She smiled, eyes going to the front of his cut, the empty place where an officer’s patch would be stitched. “You didn’t get voted in as VP,” she said, quietly.
“Walsh did,” he said, and made a good show of looking like he didn’t care. “He was the obvious choice. I knew it wasn’t going to be me.”
She made a sympathetic face, reaching to brush dirt off the breast pocket of his cut, and he stepped back.
“I haven’t earned it yet,” he explained, his smile grim. He gave her a little salute as he walked away.
“Hmm,” she murmured to herself. No, he hadn’t earned it yet, but that didn’t mean the overlook hadn’t crushed him anyway.
She shook the thought away and doubled back to the bike shop.
Mercy wasn’t working anymore, but he had been, and looked happy as a clam standing in one of the garage bays, toweling grease from his hands, a black smudge along one high cheekbone. The way his face lit up when he saw her warmed her insides, left her smiling.
“Having fun?” she asked, after he’d kissed her. He smelled like bikes. Like a mechanic. She loved that smell.
He nodded. “Got my hands dirty again.” He held them out to her to demonstrate the dirt deep under his nails. “Feels good.” He went back to toweling. “Things go alright at school?”
“Yep. I start back in Jaunary.”
“She liked your story?”
“ ‘Fearless’? She loved it, apparently. She wants me to submit it for publication in a literary journal she recommended.”
His smile was full of pride, the husband and father roles getting all mixed up again. She didn’t care; secretly, she liked it, if she was honest with herself.
“Let me wash up a little,” he said, “and then we’ll get out of here. There’s something I want to show you.”
Nerves flared up in her stomach when it came time to mount his bike again. She shoved the butterflies down with a few deep breaths. There was no evidence left of the crash. Walsh and RJ had fixed the Dyna up while Mercy recuperated; she looked as beautiful and matte-finished as she always had.
“I know,” Mercy said quietly, giving her waist a little squeeze. “It happened to me, too.”
Which meant that if he could get past it, so could she. With one last deep breath, she swung her leg over behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. It felt immeasurably good, holding onto him again like this.
She hitched her chin up onto his shoulder. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The last of her worry melted away once they were out on the road. The bike felt solid and strong; so did Mercy. She settled in against the beating of the wind against her sunglasses and bare face and let the trip wash over her, the way the world seemed to be standing still from this vantage point, the two of them the only living things moving at the same speed, breathing at the same rhythm. Like it was just them, alone in a wilderness made for two.
A few signs remained, in the heart of town, sunk at haphazard angles into the winter lawns. A few last protests; a residual enmity that Ava knew would take months, maybe even years to fade. Knoxville wasn’t anti-Dog, but it was frightened, and the road to reconcile was a long one, paved with setbacks. For now, the scandal of the mayor was still making front pages and circulating through ladies’ luncheons. Next month it would be some other minor social uproar, and so on and so on, the Lean Dogs fading back into the tapestry of the city.
Mercy pulled over at the bakery, took the turn into the alley, parked in an old familiar spot that set Ava’s heart to pounding. Her eyes went up the iron staircase to the door at the top of the landing, the small apartment with the under-window bookshelves and the ever-present smell of baking bread.
“Your old place,” she breathed, as he swung off the bike and held it steady for her. “You didn’t–”
“I did,” he said. “For now. Until we can afford someplace big enough for a family.” He withdrew the keys from his cut pocket. “You wanna go up?”
“Yes.”
The steps rang under their boots in the old way that she remembered, clanging metallic sounds she knew so well. He handed her the key, let her unlock the door and send it swinging inward with a gentle push of her fingertips. Ava braced herself for change: some hideous wallpaper, vivid paint, an overhaul, badly patched holes in the wall, evidence of vandalism. She had no idea what the tenants during the past five years had done to the place. They might have ripped out the bookcases, renovated the old bath. They might have…
Sunlight streamed in through the bare window, lighting on the old warped boards, a helix of dust motes lifting as the incoming air disturbed the peace. It was the same. It was exactly the same.
The bookshelves, waiting for their collections of paperbacks, the claw-foot tub in the bath, the old kitchen stove, the white walls, the ancient wall sconce lighting. Empty, holding its breath, waiting for them.
The same.
Ava whirled to face her husband, his face golden in the wash of sunlight, his brows drawn together with concentration as he studied her.
