Page 90 of Top Shelf

“Better?” Viktor’s voice comes through the helmet Bluetooth.

I exhale, flexing my fingers against his stomach. “Yes. Thank you.”

His hand lifts briefly from the handle, covering mine where it rests against him and giving a quick squeeze.

“You want some music?”

I consider it, then grin. “Actually, yes. I want Roxette.”

There is a pause.

“Why that one?”

“Because you apparently listen to it when you’re riding, so there must be a reason for it.”

“You think everything I do has a reason?”

My cheeks brush the inside of my helmet as I smile. “You? Yes.”

He’s quiet for another few seconds, and I think he might protest or play something else, but then the opening of ‘Joyride’ bursts through the helmet speakers, loud and shameless and completely at odds with the giant tattooed Swede in black leather between my thighs.

I laugh, and the wind snatches most of the sound away.

“What?” he asks.

“This song coming out of you will never not be funny.”

“It is Roxette. They are Swedish.”

“I’m aware.”

“Then I don’t understand the problem.”

“There isn’t a problem. I just expected something darker.”

“Why?”

I think about the tattoos that disappear beneath his collar, and the heavy black bike eating up the road beneath us. “Look at you.”

“I cannot. I am driving.”

A laugh kicks out of me again. “You know what I mean.”

“No. Explain.”

“Oh my god.” I tighten my arms around him as we lean through a long bend in the road. “You look like you should listen to music made entirely from drums or screaming.”

“Hm. You are stereotyping me.”

“It’s an aesthetic, Viktor.”

“Sweden has excellent music.”

The song continues to roll through the speakers as we dip into silence, and the chorus's lyrics strum through me about telling a fool 'I love you'.

My chest gives a strange little pull. Maybe because the line is so blunt and cheerfully reckless. As though love is something you can simply yell at another person while grabbing their hand and dragging them somewhere neither of you planned to go. I look past Viktor’s shoulder at the road unwinding ahead of us.

The next line of the song, about joining a joyride, makes me smile the most because it feels weirdly appropriate for my life lately.