Break up with me

The Civic smelled like old french fries and the pine air freshener Jess had hung from the mirror three owners ago, though by now the only thing it still smelled of was the pine air freshener trying and failing to cover the french fries. Dani drove with one hand on the wheel and the other out the window, fingers slicing the summer air, and the night was warm and the radio was loud and she was twenty years old and free.

Bri rode shotgun with her feet on the dash, which Dani had stopped fighting her about by the third year of their friendship because Bri did what Bri wanted to do and the dashboard was no different from any other surface in the world as far as Bri was concerned. Jess sprawled across the back seat with her shoes off, singing the wrong words to a song she'd hated twenty minutes ago and now claimed as her favorite. They had no plans. They had a full tank of gas that Dani had paid for in quarters and lint, and they had the whole summer ahead of them with nothing to do but be young and stupid and happy.

It was the first week of July, the kind of week in a small town where the nights go soft and long and the heat lets go of the day by ten and the air out by the river turns cool enough that you want to drive with the windows down even if you're going nowhere. The town of Bramwell sat in a valley between two ridges, a town of nine thousand people and four stoplights and one main street that turned into a state route at the edge of town, and it was the only place any of them had ever lived, and tonight it felt, for the first time, like it might be too small for the three of them.

"You're going too slow," Bri said, not looking up from her phone.

"I'm going the speed limit."

"That's what I said." Bri grinned without lifting her eyes. "Too slow."

Dani laughed. The Civic rattled over a seam in the road and something in the back suspension knocked twice, a sound she knew by name. She'd rebuilt the rear end herself at her dad's shop last winter, and it still knocked on cold days because she'd torqued the bushings a quarter turn too loose. She'd fix it. She'd fix it Tuesday. Tonight she didn't care about the bushings.

Tonight the windows were down and the town of Bramwell smelled like cut grass and asphalt and the river two blocks south, and the three of them had been driving for an hour going nowhere, which was the best kind of driving there was.

"Where are we even going," Jess said from the back seat, her head upside down over the armrest so her hair brushed the floor.

"Nowhere," Dani said.

"That's not a place."

"It's my favorite place."

"You're weird."

"You're upside down in the back seat of a Civic."

"Fair." Jess righted herself. She pulled her hair back into a knot. "I'm just saying, if we're going to keep doing this all summer, we should at least have a destination. A goal. A vibe."

"The vibe is the drive," Bri said, not looking up.

"The vibe is the drive," Jess repeated. "God, we sound old. My mom says the vibe is the drive. You sound like my mom."

"Your mom is cool."

"My mom thinks a fun Friday night is a Pinot Grigio and a Hallmark movie, so."

"Pinot Grigio sounds good right now," Dani said.

"You're not old enough to buy wine."

"I'm twenty."

"Still not," Bri said. "Not until next year for you either, Jess."

"I could get wine if I wanted wine," Jess said, airily.

"How."

"I have a face."

"That's not how the law works."

"It's how my law works," Jess said, and Dani laughed, and the Civic rounded the bend onto Main Street, and the first of the four stoplights turned yellow ahead of them, and Dani eased off the gas.

The Civic drifted to a stop at the corner of Main and Holloway, the engine idling rough, the whole car shivering the way old Hondas do when they're waiting. The light above the intersection turned from yellow to red and held.

The Greasy Spoon diner sat on the far corner, its neon sign buzzing the way it always did, a low electrical hum that you could hear if the radio was off, which it never was. Two teenagers sat on the hood of a pickup truck in the lot, sharing a milkshake, and across the street the hardware store was dark, and the barbershop was dark, and the town was winding down the way it wound down every night, slow and early and quiet.

A dirt bike rolled up beside them.

It came out of the dark on the right, a single headlight cutting across the Civic's hood, and it stopped at the line one lane over. Black bike. Blacked-out helmet. Black jacket with the sleeves shoved up past the elbows. The rider sat easy, one boot flat on the ground, the other on the peg, the bike ticking under him.

The bike was a KTM, or something built from a KTM, stripped of every piece of plastic that didn't need to be there, the engine exposed, the frame black, the exhaust a matte black pipe that rose up behind his right leg and ended in a quiet can, the kind of build a person did when they wanted the bike to be fast and invisible, a street-legal ghost, a thing that would disappear into the dark the second the light changed. The headlight was on, a clean white beam aimed at the back of the car in front of him, and the bike idled low and steady, a sound like a held breath, and the rider's gloved hands rested on the bars without tension, the way a person rests their hands on something they've held a thousand times.

Dani looked over before she meant to.

His arms were bare from the elbow down and they were tanned and corded with lean muscle, and a tattoo ran down the inside of his left forearm, something dark and fine-lined that she couldn't read from here. His hands were gloved. His shoulders were wide under the jacket. He sat on that bike the way other people sat in chairs, like it was nothing, like the machine was an extension of him and not a thing he was riding.

He didn't look at them. His head turned toward the light.

"God," Jess breathed from the back seat. "Look at him."

Bri had already looked. She'd sat up straight and put her phone face-down on her thigh, which for Bri was the equivalent of a standing ovation.

"Roll down your window," Jess said.

"It's already down," Dani said.

"Roll it down more. Yell at him."

"I'm not yelling at him."

"You should. Say something. Say anything. He's right there. When are we ever going to see a guy like that at a red light in Bramwell again."

Bri turned in her seat. "Do it. Say he's hot. Say you want his number. Say something dirty."

"I'm not saying something dirty to a stranger at a red light."

"I dare you," Jess said. She leaned forward between the seats, her chin on Dani's shoulder, grinning. "I dare you to say something. Anything. The most random thing you can think of. He can't hear me. Go."

Dani looked at the light. Red. Her eyes went to the rider. Still not looking at them. Still watching the light like the light was the only thing in the world that mattered.

Something in her chest pulled.

"Fine," she said.

She leaned her head out the window. The warm air moved over her face and she could smell his bike, exhaust and hot metal, and she could see the edge of that tattoo now, fine black lines climbing toward his elbow, and she opened her mouth and what came out was:

"I think we should break up."

The rider turned his head.

The visor was blacked-out, mirrored, and she couldn't see his eyes, but she felt him look at her. The whole weight of his attention swung onto her like a searchlight, and for one full second the summer night went very quiet inside her ribs.

He tilted his head. Just barely. The way a dog tilts its head when it hears a sound it can't place.

Then the light turned green.

Dani gunned it. The Civic lurched forward, the rear end hopping once over the seam, and she was laughing, she was laughing so hard her ribs hurt, and Bri was screaming and Jess was kicking the back of her seat and the rider was already behind them, already gone, already swallowed by the dark.

"Oh my God," Jess howled. "His arms. His actual arms. Did you see his arms."

"He didn't know what to do," Dani said, wiping her eyes. "His whole body went still, like he'd lost his mind."

"You told a stranger you wanted to break up with him." Bri was laughing into her hands. "You've never even met him. That's the funniest thing you've ever done."

"He was hot though," Jess said. "That's the tragedy. We'll never see him again. He's gone. Vanished. Like a ghost. A hot, tattooed, motorcycle ghost."

Dani was still smiling. She took the next left onto River Road and the Civic settled into its cruise, that familiar knock in the rear end marking time like a heartbeat, and she reached for the radio and turned it up.

But something stayed.

That second. The full weight of his attention swinging onto her, the tilt of his head, the black visor. She'd felt looked at. Not glanced at. Looked at. Like she'd said something that mattered, even though she'd said the dumbest thing she could think of.

The Civic rolled on through the night, and the three of them sang along to the radio, and Dani drove, and she didn't think about the rider again for the rest of the night, except that she did, in small ways, in the way his visor had caught the streetlight, in the way his hands had sat on the grips, in the way he'd turned his head toward her when she'd said the dumb thing, and she carried those small things home with her the way you carry a song in your head after the radio's off, not thinking about it, just hearing it, all the way to sleep.

She checked the rearview mirror. Nothing behind them but empty road and the red taillights of a car that wasn't his.

"Ghost," she said out loud, to no one.

"Hmm?" Bri said.

"Nothing." Dani smiled. "Let's get ice cream."