Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,18

loved to ride. One of the boys back at the grower’s village had a dirt bike. He would take me back and forth to school my junior and senior year. We’d been friends. He didn’t care about what they said about me. That I was a liar. Although, I don’t think he believed me either. No one did.

I let the wind be my therapy, chasing the bad feelings away, leaving them behind me as I tried to make room for hope, but it was hard. I felt like I was racing into the unknown… and the unknown was as scary as it was exhilarating.

Maverick sat up some when I leaned back and put one hand atop his thigh and we just rode… comfortably, in sync, each trusting the other not to fuck this ride up and send us spilling along the pavement in a bloody tragic smear.

The ride was much longer than I anticipated, but I was buzzing with excitement the whole way. The brown gave way to green, the green to gray and a bit of snow holding onto the mountain peaks stabbing their way into the great blue sky.

Somehow, even the sky was a more pleasing blue and as I held onto Maverick as we climbed the westbound approach to the pass, I wondered about what it was going to be like having a man like him between my thighs.

I mean, he was experienced for one. I somehow doubted there would be awkward fumbling from him, but it was other things I wondered about. Was he a demanding lover? Did he give as good as he got? Did he rush things, or did he take his time? Was he rough, or would he be gentle with me?

These thoughts were paramount in my mind coming out of the pass, and the vibrations of the bike were so not helping in any way to curb my mounting arousal.

Maverick made some sort of hand signal, and midway back in the pack, Fenris changed lanes and dropped back. Derringer followed suit, and they took an exit for Highway 18 and peeled off from our pack.

I turned back around and put my arms around the corded muscles of Maverick’s trim waist, and we rode on. For another hour we traveled, the urban taking over, nature thinning out as we passed through a place called Issaquah.

More hand signaling, and several more broke off and took the Interstate 405 exit. I watched them as they took the ramp heading south toward Renton. I checked and it was just Deacon with us now. Maverick checked off to our side. Checked again, and I held on as he twisted the throttle. The bike snarled and we swept into the next lane over, Deacon with us still, even as we poured on speed.

I gasped as we came over the rise as the bridge resting on the water came into view. It was cooler on this side of the mountains, and the breeze off the lake kissed my face with the scent of freshwater. I knew this was the floating bridge over Lake Washington, but this lake wasn’t like any other I had ever seen. While you could see across it side to side, it was so long north to south you couldn’t see it end to end.

It was so blue. Not like you see out of pictures from someplace like Hawaii, but more a deep, beautiful, indigo blue, as though the night sky were trapped in the depths.

I hugged Maverick tighter around the waist, almost cuddling against his back. It was impossible to thank him in words over the roar of the bike and the rushing wind, but it was the best I could to. My sentiment of gratitude for him bringing me this way, so that I could see this… well, there weren’t really words anyway.

When we reached I-5, Deacon waved and split off going north while Maverick turned south. He put his hands over mine where they rested on his stomach, pressing them against his hard body, and I held on tighter. The reason for it became clear as we started to go over steel expansion joints in the freeway surface. Set at regular intervals, I remembered them being nothing in my father’s pickup truck but on a motorcycle? They were a completely different experience and were more than a little nerve-wracking.

He took the exit by the old Rainier brewery for the West Seattle Bridge. Unlike the I-90 floating bridge, this one was high. Like really