Page 2 of Bend

MOTION SICKNESS - PHOEBE BRIDGERS

She was my mom too.

I keep saying it in my head, like if I repeat it enough, maybe it’ll hurt less.

But it doesn’t.

Helmet snug, visor down, and tears spilling down my cheeks anyway, I peel through downtown Tampa like the road owes me something. Like the roar of my engine can outpace the ache splitting me open from the inside out.

The wind smacks against me, sharp and salty, cutting through the swelter still hanging in the air even after sundown. Neon reflections shimmer off the wet pavement—bars, strip clubs, shitty smoke shops, and I blur right past them, too wired to stop, and too wrecked to go home.

Home.

I’m not even sure I have one of those to go back to without her.

I barely remember the turns I’m taking, just know that I’m getting farther from that beach house, and from the two men who stared at me like I was a fucking ghost.

Granted, I’m a complete stranger who just showed up at their house and dropped a massive fucking bombshell on them, but I can’t say I expected the coldness. Truthfully, I don’t even know what I expected. Sayshen at least looked like he maybe believed me. Compassion flickering in his eyes behind the confusion, and pain. He’d looked at me like maybe, just maybe, he could understand.

But Talon?

He looked like I’d ripped out the floorboards beneath his feet. Like I wasn’t just a stranger, but an unwanted complication standing in his driveway. Like I was a ticking bomb that dropped out of the sky and called myself his sister.

I bite the inside of my cheek, hard.

I shouldn’t have been the one to tell them.

It wasn’t my secret to tell. I didn’t even want it. I never asked to be born on the wrong side of a lie. To find out at twenty-two that the mom I barely got to keep had abandoned her two sons and husband. That she had a whole family, my family, that she never told me about.

My vision blurs anyway. Hot, useless tears streak down my cheeks, soaking into the padding of my helmet. I grit my teeth, breathing through it, refusing to slow. I don’t cry. Not like this. But I also don’t usually get screamed at by a brother I never knew I had either.

I swing left, tires skidding just slightly, and ease up on the throttle. The city’s starting to settle down, traffic thinning out the deeper I get toward the oceanfront.

I don’t have a plan. I just need to find somewhere to sleep. Some way to make this feeling disappear.

The engine hums beneath me like it’s the only thing left holding me together. I turn off the main drag and dip into Ybor City, Tampa’s historic, chaotic little heartbeat. The brick streets are slick from the earlier rain, glowing under the neon of cigar bars, tattoo parlors, and rooftop clubs with sweaty tourists spilling onto balconies.

I shouldn’t be here.

Not after tonight. Not after what Talon said, and the way Sayshen looked at me like I was some glitch in his world.

But my brain’s running on memory now, not logic.

Back in college, me and a few friends made the dumb decision to drive down for spring break. We couldn’t afford Clearwater, so we crashed in the city. Danced until dawn on these exact sidewalks. Got matching piercings we swore we wouldn’t tell our moms about, and hooked up with bartenders who probably couldn’t even spell our names.

It was chaos, freedom, and it was here.

I remember this one little motel tucked just off the strip—cheap, rundown, but smack in the middle of everything. We stayed there because it was walking distance from the clubs and had a pool that technically didn’t close. It was a total fucking dive, but it was ours for that week, and back then, that was all that mattered.

I cut down a side street, gravel crunching under my tires. My pulse slows a little when I see the sign.

The Mango Tide Inn.

Same flickering orange script as I remember, still missing the G in “Mango.” A peeling sunset mural wraps around the office wall, and there’s a busted coconut-shaped trash can leaning sideways by the door. Classic Tampa grime.

It’ll do.

I pull into the cracked lot and kill the engine, pulling off my helmet with a sigh. My dark hair’s stuck to my neck, sweat plastering my tank top to my back. It’s not even that hot. It’s just me. All wound up and still vibrating from the conversation that blew my life apart for the second time.