PEPPER P. (saltedand) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-08 20:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | gwen stacy, robin hood |
Who: Russ Campbell and Sam Alexander
What: One night stands make for weird conversation partners.
Where: Russ's workplace
When: Recently!
Warnings: Cussing.
It wasn’t a real popular place, the garage. It scooched off the main road some, an outpost of dirty gray concrete hunched down over a slab of tarmac out front, with a gas station next door that looked like it hadn’t been open ten years. It wasn’t fancy, it didn’t do drive-through car-cleaning or free shuttle services; you came with a ride back or you made your own plans to get picked up if your ride was the one getting fixed because no one gave a damn if you couldn’t get home and you had to sit around for a while or walk the two miles back to where there was service that came with a smile and helpfulness. There was a gray plastic telephone with the faded list of numbers of local cab companies hung on the wall like an afterthought and a cracked plastic chair beneath it, like lawn furniture left out too long in the sun until it split. They were the only nods towards plans; your having them and their interrupting them. But for all that, it was a good place to go to if you wanted things fixed that stayed fixed and it was cheap because it didn’t fold in charges for things like free shuttles into the cost of fixing things up. There was a slow, clogged stream of people in and out of a day, the kind of sluggish service that required a mechanic on the line only part of the time, and a small metal sign that wavered in Vegas wind at the front entrance that said what you could get for your money.
Out front, there were a couple of cars propped up and the wind came low and it bit hard against your back, pushed itself down the back of your neck and blew at you, pushing and shoving. There was a bike, as well that looked like it had passed through enough hands to be more than second, all dinged metal carapace and handlebars that looked like they’d been hammered back into place but the kind of gloss on the metal that came from rubbing at it, long hours and alcohol on a rag, polishing over the dents and the scratches. It was a kind of love, put into it, more than the sun-faded leather seat and the black paintwork was worth - it had been someone’s good bike, once, a lot of money had changed hands and the engine that sat curled inside was a good one, if old. It had been dinged and it had been dropped and it had the kind of rash along the metal-work where rust was trying to creep in and get comfortable that came from wiping out one too many times. It had no value, not any more, but the kick-stand was new, and a tarp had been tossed half-over it, protecting it from the too-bright sun.
Inside it was warmer, the Vegas wind couldn’t bite at you and the heat of engines and of metalwork, cooling radiators and a man’s effort rather than a heater. Russ’s shirt, worn-through flannel was tossed over that plastic chair and he was in a once-white vest and denim, grease and oil where he’d wiped his hands. There was a rag, in his pocket but he’d given up on that, blackened with dirt and he was hunched over an exposed engine, all twisted glints and blackened depths, the clink of metal a kind of music over tinny radio. The air was thick, coppery engine-oil and acrid rubber but he was familiar enough with it not to notice, there weren’t no comfort in it anymore, only noticing its absence. His hands were black with the grease, some had caught in the fine gold hair at his wrists, and he looked intent, the kind of frown that sat deeply grooved like it was usual, carved out lines that went deep . Further in were other people, but they worked quiet, conversation a mix of languages, mostly Spanish. They were cheap labor, the men that worked in the shop because the place didn’t pay much but it was steady and it could be relied upon. When Russ wanted cash and a lot of it, he took what he had and he went to the tables. But he liked the unthinkingness of it, the regularity and he liked the no-questions-asked access to the tools and the parts. His bike had been fixed up on down-time and the women who came into the shop had picked up some since he’d been working there, with cars a little shinier than most of the ones they worked on. They got a deal without him taking a cent off the price, but they didn’t know it, looking for smiles and rough hands more than men who could strip an engine out and put it back in with the quiet efficiency of people who didn’t sell but did, instead.
Sam wasn't even fucking sure why she'd agreed to come see Russ. She knew the man hated her, and she didn't fucking blame him, even if it made her smile to think of how she'd fleeced him. She didn't steal much these days, but she'd been one hell of a fucking pickpocket as a kid, and she still liked the thrill of taking something that wasn't hers. But, yeah, she knew he didn't like her, and yet she was still there, standing outside his garage. But shit was changing with her, and she knew it. It was like a tide turning, as much as she hated things that sounded deep like that. Most of her friends were selfish assholes, and most of her family members ran around with their heads in the sand. She'd decided to grab life by the horns and run, and maybe she needed new people around if she was going to do that. It was an idle thought, a half-formed thing with nothing solid behind it, but it felt right. Sam wasn't a thinker. She didn't tear things apart to figure out why she was doing them; she did. And that's how she ended up there, in the whipping wind after a long work shift, after hitching a ride with a co-worker who knew this joint.
She was back at work these days, which meant she was dressed in blue coveralls, half unzipped and a white wifebeater beneath. Her hair was in a messy braid, and the white patch on the coveralls said Sam in cheap string-script. She was thinner than when Russ had seen her last - a whole lot fucking thinner. Forty pounds, and the dark circles under her eyes that still lingered after a month clean. Tracks were faded to almost invisible on her sunburnt forearms, beneath the rolled up sleeves of the coveralls, and her work boots were burned black in spots from her torch. She was nothing like the micro-mini girl in black cat's eye that had met Russ in a casino a year early and fucked him broke. That girl wasn't anywhere around, and Sam wasn't sure that bitch even existed these days.
She'd never gotten off on cars; they weren't her kink. Her brothers had talked about them when she was young, but she'd never really cared how they rumbled or if they purred. She only cared that they could get her the fuck out of Elizabeth, New Jersey; that was all they brought to the table for her back then. These days, Neil had a couple of high-end wheels and a driver on call, and cars didn't matter. But she liked the shop. She liked it as soon as she walked in. It smelled like grease and sweat, metal and heat, and she liked all those things. It wasn't a construction site, but it was the same kind of hard place, and those were the places Sam felt most at home.
She saw Russ right away, and she gave him a loud, intentional catcall, one that carried over the tinny music and clink of metal and made those men in the back of the shop crane around to look.
It was a sharp, loud sound for building sites and women passing in the kind of skirt they wore to drag attention from a job that took time and focus - or for the stupid women who came into the shop and idled, like it was some kind of show and the men who were working were expected to strip down to nothing for their entertainment. Russ’s back went rigid, hard set to his shoulders and the easiness went right out, left the building with a catcall that bounced off the roof. He took his damn time; that rag came out his back pocket and he laid down each part he’d been working on, careful as china - except Russ didn’t give a fuck for china and he did for each greasy little metal piece. The rag got folded, flipped over so the parts couldn’t get lost or filched by the other guys for a fucking joke that wasn’t real funny when the deadline loomed, and he laid that, gentle with his hands to one side. Then he turned, and he wiped oil-thick hands down the side of his jeans. It was a reflex, an old one and there were dark streaks that said he’d done it before all day.
Russ took his time walking over too; he’d seen her and his eyes narrowed, head up - he frowned like it was reflex as well, but one of the guys called something and he laughed, and Russ laughed too, low and warm and throaty, and he reached over to hit the guy in the shoulder, like they were the kind of friends that sidled up close to friendship and walked away, reconsidering after. He ambled, long legs and arms bare down from the elbow and he squinted because the Sam he remembered wore skirts and eyeliner thick enough to bleed across a fucking pillowcase and this one looked like she was real at home with the thin squeal of metal in the air and the noise and the heat. She was thin, real thin, like the women in fucking magazines who didn’t know when to stop a damn diet when it was good for them - she’d been cute, the kind of girl that was sexy without much trying and who was damn sexy when she was - but she wasn’t sexy right now. She was denim and skinny hips and she looked more like a kid than she had last he’d looked. He stood, right up close and he looked, and he took one hand - almost clean - and circled her wrist with finger and thumb and she weren’t thicker in the wrist than a doll, or the hammer he’d just put down. He let her go, quick - like it didn’t mean nothing and he folded his arms, tight over his chest.
“Well hell,” he said, gruff and you couldn’t tell if he was pleased that she’d showed up or pissed, but that was Russ, “You look like you need a fucking hamburger, Goldilocks.” He dropped her wrist and he looked at her, instead. Direct. “You found the joint.”
Sam was the kind of girl (no point in calling her a woman, not today) that liked direct. She liked that he was willing to tell her she looked like shit, and she wasn't going to snit or throw a fit about it. She liked it better than the people who looked at her and didn't say what they were thinking, the ones with pity in their fucking eyes and sorry tangled up on their useless tongues. "Yeah? You should have seen me two weeks ago," she said easily, because some weight had come back. Sure, she'd had to start tapering herself off the shrink meds to make it happen, but she hadn't gotten to the point where she wanted to go eat any pills, so she was counting it all as a win. And she was dead sober, not a scent of boozy sweetness on her skin, and that was a win too. Her eyes might not be kohl lined, but they were inky clear, and her gap-toothed grin was a happy one. "I'm tipping the fucking scales right now, baby, but you can buy me a burger if you want to."
And he looked different too. No casino lights, no chips in his hand, none of that devil may care bullshit that fit in so well at a felt table. And it wasn't that she hadn't looked at him the night she'd gone to his room with him, but she hadn't looked at him like this - light of day, sober, and no sex on the air. He looked, in his work clothes, like the kind of man she usually went for. Older, hard around the edges, uncommunicative, raw, real. She liked her men the same way she liked her sculptures, with nothing softening the sharpness. She hadn't been wasted that night, but she's had that layer of tipsy that always softened the bright reality of her sexual encounters until recently. She remembered him as charming smiles and big, rough hands, and, yeah, it wasn't a bad memory.
She moved away from him with no great hurry, and she was proud of herself for it. There was a time, back in the spring, where that unexpected grip to her wrist would have earned him an elbow to the nose, but it was winter now, and shit had changed. She walked through the shop like she'd been born for it, the way some women were born for Bloomingdales and trips to the mall. She walked right back to where he'd been working, having watched his meticulous treatment of the small pieces, and she stopped in front of them. "Did you hide your wallet?" she asked over her shoulder, all round Jersey vowels and a confident smirk.
“Fuck,” said Russ, easily and the word didn’t sound jarring or none, with the clink and rattle of cars and their parts in the background, just one more hard sound amid the rest, “Sounds like you looked like a damn coat-hanger all of two weeks back.” She was skinny now, but not unattractive, all clean and hard-edged now like she was just one more metal part around men who worked with them all day, sharp with a shine to it that it’d take more than knocking it about would take it off. He’d liked the kohl and he’d liked the skirt, too - he liked it when women dressed like they meant what they said, words that shuffled together like a sloppy hand at cards, soft and halfway from sober but real and she’d been blunt the way most weren’t, a demand instead of an ask. He watched her, folded arms and a spread of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that said he squinted too much into the Vegas sun - like he didn’t know what to do with her there in the middle of the shop, and the men who watched her, wary like they’d been backed up into a corner, from the edges of the place, didn’t seem like they knew either.
It was a Mustang, dull paint and the wheel leather was cracked behind the windscreen if you looked right or you cared, but Russ didn’t care so he didn’t look. The engine, that was exposed and raw as guts in a surgery operation and it glinted silver and steel. The cars in the place, they were worn paint and balding tires when they came in and they didn’t look like much but they drove. He moved, a short and economical kind of movement and he stepped in the way - not enough to block but just enough to sweep the rag and the parts out from where they could be knocked aside. His hand was large, big enough for the pieces to sit in his palm and his back was the kind of fierce line, all terse rigidity of battling caution that would sweep her out of the way, too for good measure.
“Careful.” She turned her head and his free hand went to his jeans, smears of oil and the dappled pattern of where paint or something adhesive had clung to them and resisted the washing out. He smelled of clean sweat, and of oil and grease and warmed metal up close and he pulled a worn brown leather wallet free with a bored look that was more resigned than anything else. “Nothing in there,” he said flatly, “Free to check, if you want.” It was the kind of men’s wallet that came with pockets, with folds and flaps for the bills - the kind with plastic, in the first fold for photos of family and kids, the kind of thing a man might want to be reminded of when he opened his wallet for change. They were empty. The wallet was old, old enough for the seams to be sun-bleached and there was maybe a smidge of paper where something had been taken out of one of them, but it might have been an old receipt.
“Don’t get paid til Friday.” He turned his back, deliberately and he placed the parts very carefully on a workbench, picking up a can of oil.
"Fucker," she said of his assessment of her appearance a few weeks earlier. And, yeah, sure, so she'd looked like shit, but models had more bones and angles than she did, so she wasn't going to get upset over it. She'd always been on the wrong side of what the world considered an attractive weight, and she'd never given a shit about it. She was soft around the middle, plush in the hips, and she knew she had a nice rack, which made up for thighs that didn't have any definition and didn't gap, and for ribs that didn't show when she stretched. But that had been then, and now she was more ribs and less plump. But she'd get it back, and she wasn't worried about it. She was worried about looking sick, ill, and he didn't seem to go there. So, yeah, it was all cool. And, anyway, it wasn't like he'd be seeing her naked anytime soon, so there was that.
So she turned her attention to the old Mustang with a gap-toothed smirk, when he told her to be careful. "Come on, baby. I might not know engines, but I know my way around a shop," she told him. "Dated plenty of mechanics in my day." She ran a calloused palm over the dull paint on the side of the car. "I learned that a car hood that's running hot can burn your ass the hard way," she said truthfully, "and I know how much room there is for a good fuck," she added shamelessly, motioning to the interior She wasn't apologetic of who she was; never had been, never would be.
As for his wallet, it only got a glance, and even that didn't have anything to do with the lack of money in it. It was funny how shit could change in the span of a year, but money was the one thing she never worried about anymore. Having it, that was the problem these days. Cash in her hand, that was cash she could hand over to someone on the corner with some smack. That was a problem. But, no, Neil meant she didn't have to worry about cash. And, should shit get fucked up there, she had two brand new siblings who were sitting on the motherlode. No, what she noticed was the lack of pictures. "You don't even take pictures of your engines, huh?" she asked, even as she pulled the Mustang's front door open and slid on in.
She was trying for shocking, or she was trying for provocative and weren’t that just Sam, searching for a place to poke her fingers, work them in real good ‘til she were noticed? Russ knew enough of Mustangs and fucks across the broad back-seat and he didn’t think much of girls who dated mechanics, even the ones that passed through the place. They liked it being dirty, in Russ’s opinion, and they liked it being something that men did but they didn’t want to know what it was, how the parts fit together and sang like a fucking choir when it was done right. Sam was a rucked skirt and smudged eyeliner on a pillowcase and a hazy-pleasant memory that could have been someone that fucked around with mechanics but she wasn’t that now; she moved through the place like she fitted or like she was close enough to fitting that she matched, like one of the men in back.
Russ’s back was a comma, curled over the workbench and he didn’t look back, didn’t give a goddamn pause for backseats and Sam’s bare burned ass. Blue flame flared sharply in his hands, and it wasn’t the kind of equipment for art, and it wasn’t the fancy kind Sam probably had but it did what it needed to. The Mustang was low-slung and the seats had the give in them from use and wear and they sank a little when you sat. The door had a catch to it where it didn’t fit right, a metal ‘snick’ that caught as she opened the door and Russ let the blue go right out and he turned with fresh black on his hands and a frown that eased right back into old lines. “Careful,” he said again, watching her warily like she could hurt the car by sitting in it, “Ain’t mine.”
He didn’t move toward the wallet, and he wasn’t afraid of her picking through it; there wasn’t nothing in there but dust and a couple of folded, faded ones that looked like they’d been through the wash in his pants. He frowned, but this time it was more like baffled, and his mouth had untwisted itself from the hard line, as if Russ wasn’t sure where the joke was. “The fuck would I take pictures for? They’re there, aren’t they?”
"Like you pointed out," Sam said grin-smirk, "I don't weigh enough to hurt the fucking car, baby." Her hands were on the steering wheel and, not for the first time, she considered actually learning how to drive. The callouses on her palms caught on the leather in spots, and she tucked both legs up on the seat, like a kid on a playground might do, all criss-crossed and the coveralls rucking up to show her bare ankles above the work boots. "The bike yours?" she asked of the half-covered thing she'd passed when she was coming in.
His question about the pictures made her laugh. "At least you'd have something beneath that worn plastic," she teased. Because, yeah, she'd noticed. She didn't have any pictures of anyone either, but she wasn't going to mention that just then. And, really, his sad wallet had just made her start thinking of taking some. She could get a camera cheap, or maybe Elise could lend her one and give her some lessons. She grinned at the thought, warming to it as she leaned forwards, fingers running along the dash with the same curiousness on her face as when she'd been petting the steering wheel. The warping beneath her fingers made her hum thoughtfully, and she wondered if she could get those subtle sun-beat waves right in a piece of metal.
Russ looked at her long, the hard kind of look that was thinking. Her fingers curled over the span of the wheel looked like a little kid sitting in her daddy’s car, old and worn-out and safe, least safe as he’d made the thing, less likely to break down the side of a road where there wasn’t light and there wasn’t help. He didn’t wonder about Sam and her daddy, didn’t think about fathers who taught kids to drive - he’d learned without a license and with a car that hadn’t been his and he’d spent half an hour hammering out the dent he’d put in it, shit scared and his heart jammering inside his chest like it was sparks on steel that he’d get caught. She wasn’t hurting it, it was clear to see that, and she wasn’t digging through the side-pockets or the glove-compartment. He relaxed; it was something in the particular tenseness of his shoulders, a give that was there that hadn’t been. He tensed right up again when she talked plastic and photos, and he turned, like he was done with sassing about the car, back to the workbench and the parts that were there.
“Yeah,” Russ said of the bike, and it was low and it was dismissive, but there was love there, not a lot and not like a man for a woman or even a man for how a woman wants to be loved, but the curl of pride that comes from owning something that’s work and sweat and scouting around for parts and making it go. “It’s mine. You can ride?” He was real careful with the question, like he didn’t care about the answer, like it was just something out there the way people said ‘how are you’ and didn’t want to fucking know. He’d have guessed; Sam of the skirt and the easy-undone smile wouldn’t ride, not by herself. But Sam in coveralls and skinny wrists, he figured riding was half a step away from making the metal do what it would.
She knew he was staring, but she didn't mind. Some things Sam minded when she was sober, and some things Sam never minded; being stared at was one of the latter things. She'd grown up in a one-room shithole with seven brothers coming and going, and she was the baby of the fucking bunch. She'd learned life's lessons with pulled pigtails and punches to her shoulders, and she'd learned to scream loudly to make herself the center of attention. If you looked close, her nose was crooked where it'd been busted in a brawl with one of her brothers over a box of generic Cheerios, and there was a scar on her wrist from the time she'd thrown a punch at a guard while visiting her favorite brother in the joint. No, Sam didn't mind being stared at. She didn't squirm, and she didn't preen. It was just what it was, and that was that.
She noticed the loss of tension in the way that she noticed when metal gave under her torch and, yeah, she noticed the way his shoulders went stiff again when she mentioned the pictures. Huh. "I can ride, but it's been awhile," she said truthfully. "I mostly have bitchseat experience," she admitted, and she uncrossed her legs and tugged a pantleg up, coverall and the denim underneath, to show an old, old scar on the meaty part of her shin. "I burnt the fuck out of myself with the exhaust pipe," she admitted with a gap-toothed grin, remembering a summer and shorts and a girl named Brenda.
She climbed out of the car then, and she glanced back to where the bike was. "You have a break? Take me for a spin, baby."
He laughed. It was a sound rough as calloused hands on skin but it wasn’t hard, there was a quality to it that made you think of molasses, of whiskey poured into a glass. He wasn’t a man who looked like he did it often, and it made the sound appealing when he was with women in particular. Russ wasn’t self-conscious about it and it wasn’t deliberate; his eyes warmed up some and the wrinkles there fanned a little, and he shook his head, as if he were shaking off an image of Sam yowling about the exhaust like a dog does water. “Shouldn’t fucking ride with bare legs, does it every time.” He wasn’t smiling anymore but he wasn’t scowling and there was a warmth to it that sounded like humor. Russ reached out for the wallet, still lying on the hood of the car and he crammed it into his back pocket, smears of oil he didn’t notice getting it greasy-black.
“It’s not the same,” Russ didn’t think much of riding behind, of bitch-seats and girls who shrieked in his ear as the wind bit, who coiled their arms hard like they were squeezing him to death. He liked them crammed right up tight, warm and close and he liked the way the bike got them real wound up, the hum of the bike low and strong and their arms tightened each time the engine sped up. But riding behind, you didn’t get the wind and you didn’t get to see, it was blind belief in whoever you rode with. He was scornful, same way he was scornful of most of the women he fucked, “Learn to ride.” He’d picked up one of the pieces in his hands and he came round her, part and tool and his face slid in on to something like seriousness, focus; he began to fit it back in, elbows deep and a frown like it was hard or required concentration and when he spoke, it was distractedly, like it was afterthought, “Gotta finish this first.”
Yeah, she liked that honest laughter. The honest laughter was, when it came right down to it, the reason Sam was drawn to older men. They did that, laughed, without it being about looking good or impressing anyone. They did a lot of shit like that, and Sam liked that honesty in people. Sure, those people were just as likely to tell you to fuck off, but it would be real, and they would tell you why. None of the fake bullshit or pity-me-please crap that younger guys did, that younger women did. The age thing, it went both ways. It didn't occur to her that it might be weird for a twenty-two year old to feel that way, because whatever. Different people liked different things. "Yeah, well, you weren't around to tell me at the time, baby," she said, a roll of her eyes and a lingering smile of the memory that came along with the burn to her leg.
She couldn't disagree with his opinion about the bitchseat versus the front, because she could only remember a few times she'd actually put her hands on the bars of a bike, and even that had been between someone's thighs. Yeah, no, no experience, but she didn't contradict him. Why would she? She had no expertise on the matter, and while she might be argumentative about some things, she wasn't argumentative about everything. She walked back to him and looked over his shoulder, inky gaze settling on the pieces and parts. "So, invite me back some other time," she finally said, backing away with one final pet to the Mustang's hood. "When you don't have shit to do, and when you can teach my ass how to ride, if it's so important."
She was warm, right there, right up close, the thin warmth of a body and breath, near enough to touch. Russ noticed; he shifted some, not a lot but enough for her to look properly, never mind that she didn’t know what the hell she was looking at. It might be a mystery, the dull steel glint of the slotted pieces, grimed over in black oil but fresh, like it had all been taken out and rejigged, but it could be more than just what made the car go from mall to door, like most girls gave a shit about. He didn’t say nothing, just let her look and he fitted the spark-plugs back into place with blunt fingers and a concentrated stare. When she moved, Russ noticed the spreading cool before he looked, and when he turned his head, she was stood with the outline of the cement and the tarmac, the streaking noise of the cars going past behind her. Yeah, she was real skinny these days and she could eat a burger or ten, but she didn’t look it so much, in the coveralls and the denim. The girl he had a memory of, husky laughter, a come-on like a taunt, bare skin and tumbled hair and sheets - weren’t this one, stood in the garage with a smear on elbow of oil, where she’d got too close.
He reached, clean end of the rag and he caught the smear, little rough with his hands but perfunctory, and he held it up for her to see, like she’d question why.
“Okay,” he said and it sounded flat, the way Russ spoke it bit off all kind of real feeling like reluctance or eagenerness, till you couldn’t tell the difference, save when he was angry. He didn’t sound angry now and he didn’t look it, he stood and he looked at her, skinny in denim and he shrugged, like it wasn’t anything, like it was all about her and nothing him at all. “If you want to learn.”
Yeah, Sam had no clue what the pieces did, but that didn't matter. She saw them the same way she saw anything metal; art. Shit she could mold and torch and make into something expressive. It might not make a car run or get anyone to the mall, but she didn't really give a shit. And the gears were definitely turning. She was already planning on hitting a junkyard for something other than scraps. Yeah, if she could get that polished shine he had on some of those spark plugs, she could make something happen.
When he turned, she watched him for longer than absolutely necessary. This was new territory for her, this "getting to know" a one-night stand thing. Sam's relationships didn't start with a fuck, and her fucks didn't end in relationships. But then she'd been married pretty much since fucking puberty, and she'd spent the past year catching up on all the bad behavior she'd missed under the watchful eye of her overbearing husband. Yeah, no, this was new. This wasn't like Daniel, either, because Daniel didn't actually want to know shit about her. That was the thing with Daniel; he wanted her to come around, and he wanted to pet her and stick his cock in her, but he didn't want to know anything, and he didn't want her to know anything. It was like a one-night stand that just kept happening. But she was out of the market for that, too, and trying for the whole "honest woman" schtick.
But, yeah, this was new.
She moved, finally, decision made. "Yeah. I want to learn. I can probably even get someone to buy me a bike, if you're afraid I'll scuff yours," she called out, loud and where everyone could hear, as she headed for the sunlight. "And I won't have to steal it," she added, smirk-smug and gapped teeth and that sandpaper laugh again. Yeah, maybe this wasn't so bad. She did a turn, looking back at him fully for a second longer. "Saturdays? Noon?"
He shook his head and the way his shoulders moved, it looked like a laugh that didn’t quite make it out, not entirely. “Buy yourself a bike, Goldilocks,” and he made it sound dismissive because it wasn’t real, not if it wasn’t your own bought and paid for, “Bikes ain’t fucking love-gifts.” She wanted a present from someone with cash, she could get one of those shiny red cars, looked like polished apples scootling on by, all smooth plastic and GPS modulated voices, all but fucking driving themselves. A bike was scuffing the soles of your boots, going fits and starts til you’d learned the weight of it, the way you held it upright even if you didn’t feel like you could. A bike was your fingers stinging in the wind and the judder as you learned to bend low, didn’t quite get into the corners.
He stood and he looked at her for a minute, and Russ shrugged; it wasn’t anything, nothing but teaching a bored girl how to ride til she got sick of it. “Twelve,” he said, and he turned his back effectively dismissing her, and he worked, the noise of it drowning out the sound of her walking away.