Page 143 of Roadrunner

Arthur walked me down the aisle at the pace of a boy who understood that some things deserved to be slow. The white lights were in the trees above us. Brisco made a sound when we passed his row that he covered with a cough that convinced no one. Lackey wasn’t trying to cover anything.

Price stood with his arms crossed and watched us come.

When we reached the end Arthur stopped.

Riley looked at him.

Arthur looked at Riley.

He took my hand and placed it in Riley’s.

He held on for an extra moment before he let go.

Then he stepped to Riley’s side and stood there.

I’ll admit I heard very little of what followed with any precision. What I was aware of was Riley’s hand around mine and Arthur beside him and the white lights in the desert evening and the smell of leather and something warm inside of me that resembled the day I was eighteen years old standing atop Mount Lemmon.

I was aware of my mother in the front row.

She was crying.

My father had his arm around her.

I looked at them for a moment.

My father caught my eye.

He nodded.

Once. Firmly. The way men nod when they mean something completely.

I nodded back because I thought I should.

When it was time for the words I’d written I looked at Riley and said them.

I didn’t read them. I’d written them out and read them back to myself enough times that they lived in me rather than on paper.

I told him about a desert. About two flat tires and a cloud of dust and a man on a motorcycle who stopped when he didn’t have to. I told him that I had been trying to find my way back to that afternoon for years and that I intended to spend every remaining afternoon making up for the ones I’d wasted.

I told him that Arthur standing beside him was the most right thing I had ever seen.

I told him I loved him. That I had always loved him. That there had never been a version of my life in which I didn’t.

He listened.

He held my hand and listened with the same focus he brought to everything that mattered.

Then it was his turn.

He looked at me for a moment before he started.

“I’m not going to say as much,” he said. “Because I don’t need to.” He held my gaze. “You came back. That’s everything. That’s the whole of it.” He paused. “And you brought my son. So, I’ve got everything to be grateful for.”

He looked back at me.

“I love you,” he said. “I always have. I always will.”

He said it the way he said everything.