Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75547 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 302(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
As much as I love Toon as my brother. He fucks up with her, I’ll fucking kill him. He is busting his ass building shit for her dog rescue. It’s cute to watch him bend over backwards for her. They’re in love just like all the others and I’m happy for them.
I’m genuinely happy to see them all content and finding their place in life with a partner. I am.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t sting a little bit.
“Need a hand?” Tripp calls over.
“Got it.”
I tighten one last bolt, wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. The whining sound was just a belt loose. Easy fix. Customer will think I saved her life. Maybe I did, in a way. The key to driving safely is not panicking. If something had broken and she was on the highway, if she overreacts it could mean a wreck. At least now this is fixed and she won’t mess up.
By noon, humidity rolls in heavy, thick enough to choke. I shrug out of my cut long enough to eat the sandwich one of the prospects grabbed from the corner store. Bread’s stale, meat’s thin, but it fills me. I wash it down with water warm from sitting in the sun.
Work carries me until late afternoon. More bikes in, more grease on my hands, more hours burned away in the rhythm I know best. Fix. Wipe. Test. Fix again. It’s a language my body speaks without thinking.
When the last customer rolls out, the shop quiets. Brothers peel off toward their women, their homes, their full tables. Laughter trails them, fading with the sound of engines pulling away.
I stand in the empty bay, rag in my hand, staring at the streaks of oil on the concrete floor. My reflection stares back from the chrome of a bike waiting on parts. Hard eyes. Hard mouth. Man-shaped wall.
I hang the rag.
I need air.
The road waits outside like an old friend. My bike’s where I left it, black and mean, chrome catching the last of the day’s sun. I swing a leg over, settle into the seat, and for the first time all damn day, something in me eases.
Key turns. Engine roars. The sound isn’t noise—it’s life, it’s my heartbeat.
I roll out, gravel crunching under tires until I hit pavement. Wind rushes past, cool against sweat. The farther I get from the garage, the lighter my chest feels. Houses fall away. Pine trees rise tall and dark, their scent sharp in the air. The sky bleeds orange to pink to purple, the kind of sunset tourists stop to take pictures of. I don’t stop. I live here.
Throttle down. Speed answers. I let the bike run.
Nothing else matters out here. Not the brothers finding their happiness. Not the empty house waiting for me. Not the itch under my skin that says maybe, just maybe, I want more than chrome and leather and nights that blur.
I push harder, chasing the horizon, chasing silence, chasing the piece of myself I only ever find at sixty miles an hour with nothing but asphalt stretching ahead.
The first few miles peel off like dead skin. Sweat cools. My shoulders drop. Speed evens my head. I don’t push hard enough to be stupid, but I let the bike breathe. She likes it. I do, too.
Passing through Stella, fields open wide on both sides, flat as open possibilities. Soybeans in tight green rows, corn fading from summer bravado to early fall tired. I pass a church with a sign that says GOD’S NOT MAD—HE WANTS TO TALK. Cute. The only thing I talk to out here is the machine under me.
I don’t put music in my ears. Noise like that makes men miss the world right in front of them. Out here, the soundtrack’s wind, the steady drum of the engine mixed with a random lawnmower with someone drinking a beer while taking in the evening sun cutting grass.
I pull off. There’s a two-pump station near the split on highway fifty-eight that always smells like hot rubber and cheap coffee. The bell over the door slaps when I push through. The old man at the counter looks me over and nods like we’re soldiers trading salutes.
“Hot,” he says.
“It’s Carolina.”
He flicks his eyes toward the cooler. “Cold’s in there.”
I grab a water, slap cash down, don’t take the receipt. Outside, I lean on the bike and drink half the bottle in six swallows. A kid in a minivan points at my patch through a smeared window. His mom pulls his hand down and mouths sorry at me. I raise the bottle in a lazy toast. She smiles like she got away with something.
Back on the road, the trees thicken, Croatan forest and swamped out ditches in some spots crowding the shoulders. The air shifts—fresher, wetter, speckled with salt if you breathe deep enough.