Page 52 of Furious

My cheeks heat, but not with embarrassment this time. “You too.” And she was. Asking where it was okay to touch me and what I wanted, telling me where she liked to be touched and what she wanted. Like, in hindsight, it seems pretty clear I didn’t totally know what I was doing, but if she says she had a good time, I choose not to doubt it. I choose to believe this, even as I can feel my inconvenient brain wanting to buzz with questions, with doubts, with what if, what if, what if.

“And you’re okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. I’m good. We’re good,” I echo her words.

We’re good.

JoJo grins, sliding her leg farther up, her knee between my knees, and I ignore my brain and our commingled morning breaths completely as I lean in to kiss her again, and this, too, feels like relief.

Day two on the R1 is a whole different game. For one thing, it’s a bright, clear morning instead of midnight. While that should make things easier, it means more traffic—a constant flow of cars and big rigs on all sides, instead of the occasional pair of headlights streaking past me like twin stars in the dark. Other drivers were always the most nerve-wracking factor in my brief trips on the highway with Max to reach Pemberly Mill. And now there’s no Max to fall back on, no big sister ready to take over if I panic and need to pull onto the shoulder.

With a deep breath, I steer us out of the motel parking lot.

We only put about eighty miles behind us yesterday, stopping in a place called Butner. The short ride to the I-85 on-ramp, which we’ll take for the next two hours until the Richmond exit, is mostly fast-food places and the gas station we filled up at. I spot an old hulking water tower in the distance beyond the trees. This isn’t super cinematic as road trips go, which is kind of a shame. I’ve never been to Butner before, even though it’s so close to home, and who knows if I’ll ever come back?

Still, I’m almost excited to be on the highway again. Because riding gives me little time to think of anything but riding. I can’t daydream like I might in the Oatmobile, cruising the backstreets after our traffic lights turn to blinking red late at night. Which means there’s no time or brain space to spiral over what waits for me back home. Or what I’ll say to Max when we find her. Or whether Jo is daydreaming about a training program in London, even as she clings to me; whether last night has changed any of her plans, or has changed nothing at all.

There’s just this: the road ahead, the bike beneath me, and the body in which I’m more rooted than I’ve ever been, because I need every part of me to ride. I work the clutch and turn signal with my left hand, the front brake with my right. My right foot is constantly poised to work the rear brake, and with my left I shift the gears up and down. I accelerate, I brake, I lean—carefully, with JoJo on the back. I smell everything, the way I wouldn’t even in a car with its windows down: the grass and butterfly weed in the roadside ditches, exhaust and hot asphalt. I feel everything, like the slight drop in temperature when we drive through a tree-lined stretch of I-85 and the early sun is off our backs for just a moment, and the rumble of every minor patch in the road, and the warm wind scraping against my throat. I feel awake and alive and afraid.

Which, look, I’m not unused to being afraid of everything all the time, but it’s different on the R1, as I’m now remembering that it was different on the Husqvarna. Like I have permission to just feel it, without having to muscle myself back under control.

The 130 miles seem to take forever and fly by at once, but we merge onto I-95 North almost exactly two hours later, as expected. As we cross the bridge over the James River, the skyline of Richmond rears up in front of us. Skyscrapers are gleaming in the noontime sun, and I’m grateful for Max’s tinted visor even as I start to sweat, caught in exit traffic. As we take the turn onto East Canal Street—as far into the directions as I’d memorized—JoJo takes over, like we planned this morning. We’re going slowly enough that she can lean forward and direct me to a parking garage on the other side of the canal, where we pay for entrance and find a spot on the third level. Hopping off the bike at last, I twist to crack my spine, and strip gratefully out of Max’s jacket and helmet. Even in the shade, I’m baking without a constant wind.

JoJo takes off her helmet and rolls up the sleeves on her gray Fast & Furious T-shirt. When our eyes meet, she laughs, a little wild.

So do I, giddy with disbelief. “We actually did it!”

She beams back at me. “You did it. You drove a whole-ass motorcycle to Richmond.” Jo leans across the cooling bike to kiss me, and I feel like I’ve just won first in my category at Loretta Lynn’s, or something. I feel heroic. Unbeatable.

And then I remember the next part of the plan.

JoJo’s already on her phone, checking the distance to Clark’s Gold Star Pawnshop and how much an Uber will cost us. For now, we’ll leave the R1 in the relative safety of the garage; no sense driving it all over Richmond and trying to find parking at each stop. Once we find Max, we’ll all come back for it together. Hopefully she’ll forgive me for the bugs and dust now plastered to her previously spotless prized possession.

“There’s a car seven minutes away,” JoJo announces, “and we can be at the pawnshop fifteen after that.” She looks up from her screen and asks gently, “Are you ready?”

“I … don’t think I should think about that,” I admit, “‘cause I honestly don’t know. But we’ve come this far, right?”

“Right.”

We’re so close now, either to my sister, or to the helpful coworker that will direct us to her. We’re so close.

All we have to do is keep it pinned.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

JoJo

El grips my hand as soon as we climb into the Uber. I snake my fingers through hers. “We’ll find her,” I whisper. “Don’t worry. We made it here; that’s the hard part.”

She doesn’t reply, just squeezes my hand.

The driver takes us through Richmond, past shops and restaurants. Then, the city starts to change, going from bougie hipster neighborhoods into distinctly more frayed-at-the-edges ones.

“Are you sure this is the address?” the driver, a middle-aged Black woman named Rita, who has a collection of soccer ball stickers with her kids’ names and player numbers on them covering the back of her minivan, asks us as we pull up outside the Clark’s Gold Star Pawnshop. We’re in the middle row of the minivan, and the entire back row—the non-professional riding area according to Rita—is filled with kids’ shoes, uniforms, toys, and a booster seat.

We all pause for a moment, taking in the bars over the grimy windows, the collection of guns hung behind the counter, and the two skinny white men outside the shop, smoking and eyeing us warily.

The Gold Star is no less sketchy than Riley’s apartment, but it doesn’t feel right. Rita frowns, looking like she wants to give us a juice box and deliver us to school play practice, not leave us at the doorstep of whatever trouble El’s sister is tangled up in.