Page 19 of Redline Baby

He eats the piece instead of finishing the sentence.

I let him.

I know the shape of this now. Pushing gets me nothing.

He comes back to it about a minute later, unprompted.

"I know I still ride like I'm racing," he says. "Ni gives me shit for it constantly. Dex too. Like I never got the memo that the season's over."

A small, real smile.

"Habit's a hard thing to retire."

"I don't think it's really about the habit."

He looks at me.

It's the first time all dinner he's held my eyes for more than a second without an exit ramp ready.

"No," he says. "Probably not."

I don't push past that either.

Instead, I ask him what bike he'd build if money were no object, and he lights up in a completely different register, hands moving through the air as he describes frame geometry I could have drawn myself.

For the next fifteen minutes, I get an entire unbroken monologue about weight distribution and center of mass and why everyone gets rake angle wrong.

I don't understand half of what makes it exciting to him and every bit of why it's exciting to hear him say it.

"You're not even a little bored," he says at some point, catching himself, catching me watching him instead of glazing over.

"I restore bikes for a living. This is basically foreplay for me."

He laughs, loud enough that the couple at the next table glances over.

He claps a hand over his own mouth for a second like he's surprised by the volume of his own joy, and something in my chest goes warm and a little unsteady at having caused it.

"Tell me about the shop," he says when he's got his breath back. "Actual question. Not just—I want to know what you actually do all day."

So I tell him.

I tell him about the customer who's been eyeing the same bobber for three weeks and hasn't worked up the nerve to buy it yet, and Kit has an immediate, strong opinion about exactly what's stopping the guy:

"He's scared he's gonna kill himself on it. That's not a bike thing, that's a confidence thing."

Which is, unfairly, probably correct.

I tell him about Rue.

I don't plan to.

It comes out because he asks, lightly, if I have kids, and I say no, not mine, but there's a six-year-old who runs my shop better than I do most Wednesdays.

Then I'm telling him about the tire gauge and the valve stem caps and the way she holds a wrench like a weapon and refuses to be told otherwise.

Kit is grinning the whole time, asking follow-up questions like he actually wants the answers and isn't just filling space with noise the way he does at the bar.

"She sounds like a menace," he says, delighted. "I love menaces!"