Cassie

by deMora, MariaLisa

  “Not actually, I don’t. That’s why I—”

  “Be there in five,” he said, and the call disconnected. Disconnected. He’d hung up.

  Her hands began to shake.

  Be there in five.

  As in minutes.

  Her breath came faster until it was whistling through her nose on each inhalation and exhalation, darkness creeping in along the edges of her vision.

  Be there in five. He was coming to her house. He’s coming here.

  The distinctive sound of her garage door making its way up on the overhead tracks broke her out of her fog, suddenly aware she was shivering and wringing wet with a sweat definitely not to do with her choice of wardrobe. Whirling, she saw the man who had delivered the motorcycle coming out of the pass door, disappearing as he strode up the walkway towards her back door.

  It hadn’t been five minutes. Surely it had only been seconds since the call disconnected.

  Thump. “Miz Williamson. Cassie, honey, open up.”

  Tug had come to her house. He’d found his place in their conversation and decided that place was here. He knew her name, calling it out as if they were long-separated friends, back together at last. “A minute,” she mouthed, aware on some level that the words hadn’t actually left her mouth.

  “Cassie?”

  “Jus—just…um. A, a minute,” she forced out. Her voice broke in the middle of each word and she first heard him respond, then saw him appear again walking towards the garage. He turned around right before going into the dark opening and through the window, across the short distance that separated them—their eyes locked. He paused and stood there. Simply stood looking at her, and then slowly his head tipped to one side.

  She watched as poignant changes flowed across his face, the mustache that framed his mouth tying everything together in an expressive canvas painted with his responses to this connection hanging delicately between them.

  Recognizing.

  Contemplating.

  Considering.

  And then finally, accepting.

  His look sliced through her, cutting through all the barriers she had in place, those walls that were desperately trying to hold everything at bay. That look told her that he saw her. Everything. Saw her fear…understood where she stood right now was filled with nothing good. The look told her that he could see she wanted to be standing in a different place so bad she would do nearly anything to get there…anything to get past this fear and panic and terror and pain. It promised that nothing bad would happen to her. Not while he was around. Tug would make certain of it, he could take care with her, for her…of her.

  Certainty freed her lungs and she sucked in a great, whooping breath, then another, feeling muscles loosen in her shoulders and arms. Tears welled in her eyes as she continued looking at him and he nodded, chin going down and then back up once, steady and slow. Easy, I got you. He motioned with one casually relaxed hand, the intent clear. Come on, let’s get this going.

  Chin up, she did as he requested, blinking as she walked into the sunlight of a late fall morning.

  Next morning, she rose earlier than normal and worked on the computer for about four hours, then dressed and went to the garage by ten o’clock. As promised, Tug was there waiting, seated on an overturned bucket he had appropriated for himself yesterday.

  He didn’t speak as she went through the safety and maintenance checks he had taught her. Only making a disapproving noise when she swung her leg over the seat and sat down. Reaching back, she pulled the helmet off the sissy bar and frowned at him. Crossly, she said, “It’s not even started.”

  For some reason, Tug didn’t set off any of her alarms. The man seemed to be one big nullifier for all her triggers, because around him, she felt as if she could do anything.

  Anything. For the first time in forever.

  Even tease him and scowl back.

  “Bad habits are easy to get into,” he said, his voice low and growling.

  “Bah,” she scoffed, tightened the chinstrap on the helmet, and then grasped the handlebars. With a jerk, she pulled the bike upright, balancing it between her legs for a moment before tipping it slightly to the right. With her left heel, she lifted the kickstand that held the bike in place when it was parked, and then settled back onto the seat. Balancing. Intentionally wobbling it back and forth slightly so she could feel the weight of the bike. As she had yesterday, she pushed backwards with her feet, but the wheels didn’t turn.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to remember what he had said yesterday.

  “You have the—” he began and when she shushed him, he fell quiet immediately.

  In gear? Maybe. She released her right hand from the grip to turn on the key and check and the bike suddenly moved backwards a couple inches. Oh, right, she’d had the handbrake engaged. Tug made a pleased sound, and she opened her eyes, grinning. Now she pushed it backwards, but it went quickly and she fumbled at the grip again, pulling the brake hard and stopping the bike just before it hit the supply shelves next to the wall.

  Huffing out in irritation because she had nearly bobbled that simple thing, she cautiously pushed forwards, gliding slowly and easing the bike to a stop with the brake. When he spoke, his voice seemed natural in her garage, echoing and sounding all around her, so she wasn’t startled. “Do the three-point we talked about.”

  With a nod, she pushed forward then stopped, then backwards, but she cut the handlebars far to the left. Too far. So far the bike nearly toppled with her on it and Tug was off his bucket and across the garage just as she got her feet underneath her to halt the fall. “I’ve got it,” she complained, turning her head to see how close to the wall she was. He settled back onto the bucket as she completed the maneuver, now facing the back of the garage.

  “Again,” he said, and she nodded.

  “Again.” Nod.

  “Again.” Nod.

  “Enough, Cassie.” Tug’s voice came from nearby, and she looked up from where she was staring at the floor, trying to line the wheel up with the tape he had put down. “Honey, you’re soaked and it’s like sixty degrees. You need to go inside. Get a rest in.”

  “But, I want to get it right.”

  “You are getting it right, honey.” He reached out and loosened the strap underneath her chin. “Pop that kickstand down and lean it over.” She did as he told her, but when she tried to stand up, her legs complained. With a grin, he said, “Four hours, Cassie. Quite the leg day you’ve had.”

  Swinging her leg over, she completed the routine from this morning in reverse, checking the stability of the bike and turning off the fuel petcock. Helmet in hand, she turned to him and knew there was a stupid grin on her face as she asked, “Tomorrow?”

  “Couldn’t keep me away, honey.” With a flip of his hand, he walked out, and she heard a vehicle engine start up. Stepping to the doorway, she watched him climb into the passenger side of a truck sitting at the end of her driveway. The driver also gave her a flip of his hand as he pulled out. She repeated the brief two-finger wave, determined to practice it until it felt natural.

  A week later, she and Tug had fallen into a comfortable routine. She now brought him a cup of coffee when she came out, and he’d wrenched permission from her to go into her house for refills. Comfortable and kind, Tug somehow seemed to have turned into a friend. A friend who is also a slave driver, she thought. Today he was sitting at the end of the driveway on his own motorcycle, patiently waiting for her to roll hers out of the garage.

  He had been there for nearly three hours.

  The plan was to ride to the parking lot of a nearby factory that had closed down. With space for more than seven hundred workers per shift, he’d joked that it should have ample room for her to ride in figure eights and practice stopping.

  He promised her she was ready.

  All she had to do was follow him. Trust him.

  “I do trust him,” she muttered, pushing the still-quiet bike out of the garage and letting it glide to the botto
m of the slight incline. Tug’s hand moved, and she heard the overhead door behind her closing. Bastard. He held her remote and had used it to cut off any path of retreat. Moving forwards from here.

  Shaking her head, she frowned down at the tank of the bike, nestled between her knees. The posture now comfortable after hours of time spent sitting on the bike. Bastard. Leaning over, she checked the petcock. On. The bike she’d bought was older, with a carburetor instead of fuel injection, but thankfully a starter button because those kickstart levers looked like the very devil to deal with on the videos she’d watched. Tug called her bike a classic and told her it matched her beauty. Something she’d laughed at until she was breathless, sides aching from the unaccustomed activity.

  Focus, dammit. She needed to follow the mental checklist Tug had drilled into her if she expected to hold her nerve today.

  Key. She reached and twisted it, waiting for the lights to glow on the dials attached to the handlebars. On.

  Neutral. Leaning the bike slightly to the right, she pulled in the left-hand lever, engaging the clutch as she used the toe of her boot to push down a lever by her foot, watching one of the lights go out. She tucked her toe underneath the shift lever and pulled it up slightly. The light came back on in confirmation. Neutral.

  Chin up, she looked at Tug and waited for him to nod, and then hit the button with her thumb. The rumble of the bike no longer surprised her, and she was ready for the way the machine seemed to torque between her legs, moving in a way that told her it was more ready than she would ever be to hit the road. Started. Hand to the clutch again, toe to shifter, tap down, putting the bike into first gear. It jolted slightly, and her stomach leapt into her throat.

  I got this, she reminded herself, hearing Tug’s voice in her head as encouragement, and she swallowed hard.

  Tug gestured her forward, but he didn’t move, his bike taking up all the space across the end of the driveway. Slowly, as he had taught her, she released the clutch, trying to feel the moment when it engaged and rolled the bike slowly forward. The engine on Tug’s bike started, the echoes from his exhaust pipes bouncing off the surrounding houses and fences. Her heartbeat chased the rhythm, speeding up. Ignoring that, at a snail’s pace the entire way, feet alternately dangling or padding to keep her balance, she eased to the end of the driveway, gliding the bike to a stop at least five feet away from Tug’s.

  “Ready?” he called, pitching his voice to be heard over the engines, reaching up to do his own manipulation of his bike’s controls. At her nod, he moved forward smoothly, leaving the end of the driveway looking suddenly huge and open. Easily navigable.

  “I can do this,” she told herself as she carefully engaged the clutch again and rode into the street, trailing behind him. Before she realized how far they had come, she watched him pull into the parking lot and followed, gliding to a stop next to him as she put her feet down to balance the bike. She knew she had a broad grin on her face when she asked, not even caring if she squealed a bit, “Did you see me?”

  “Good job, baby,” he called over the noise of the engines, then he killed his bike and put down the kickstand. Leaning back on his seat, he put his feet up on what he called highway pegs. “Now. Ride some more. Get it, Cassie.”

  With a nod, she released the clutch cautiously and rolled away, eyes plotting her path, picking out landmarks she could use to navigate by. That large oil spot could be one end of a figure eight, and the flattened leaf the other. She could use the place where the individual parking space lines joined the row to make a weave pattern like the one she had found online. I can do this, she thought. I really can do this.

  ***

  “Yeah, but I still feel like a fraud,” she told Tug, hearing him laugh on the other end of the line.

  “You ain’t no fraud, Cassie.” She imagined him shaking his head, grease-stained fingers going up to smooth that damn mustache. “A newbie, but not a fraud. You’ve got bit by the bug, sure as shit.”

  “I just feel absurd,” she said, twisting to look at herself in the mirror of her bedroom. It would be her first time riding solo on the street, and he was insisting she needed to wear all her leather garments, even the chaps. He wasn’t able to ride with her today, and she didn’t want to wait, wanted to already be “in the wind” as he called it.

  The woman who looked back at her from the mirror looked far different from the one she normally saw. This one wore her hair up and back, revealing her face. She had on black square-toed boots, a black leather jacket, black leather chaps over tightly fitting jeans, and to top it all off, black leather gloves that covered her arm up past her wrist. She had goggles to put on with her helmet, which would complete her outfit.

  “You’ll have all your skin someone gets stupid around you and causes a wreck. Skin’s hard as fuck to grow back, Cassie. Wear the fuckin’ gear, honey.”

  That was something she liked about Tug. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, didn’t placate her or talk down to her, didn’t worry he would trip her into an anxiety attack. He was just himself, all the time. You could always know what you were getting with Tug. Riding with him over the past weeks had shown her the kinds of stupid behaviors people exhibited in traffic, and she knew his concern was valid. Listen to the man. She had less than two hundred miles of experience under her belt, while he had thousands and thousands.

  “I will,” she said softly, and he huffed a laugh in her ear.

  There was noise in the background where he was, a rising roar of voices shouting greetings. Laughter of his friends nearer to the phone and she heard someone call his name. “Gotta go, Cassie. You ride safe, yeah?”

  With a giggle, she said, “Will do, boss.”

  She saluted herself in the mirror, already moving to disconnect the call when she heard him say with a smile in his voice, “Shiny side up.” Her reflection’s answering smile surprised her, and she studied her face for a moment before turning away.

  Her route, approved by him, was to head through downtown and south for about thirty miles on one of the main state highways. Her assignment, provided via text this morning, was to gas up at an unfamiliar place, and then stop for food on her way home. It should be about an hour total, maybe a little more depending on how slowly she rode.

  I can do this. That had become her mantra, and with Tug’s encouragement, she believed she could.

  Sitting in the center lane at a red light near the downtown courthouse, she was looking up at the signal when she first heard the noise. A low rumble, it sounded like a train approaching, and she expected the pavement to begin shaking underneath her feet. Whipping her head to the right, she saw a long double-line of motorcycles pulling to a smooth stop, their light having gone red and impeding their progress.

  Eyes flicking between the light—the left turn lane had a green, she would be next—and the mass of motorcycles, she had a moment to register that every rider she could see was looking at her before the light in front of her went green. Feigning nonchalance, she nodded her head at the lead riders as she smoothly released her clutch. She was filled with equal amounts of fear and excitement when they nodded back at her.

  Holy cow, that was a lot of bikes, she thought, working her way up through the gears and looking ahead to the next set of lights, keeping track of the cars on either side of her at the same time. Like…a bunch of bikes. Lined up two-by-two as they had been, there were probably forty rows, which meant at least eighty bikes. Holy cow. The right lane ended just ahead, and she slowed slightly to allow a car to slide in ahead of her.

  Catching movement in one of her mirrors, she was stunned to see that the mass of bikes was now riding up the road behind her. In her lane. Cars were moving out of their way, and she looked frantically left and right, but there was no room and no place to pull over to allow them to pass. Crap. Hugging the right-third of the lane like Tug had taught her, she cruised along, heart in her throat, waiting for them to go around her. She was making room, after all. Pass me, pass me. Please, pass me.

>   A bike pulled up beside her and her hand slipped on the throttle, unevenly holding her speed. She relaxed her grip, smoothing out the application of gas and dared a glance over. The man was staring at her and when he saw he had her attention, flipped her a two-fingered wave. He grinned, his mouth curving up in a pleased smile and he tipped his beanie-covered head, steering one-handed as casually as if he had been riding a motorcycle all his life. Which he probably has, she thought, and then stared ahead again, brain working overtime. He looks familiar.

  ***

  Hoss

  Hoss’ heart stuttered in his chest. Cassie. On a fucking motorcycle. Riding as if she had been doing it all her life. It seemed so out of character for the woman he’d met and studied. If asked to put money down on the idea, he would have confidently wagered against it. The instant he recognized her, with a raised hand, he had rerouted the direction of the club’s run, pulling them south from the downtown red light, cutting off traffic to slide out as close behind her as he could. Weaving around the couple of cars between them, he watched as she rocked her bike to the outside of the lane, leaving room for him to pull up next to her, as if she had done this a hundred times before. What the fuck?

  He changed position in the lane, moving up beside her bike in order to watch her. The oversize goggles on her face couldn’t hide how pretty she was, and he wondered at the full leathers since they were still in mild fall weather. He had shown up to Sammy’s last three home games with binoculars, noting the different face in her seat for one of them as the usher had warned him. The other two he had spent more time watching her than the game, enjoying how excited she got for the boys, frowning when he couldn’t catch some interaction through the glass. He hadn’t tried to see her again in person, but Hoss felt obsessed, still driven to draw and sketch her from memory every night when he stepped into the studio.

  “Prez.” He heard the shout from behind him and glanced back to see Tug riding up on his left, putting them three bikes wide across two lanes. “Don’t fuck with her, man. She’s scared.”