Page 35 of Roadrunner

“How many kids, in a perfect world?” he asked.

He said it like it was nothing, like the idea didn’t scare him at all, and something in my chest loosened. “I don’t know. One of each. I really don’t care, as long as they’re healthy.” I handed him what was left of my soda. “What about you?”

“I’ve always wanted a boy.” He looked at the ceiling. “But I like the idea of a girl too. Someone to stand on the porch with a shotgun for.”

“You wouldn’t need the shotgun. They’d see the Harley parked out front and turn right back around.”

“It’s fun to think about,” he said. “One of each. That’d be perfect.”

It was fun. More than I would have guessed, given how carefully I’d avoided the subject with anyone else.

“I’d want to be hands-on,” I said. “Not that we couldn’t have help. But I’d want to be there. Always.”

“I’d do it the way my dad did it with me. Teach him baseball. How to ride a skateboard. Build a motorcycle with him in the garage, piece by piece. Some of my best memories are just me and my old man, working on something.”

I didn’t have those memories with my own parents. I had them with Martina, though, in a smaller way. Only fourteen years separated us. She’d started out feeling like an authority figure and ended up feeling like an older sister.

“Martina came into my life when I was four or five,” I said. “I used to think of her as in charge of me. Then I got older and realized she was barely older than me herself. By high school she felt more like a sister.”

“We’ll have help too, probably. But we’ll be there. I’m not handing my kids off to be raised by somebody else. We’ll do it together.”

The we did something to me every time he used it instead of I. “We can take them out in the Jeep. Desert trips.”

He groaned. “You and that Jeep.”

“Our kids are going to love that Jeep. Wait and see.”

“Our kids.”

“Yes,” I said. “Ours.”

He held out his fist, pinkie extended. “Pinkie promise.”

He could be terrifying to strangers and ridiculous with me in the same ten seconds. I loved both versions of him equally.

“Promise what?”

“If we’re lucky enough to have a family, we put them first. Before everything else.”

It cost me nothing to agree. Whatever else our children might inherit from either of us, an absent parent wasn’t going to be one of the things.

I hooked my pinkie around his and kissed him. “Promise.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Alex

Then

Summer break was close. I was eager to be done with school and equally certain I had no idea what came after. I knew I wasn’t going back to California. If it were up to me alone, I’d stay in Arizona with Riley for the rest of my life. California was a beautiful locked door. I did not want the key back.

I wondered, sometimes, how long we’d go without my parents ever meeting him. The thought used to sting. Three years in, it barely registered anymore. My new family’s total acceptance of me had quietly replaced whatever I used to need from the old one. A person can only wait on a driveway so many times before she faces the other way.

It was a Saturday morning. Price and Riley had gone to look at a motorcycle. Brisco and I were killing time at the clubhouse, waiting for them to get back. I liked these stretches with the guys. The ones where nobody needed anything from me except conversation.

Brisco raised a fist the size of a ham to his mouth and yawned. “Shoulda got more sleep last night. I’m worn the fuck out.”

“What were you doing?”