Chapter 6:

I follow him down the hall to the kitchen where he pulls out a pound of ground turkey, a box of angel hair pasta, and a jar of marinara sauce. I laugh realizing what he meant by cheating. Essentially, he's heating stuff up and putting it together. No real cooking, but I don't care. It's ready in less than ten minutes, and moments later we're sitting at his counter eating.

I swear this is the best spaghetti I have ever had. He laughs when I tell him, and insists anything would have been good since I haven't eaten in almost twenty-four hours. He may have a point, but we will never know since this is what I'm eating and I love it.

"Tell me about the bike," he says. It's random but he's certainly not the first person to ask.

I start to go into the statistics of my motorcycle. With a mouthful of food, he shakes his head and waves his hand, finishing the bite he's chewing. "No, silly. Tell me why."

"Hmm. It was an impulse buy. I was hurt, feeling rejected, and I wanted to regain control. I wanted to feel power over my own life. I wanted to reengineer myself. I was always the good girl growing up, but there was a part of me I stifled, kept deep inside, but she wanted out. She's a little hussy. When she starts talking to me, she usually gets her way." I wink at him so he knows I'm playing. We all have that internal voice, most people call it a conscious, I just gave mine a title. "Anyway, when I saw the bike, I knew that was the first step in letting her have some visibility to see what she could do with me in the world. She hasn't helped my career, but I sure am a hell of a lot happier. For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm who I'm supposed to be and the rest will fall into place. I don't know whether to give credit to the hussy or the Deuce."

He tosses his head back as he laughs. He's not making fun of me. I think he's acknowledging the truth in what I just said, and the irony that my inner voice and a motorcycle brought it out. "It suits you."

"What does? The motorcycle?"

"Yeah. The motorcycle. And the nickname."

"What nickname?"

As we stand up to take our plates to the kitchen, he announces, "Deuce," and swats my ass with a dishtowel.

"Noooo. That's like a gang kind of nickname. I'm just a girl on a bike with a flair for living life to the fullest."

"I'd say." He looks me up and down, taking me in from head to toe before winking at me. "Deuce."

I laugh. If he wants to call me Deuce, he can. It's the first nickname I've ever had, and the fact is, coming from him, I kind of like it.

I help him clean up and glance at my phone, noticing it's two o'clock in the morning. "Chris, do you have any idea what time it is?"

He shakes his head, taking a drink of water. "Nah, I don't have a clock."

"Anywhere?"

Again he shakes his head.

"Why not?"

"What's the point? Time is confining. It's the one resource in life that is most valuable to people and can't be recreated, you can't generate more, so why sit around watching it tick by? If you never know what time it is you enjoy the moments of it you're spending. At least, I do. If I want to read, I sit down and read. I don't give myself a time frame. If I want to eat dinner, I sit down and have a glass of wine and eat. If I'm tired, I go to bed." He pauses, then finishes his point with a big grin on his face. "And if I want to fuck for hours on end, I fuck for hours on end. And I enjoy it!" He kisses me on the lips, enunciating his point.

"I can't imagine the freedom in that. What do you do about work?"

"Freelance."

I follow him back toward his bedroom and crawl in under the covers after him.

"What about you?"

"What about me?" I'm confused.

"What do you do for work?"

I roll my eyes and scrunch up my face, giving him a brief rundown of the recent events. I can tell from the look on his face he knew everything I told him, likely from my big mouth brother, except for the events of today. He is genuinely angered by the story of my boss and his continued harassment, but I think proud I told him to fuck off.

"Alex, why don't you stay here for a while? Take some time to figure out what you want to do? Or don't want to do. Let me take care of you."

"You can't be serious, Chris. We just met."

"We did not just meet. I've known you since you were in middle school. And, let me hasten to say, if you're any closer to another man, please tell me now, because after tonight, I'd say we're pretty close." The right side of his smile turns up, teasing me.

"Oh my god. You can't count knowing me through my brother who is five years older than I am. We hardly ran with the same crowd," I toss back at him.

He rolls over on me. Tickling me as he talks. "I can count whatever I want to in order to justify you staying here with me. Plus, I'm considerably bigger than you are. I could just force you to stay." He peppers kisses all over me as he continues to poke me in the side. Relentlessly. "Say you'll stay for a while. Your parents won't care. Tell them you're staying with me."

I laugh until he stops. He stills and I see him looking at me in a way I've never seen a man look at me before. He's serious. I figure, what the hell, the little hussy talks me into it. "Okay."

"Okay? Really?"

"Yeah. No promises, but I could use a few days away to sort myself out."

He leans in, kissing me gently, before making slow, sensuous love to me.

What I didn't know at the time was those few days would turn into months that led to years. He did exactly what he said he would do. He allowed me time to find me and took care of me in the process. Three years later, on February second-deuces, baby-he made me his wife.