This was it. Something was happening, something that I’d been chasing for years?—
The blast of a siren cut the air.
“Fuck!” Mike straightened, wiping his mouth. With one hand, he tugged my skirt down, as the other pulled on the door handle. He was out of the car and adjusting himself before I’d figured out which way was up. Panting, I looked in the rearview mirror and saw a cop pulling over behind us on the side of the road.
Passion turned to terror.
Mike should have been putting his hands in the air. He should have been getting back in the car, or lying on the ground. He should not have been doing what he was, which was leaning over the open passenger door and waving.
My pulse was about to choke me.
“Hey, Keri!”
“Mike,” the cop greeted as he got out of his car.
I tried to keep my breathing steady and my hands visible.
“What’s up?” the police officer asked. “Car trouble?”
“I’m going to be honest with you, Keri, mate.”
Surely, he wasn’t that silly?—
“We pulled over for a pash,” Mike confessed.
I was not expecting what happened next.
The cop snickered. “Of all the places, Mike. This was the best you could do for romantic ambience?”
Mike shrugged. It was a very players-goin’-play shrug, which didn’t suit him. I tried to study his expression but got distracted by a particular glisten on his lips, which made my breath spike—partly with panic, partly not; so I went back to what I was doing before, which was trying to calm my pounding heart.
Of all the ways to be interrupted, this had to be the worst.
“Take it home, folks,” the cop said. “Roadside canoodling isn’t safe.” With a wave, the officer got back in his car.
Mike exhaled slowly. “Damn.”
I didn’t say anything. I genuinely didn’t know what to say. Instead, I awkwardly tugged at my skirt, a motion Mike’s eyes flicked to watch. He might have thought my cheer was weird, but he definitely didn’t think the outfit was.
“Talk about coitus interruptus, eh?” Mike said after a minute. “Wait, no, I’ve got it. Cop-us interruptus.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t get shot. You didn’t put your hands up or anything.”
“Huh?” Mike frowned. “Oh. Lyssa, cops here don’t even carry guns on them. He wasn’t armed. I’m not saying that our cops are perfect or anything?—”
“ACAB,” I recited quickly.
“Totally. And I get that you can’t be a good egg in a bad batch. But it’s different here than it is in America. In small towns like this especially—no one needs to feel unsafe when they see Keri. I promise.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was a lot to think about. Examining the cultural elements of justice structures and nearly coming. Big day.
After a while, I just said, “Are you getting back in the car?”
“In a minute,” he replied. “I don’t want Keri to see me full mast, because he’d definitely tell his wife about it, and she’d never look me in the eye again.”
Mike waved to Keri, who was sitting in his car waiting for us to leave. The cop tapped his watch at Mike. Mike flipped the bird in response, and incredibly, instead of tasering him—or worse—the cop laughed.
I pointed at my phone, which had fallen to the grass when Mike opened the door, and he picked it up and belatedly stopped the recording I’d forgotten about. I expected him to immediately delete the video, but he just passed my phone back to me and got back in the driver’s seat.
