

  “Raf,” I breathed, barely believing my eyes.

  But there he was.

  In high definition, lazily draped against the open entry to the workshop. A smile graced his handsome, honey-toned face, framed by the facial hair that still felt so alien. It was him though.

  Different.

  Bigger.

  Older.

  But undeniably him.

  Tears welled in my eyes, burning and stinging, but I didn’t dare blink, for fear that if I did, he’d be gone. Maybe all my wishful thinking had culminated into this – into a mirage. Perhaps I was seeing things.

  “Seriously, Britt?”

  Just like over the phone, his voice was more gruff.

  Deeper.

  Different enough to feed my seeing things theory until he moved, closing the space between us to swipe a thumb over my cheek, wiping away an escaped tear.

  There was no denying his body heat.

  He was real.

  Real, and taller than I remembered, though I had a million pictures of us together. I had to angle my head to look him in the eyes, where I found the deep familiarity I’d been missing. Tears flowed freely down my cheeks as he cupped my face in his hands, anchoring me in place, his eyes never leaving mine as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “I missed you.”

  Why did those words take my breath away? I was powerless to speak as his hands dropped from my face to wrap around my body instead, pulling me into a hug. I melted right into it – right into him, savoring the feel of his arms around me for the first time in however long.

  In much, much too long.

  He was here now though.

  That was all that mattered.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered into his chest, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes. “We just talked yesterday, and you—”

  “Could not go even one more day without you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Could you not sound like some lovesick fool coming back from war to retrieve his girl?”

  “That’s exactly what I am though,” he s
aid. His gaze locked with mine, and his face set into this solemn expression that made me feel… something.

  Butterflies.

  “If you’re done playing,” I scolded, stepping out of his arms and putting some distance between us, so I could breathe. “This is the store. This is my baby. Do you see what I mean now, when I say the pictures don’t do it justice?” I asked.

  “What I see is that you’re bleeding, come here.”

  There was little room for protest as he grabbed my hand, examining the small cut that must have been deeper than I thought, with the amount of blood it was putting out.

  “Hard-headed ass,” he grumbled, pulling me back to the sink to help get me washed up. “I could swear I taught you better.”

  “When has that ever been any kind of deterrent for me?”

  He shot me a grin as he used a clean towel to put pressure on the cut, then grabbed a band-aid from the first aid kit at the back of the worktable. Once my finger was taken care of, I could focus again, on what I considered the more pressing matter.

  Him.

  “So you… you really just decided to come back to the Heights on a whim?” I asked, taking him by the hands to lead him over to the dressing rooms, where there was some seating. “Make that make sense to me.”

  He shrugged, scraping perfect white teeth over his full bottom lip. “It already makes sense B, just don’t overthink it.” He met my gaze with softened eyes, his expression wholly contented. “I’m here. You’re here. The details don’t matter that much, do they?”

  No.

  They didn’t.

  What mattered was that he was here, back in my space like he’d never left, and I had to fight the urge to crawl into his lap to get as close as possible and pin him down to make sure he stayed.

  “Yo, why are you looking at me like you’re thinking about tying me up?” he asked, chuckling.

  “Because that’s exactly what I’m thinking,” I admitted. “It’s been years, Raf. And no lie, I kinda want to be mad at your ass for letting it go this long.”

  A thick eyebrow shot up. “You wanna be mad at me, gotta be mad at yourself too – I’ve never made it impossible for you to find me.”

  I dropped my gaze, shaking my head. There really wasn’t much arguing I could do, cause he was right – our distance had been just as much my fault as his. I wanted to say it was different for me than it was for him, but he got as many stares as I did, albeit for not quite the same reasons.

  Rafael was tall, fit, and good-looking, so naturally he got attention. Add to that the fact that he was something of a celebrity for anyone who followed professional cycling – or social media – and he got looked at too. Only a full-blown narcissist wouldn’t feel a little awkward about that, but as unnerving as it was, because of his status, he got used to it.

  I couldn’t.

  It was a little hypocritical, probably, considering the exposure level that happened in varying stages on my social media, but… it wasn’t the same thing. “Likes” and comments and shares were abstract, barely real to me.

  Open staring in public, though?

  That was too real.

  I’d lived in the Heights all my life, and as such, had built up a certain level of comfort. I knew these people and they knew me – were used to me. But any time I stepped outside that bubble of familiarity, I was swiftly reminded that not everyone understood my skin condition. Or rather, reminded that not everybody had fucking manners.

  Luckily, the Heights had everything I could possibly need, right here in my beloved neighborhood.

  Well… everything I needed except Raf.

  I reached up, cupping his face in my hand and sliding my thumb over the soft coils of facial hair that had caught my attention on our video call. He had to have been growing it a while, and it struck me then just how absent he’d been from the public eye.

  Ever since…

  “How are you doing?” I asked him, still caressing his jaw. “And don’t give me the public relations answer. Give me the real answer.”

  “You love changing the subject, don’t you?” he teased, though the warmth that had been in his eyes before was gone. His eyes were coated in a sheen now, and filled with the same blues I’d noticed before. “I’m… managing.”

  Shit.

  “Just managing?” I moved closer to him, as close as I could without actually getting in his lap. “Are you still in pain?”

  He shrugged, which told me an answer his mouth likely never would. “I’ve been able to train. I’ve been training hard.”

  “But you haven’t raced. Not since the accident, and you’ve only done one charity ride after, which isn’t like you. But you fucking blitzed all the other riders. Like, a crazy good time. So what’s up?”

  “Nothing,” he insisted. Lied. “I’m just… I’m not really feeling it right now. And I didn’t spend all those hours on a plane to get here and talk about me. I wanna hear about you. Fucking look at you, B.”

  I dropped my hand from his face as I turned away, looking down at my clothes. I lived in athleisure, and today was no exception - my cropped Ivy Park sweats and tank were cute, sure, but certainly not worth that type of compliment.

  I scoffed. “Yeah, if you say so.”

  “I’m pretty sure everybody would say so,” he countered. “I’ve seen the comments on your Instagram.”

  “Whatever,” I said, brushing him off. “Let’s talk about this lil’ beard situation, Mr. Suave and Sexy,” I teased. “Who told you to do that?”

  “The ladies love it.”

  I laughed. “Uh, yeah, I bet they do.”

  “Brittany?”

  The sound of a different male voice drew my gaze up to the front of the store. Instant annoyance tensed my shoulders, and I squared them, preparing for whatever battle was about to ensue.

  “Aaron… what do you want?” I asked, standing up. As soon as I did, Raf stood up too, which drew Aaron’s attention.

  I hadn’t seen him since before I saw his annoying ass Instagram post, and hadn’t spoken to him either. It had been days – enough for him to get the picture, or so I thought. I was a little surprised to see him here.

  “Who is this?” Aaron asked, ignoring my question in favor of unsubtly sizing Raf up, which made me wonder just how long he’d been there watching us before he said anything. Beside me, I could feel the agitation coming off Rafael – in the whole time I’d known him, he’d never been one to abide by foolishness like this. But instead of acting on his unspoken irritation, he extended a hand towards Aaron.

  “Rafael De Luca,” he introduced himself. “What's up?”

  Aaron's eyebrows shot up. “The Rafael De Luca? Like… from ESPN?”

  Raf smiled. “I don’t know that I qualify as the Rafael De Luca, but… yeah. You may have seen me on your TV a time or two.”

  Aaron accepted his hand, shaking it before he offered his own name. “I'm Aaron,” he said. “Britt's boyfriend.”

  “Oh, you are?” I asked.

  Aaron pushed his locs back from his forehead as he turned to me with a confused grin. “Am I… not? That would be news to me.”

  “I'm not sure why,” I said. “Unless… maybe you don't know how to take a hint.”

  “Britt, come on. What is this about, me having Shannon on my Instagram stories? I've been told you that girl don't mean shit to me!”

  “Well, it wasn't,” I explained. “Because I had no idea what had been happening in your Instagram stories, because I hadn't been keeping up with your Instagram stories. But you know… let’s say it is about Shannon. Sure. Bye.”

  Ugh.

  Shannon was Aaron’s ex, who was a little too comfortable in his face – because he allowed it. Among the other issues with Aaron, it ranked low, but it was enough to keep me from considering a reconciliation.

  “You’re not about to do this shit,” Aaron declared, bringing out that haughty arrogance that annoyed me so much. “You’re just dropping this on me out of nowhere, without tal
king about it?”

  “I'm surprised you care, Aaron.” I told him. “Surprised your ego let you pay someone else enough attention that you noticed I wasn't around. Or wait… are your likes slowing up again? Is that what this is?”

  His mouth dropped open, like he was flabbergasted by my words.

  But he didn't deny it.

  “You know what? Fuck this,” he said. “I'm a good guy, not all hung up on appearances and shit like a lot of these other dudes out here. Dudes who wouldn’t give you a second look. But that doesn't matter to you, huh?”

  I nodded. “It doesn't matter to me, at all. And the fact that you feel like you were doing me a favor? That's the problem.”

  “I was doing you a favor,” Aaron declared. “You think I couldn't have any of these girls out here I want? I could have been with anybody, but I chose to be with you - had you on my Instagram and everything!

  At those words, Raf made a sound in his throat, and shook his head as he turned away, which let me know that I wasn't crazy for feeling like this dude had lost his mind.

  “Do you think I couldn't have any of these niggas that I want?” I asked. “There's never been a shortage of men trying to throw some dick my way, Aaron. So you can climb down off of whatever high horse you put yourself on, and stop patting yourself on the back for daring to be seen with me. For putting me on your Instagram, as if me being there wasn’t getting you more juice. I was the only interesting thing about you, and the fact that you don’t realize that… you are so much worse than I thought.”

  “We were a team,” he insisted, making my scowl.

  “You don’t give a shit about me, and you know it. So you can kiss my ass Aaron, and get the hell out of my store.”

  “Gladly,” Aaron huffed, stomping out without looking back. Once he was gone, I let out a deep breath and then turned back to Raf.

  At the look on his face, I almost burst out laughing.

  “Damn, you really had old boy in his feelings, huh?” he laughed. “He thinks he did you a favor.” Raf shook his head. “Nah. That ain’t it, at all. I'm low-key upset you had that egghead-looking dude anywhere near you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh, and here is the part I haven't missed about having you around. You criticizing my boyfriend choices.”