Page 37 of Handful

“Two and a half hours.”

She nodded. “Did you tell your brother and his wife I’m coming?”

“Mark knows. I called him Wednesday.”

“What did he say?”

“You’re bringing a girl?” I drank my coffee. “A woman, I said. He didn’t have much to say after that.”

She smiled. “And Heather?”

“Heather’ll assess you. Two kids, a husband who doesn’t worry enough, so she does it for the whole house. First ten minutes she’ll decide. After that you’re either in or you’re polite strangers for the day.”

“And if she doesn’t like me?”

I looked at her — the coffee, the gear, the way she was standing at a gas station in the middle of nowhere like she’d always been part of this. The woman I was going to convince to be my old lady. I thought about what my property of cut would look like on her back.

“Heather will love you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Because I—” The word I actually wanted sat right there and I couldn’t say it. I looked away. “She just will.”

Across the lot, Glitch caught my eye. He tilted his head toward the highway behind us and raised his chin. We’re heading back. I nodded. He said something to Smoke and they rolled out with a wave.

We finished our coffee and got back on the bike. Her arms came around me and, after a quick check, I pulled onto the highway.

The next two hours were the quietest I’d ever spent on a bike. She was warm behind me. Solid. Present. Every curve I took, she came with me — no delay now, her weight shifting with mine.

I felt every breath she took through my back.

No speeding. No fast line through the curves. I rode steady, clean - except nothing about the route I knew by heart was the same. She was behind me.

The Glenwood exit came up and I slowed for the curve and she squeezed once — not the stop signal, not the slow-down signal. Just a squeeze. Telling me she was there.

I already knew.

I reached back anyway. Palm flat to her thigh — the way I had three times on the highway, brief. She settled a little more against my back.

I put my hand back on the bar and took the exit slow.

The last half hour was different. Off the highway the road narrowed, speed came down, and Glenwood opened up around us. I knew every light, every turn.

She was quiet behind me, taking it in the way she took everything — without filling the space. By the time I turned onto Mark’s street I wasn’t sure what I was more aware of: the town I’d grown up in or the woman on the back of my bike seeing it for the first time.

Heather was at the door before I’d cut the engine.

That was different. Usually Heather waited inside — coffee ready, dish towel on her shoulder, the measured greeting at the screen door. Today she was on the porch with her arms crossed and her eyes on the bike, watching Austen dismount and clocking every detail.

Austen got off the way I’d taught her — left side, right leg over, feet on the ground before letting go. The helmet came off and her hair spilled out, pressed flat on one side, wild on the other. She smoothed it without success and shrugged.

“Heather,” I said. “This is Austen.”

Heather looked at her. Austen looked back. A full second of two women reading each other.

“Heather. Nice to meet you.” Austen put out her hand.

Heather shook it. Firm, brief. “Tyler hasn’t brought anyone here before.”