slide my hand down to the bag strapped to the side of the bike and retrieve some glasses for the ride.
With no need to back out of the spot, I reach for the handlebars and press down on the gas. We fly over the thin strip of grass separating the gravel parking lot from the road. Wind whips through me and I can't help but think...
Driving a motorcycle while being hard as hell fucking sucks, but with Avalon's tits smashed against me and her hands creeping close to my abdomen, I don't mind it so much.
32
Avalon
Goosebumps rise along the skin of my arms as we speed down a deserted highway. After being in the overheated warehouse for who knows how long, the sweat has dried pretty quickly. With my front pressed to Dean’s back, I feel nothing but heat from him. But along my spine, as the wind blows up the back of my shirt, the chill of the air sweeps around us and makes me shiver. Unthinkingly, I press myself against him even harder, trying to ward off the feeling.
He stiffens but doesn't say anything. I'm absolutely crazy to trust him. Fucking certifiable. Then again, I’ve always known that about myself. Something about him, though, makes me do crazy shit. Just looking at his stupid face makes me want to jump off a cliff, if only to try to outrun the ridiculous feelings he causes within me.
Is he going to kill me? I wonder as the roads grow longer and emptier. Maybe. Though he looks like an all-American jock with a bad boy streak, something tells me that Dean has a violent side.
My insanity makes itself known in the fact that I can’t really make myself care. I’m not scared of him.
I should've never gotten on the back of his bike. Especially not after his threat. I know better than to think he’s taking me back to the dorms. No, he’s taking me somewhere else, somewhere far from Eastpoint.
In fact, I don't know where the fuck we are. It's somewhere rural. The warehouse had been farther out of Eastpoint than I've been since I arrived, but now we're somewhere in the mountains and the air is even colder up here. Despite the protective glass covering my face, I lift my head as a smell slips through the cracks and crevices and under my chin strap. There's something salty in the air.
I sniff at it, wondering what it is until I turn my head and freeze as the motorcycle turns a corner and suddenly we're riding past a deep incline that opens up to the fucking ocean. Dark waters crash against the cliffs below. So vast, it looks like it goes on forever. I can see, in that moment, why some people think the Earth is flat. It's dumb, but the ocean makes it look like it's all one big fucking plain that stretches well into the distance. I can't imagine it ever ending.
Even growing up in Georgia as I had, I'd still been hours from the ocean. It'd been a fucking crime, I realize. Or it should've been. To be so close and yet so far from such a beautiful sight. Patricia had never owned a car. Her job had been walking distance and what few nights she worked the pole at the Tiny Dancer combined with her welfare check had gotten us by. There'd never been a need for one. I find myself wishing, though, that there'd at least been one time we'd gone to the ocean. I hate that I've wasted so many years without seeing it. A yearning starts up in my chest; the desire to fling myself off the back of Dean's motorcycle and into the wicked waters below and sink as deep as possible, letting it swallow me whole.
The image is disrupted when Dean turns the handlebars of the bike and a copse of trees obscures my vision as we ride even higher. My hands sink into the fabric of his shirt as I try to quell the need to go back. To see it again. It's kind of amusing when I think about it; the fact that I'd only ever been a few hours away and yet it took moving up north to ever get the chance to see it.
Dean turns the bike even more inward until we're winding up a two lane path. Every few yards the line of trees opens up, revealing how steep the cliff along our side is getting.