13. Rhodes #2
She's got a tiny dot of mud on the tip of her nose and is grinning like she stole something. It lands on me all at once, no flicker to it this time, nothing I can file. I want her.
"How about a cold one on the porch? I love sitting out here after a great day riding."
With her, a cold one means something entirely different.
"God, yes," she says with a smile as she gets off her bike and puts her helmet on the seat.
I take my thumb to her nose to wipe off the speck of mud. Neither of us says a word, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Then I grab the Yeti out of my truck before we walk to the cabin. There are no beers in this one, and there haven't been since February.
We drop into the porch chairs simultaneously, both of us useless. My legs have that hollow shake in them from bracing the bike for hours, and she's slumped sideways in hers with one arm hanging off the rest. Her boots are caked to the ankle. We’re both still breathing hard.
I dig two bottles of water out of the ice and hand her one. I crack mine and drink half of it before I say a word.
"I was good, right?" She pulls the cap off with her teeth, spits it into the grass. "Like immediately, from the first second."
"From the first second you killed my engine."
"Once."
"Six times, Tallulah. I counted."
"That was a warm-up." She waves the bottle at me. "You can't count the warm-up. Plus, you rushed me. That’s a coaching problem.”
She laughs, head tipped back, and the sound just rolls out of her across all that empty land. There's nothing out here to catch it or bounce it back, just her laugh and the pines.
This is the part nobody warns you about.
Nothing changed on her end. She's still sprawled like a dropped coat, still giving me hell, still trusting me with every dumb brag because why wouldn't she.
I'm Rhodes. I'm the one who's supposed to be safe.
She's got no idea I've spent the last hour doing math I never wanted to do.
"I'm ready for the expert trails," she says. "Next time. You know I am."
"I'm open to a next time. You're a natural. I'll give you that."
She smiles into her water, and I take another long pull off mine. Stretching her arms above her head, she groans. "Do you have a key to this place? I need to use the restroom. I can find a spot in the woods if not."
I stand, and my legs remind me they hate me. "Come on."
I pull out my keys, open the door, and walk her through, pointing her down the short hall. "End of that on the left."
She goes in and the door clicks shut. I stand there in the middle of my family's cabin for a moment before busying myself in the kitchen.
When the door opens, she wanders into the front room instead, stopping in front of the fireplace. "This place hasn't changed a bit since the last time I was here. I think it was probably four years ago, the last party your dad had. Or, at least the last time I was here."
"Your mom sat out on that porch the whole night." I come stand next to her. "Wouldn't come in even when it got cold."
"She loved it here." Tallulah's quiet for a second. "I keep going for my phone to text her something dumb. Saw a heron on the drive out and had it half typed before I remembered."
I don't trust my voice, so I give it a beat. "She caught me sneaking beers off the back of your grandad's boat that night and made me a plate instead. Sat me down like I was one of hers."
What I don't say is that she was the only one who ever did. I've never once known what to say to somebody's grief, my own least of all, so I don't try to fix hers. I just stand there next to her in it.
She's right there, close, still looking at the fireplace, but her mind is a hundred miles away
She turns her head just as I turn mine. Her eyes come up to mine and hold longer than they should, long enough that there’s no question what I want.
I close the space anyway.
I kiss her, careful at first, because I didn't plan it and neither did she.
My mouth is on hers, testing whether the floor's really there.
Then she leans in, and it's real, and my hand comes up to her jaw, and the whole afternoon lands at once.
She tastes like water and dust, and I want more of it than a few seconds can hold.
She pulls back first.
"Okay." She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "That was weird."
It was not something I ever would have expected, but it was anything but weird. It was the least weird thing that has happened to me in a year. I know it before she finishes saying the word.
"Yeah," I say. "Weird."
Neither of us says one word about why it happened or if it meant anything. We start shoving the room back into a shape we recognize, both of us talking over each other about nothing.
"I need to load up the bikes before it gets dark."
"Yeah, good call." She's already moving. "Great. Let's do that."
Outside, the light's gone gold and sits low behind the trees.
We roll the small bike up the ramp, and she's back to herself before I've got the front tire chained, calling out to run the strap through the frame, not the spokes.
Then she tells me my ratchet's junk, and she's buying me a better one for Christmas.
That stings somewhere I don't want to examine. I cinch the last strap down harder than it needs to be.
Once everything is tied down, I run back to the cabin to make sure it's locked, grab the cooler, and throw it in the back of my truck.
The highway rolls out ahead of us in the dusk, the trailer rattling behind. She fights my radio, lands on a station, and leaves it this time on some peppy song I recognize but couldn't say what it is.
"I didn't even wreck," she says. "I want that noted. We had a full day, zero wrecks."
"Day's not over."
"Optimist."
The phone buzzes in the cup holder somewhere past Pearl River. She picks it up without thinking, the way she's picked up everything in my truck for a month, and I sense a hesitation.
"It's Coop," she says.
"Read it to me."
She turns the screen toward me at arm's length instead, holding it out there. I take my eyes off the road for as long as I dare to read the text.
how's my girl doing? tell me something good.
Neither one of us says anything. The trailer rattles while the headlights find the reflectors on the guardrail.
"You want me to answer that?" she says.
"I'll get it later."
She puts it back in the cup holder, the screen facing toward me now. Then she reaches over and turns the radio up, which is the kindest thing anybody has done for me in a long time. We ride the last forty minutes into New Orleans without either of us saying one word.
I never answer the text.