Data…

She scowled, eyes unfocused and brooding behind the clear safety lenses I’d handed back to her. She was still pissed and I felt like a total shit. She stayed that way for over an hour into the ride, her expression smoothing out about a half an hour before hour two… I figured now would be a good time to pull off and eat. I’d texted Dragon what I could from the elevators on the way down to the garage and was pretty much itching to check out any responses by now. Freeway riding didn’t exactly afford any stoplights to check messages, and unfortunately, traffic was clear; the road wide open in front of us, so there wasn’t any stop and go to afford me a similar luxury.

I pulled off the freeway and I felt her perk up behind me, curious. It took an effort of will to keep my eyes on the road and off my mirrors to see what she was doing. It was drawing on towards evening, and we wouldn’t be making it to Point Nowhere before dark. There wasn’t any way.

“Why are we stopping?” she yelled when we reached the bottom of the off ramp.

“Food!” I called back.

“Good idea, I forgot about that!”

I laughed at that and shook my head, turning us out onto the surface streets in the direction of where the blue signs boasted food could be found. At the next stoplight, I called out, “What looks good?”

“Don’t give a fuck, it’s just something you eat so you don’t die!”

I tilted my head and couldn’t argue with her there, then again, Mali had never been picky out of necessity growing up. Food had been sometimes hard to come by for her and her pops, and he was one of those guys that were too proud to hit up the food bank. I turned into a Cracker Barrel Country Store’s parking lot and let Mali off the bike. I backed it into a vacant parking stall and lowered the kickstand, shutting off the engine.

She stood not far from me, working loose the chinstrap on her borrowed helmet and I watched her for a minute.

She looked like she was born on the back of a bike, long legs covered in tight denim, flowy, loose black tank under my worn jacket that fit her better than it’d ever fit me. She was beautiful. She looked over at me and arched one brow.

“K, now I’m fucking starving,” she said and I smiled and got up.

“Me, too. Let’s eat, then we’ve probably got around four or so more hours to go.”

She groaned and sighed out, “There had better be a hot bath or a shower at the end of this rainbow,” she grumbled.

I took that into consideration and murmured, “I’ll see what I can do.” I don’t think she heard me. She was up on the faux rustic front porch, opening up the door to the country store part of the building. I went in after her and we found the hostess.

“Two, please.” Ever polite until someone gave her a reason not to be, I let her take the lead. No reason not to. She was a fierce, capable woman and there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that she’d turn out to be anything else. We dropped into a two-person booth and Mali immediately lost herself behind a menu.

I pulled out my phone. Four missed text messages from D.

1/4: We’ll get on it, get Point Nowhere setup in no time. Just get your asses here, carefully. Any idea who’s doing it yet? Let me know what’s up. I can’t start working angles until I know.

2/4: Do you need your computer systems brought out to Nowhere?

3/4: That was a stupid question. Of course, you do.

4/4: We’re almost set up here. If you stop, let me know where, for how long, all that happy horseshit.

Me: We’re stopped, about four hours out at a Cracker Barrel. Food then we’ll get right back on the road.

I set the phone aside and perused the menu myself. The waitress came by and asked for our drink orders. I looked over my menu at Mali who had a mischievous sparkle in her eyes matched by the ghost of a trouble-making smile on her lips.

“What can I get you to drink?” the girl asked and Mali ordered a sweet tea. I cocked my head and let my gaze rove her face and ordered the same.

Her smile grew a bit wider, despite the tiredness creeping in and she asked, “Do you know what you want to eat?”

I got back to the menu murmuring, “No, not yet,” and decided that she was definitely up to something. I’d seen that playful look a thousand and more times and it always preceded some sort of shenanigans.

The waitress came back and asked us, “Do you know what you’ll have?”

Without missing a beat, Mali said, “I’ll have an explanation over why Brad’s wife was fired.”

I choked on my sip of tea and laughed, the girl blinked and blushed slightly, fighting not to roll her eyes. I couldn’t help it, maybe it was the stress or the long, hard miles, but I laughed and laughed over her jibe over the viral internet sensation that had been some dude named Brad demanding to know why Cracker Barrel had fired his wife over their Facebook page.

“I wouldn’t know, it didn’t happen at this location…” the girl shifted, kind of uncomfortable, and Mali rested her chin on her hand.

She wrinkled her nose in the cute, impish way she’d always had and said, “Oh, well, in that case, I’ll have the catfish.”

I watched her as she placed the rest of her order and ordered what I would like, going through deciding on like the million different sides that they had. The girl took our menus and left hurriedly and I shook my head.

“Some things don’t change,” I said.

“I was just thinking that earlier…”

“Oh yeah? About what?”

“You set the table.”

I paused and thought about it, nodding. “We always have dinner at the table.”

“Yeah, that was a tradition that was lost after we had to bounce.” She looked bitter and uncomfortable, shifting in her seat.

“Can you tell me anything?” I asked. She looked around the restaurant and shook her head slightly and I nodded saying, “Fair enough.”

“I’m not trying to weasel out of it,” she shot back defensively and I shook my head.

“I know you aren’t. We have time.”

She turned her head and stared out the slats of the wooden blinds, across a short expanse of blacktop parking lot and into a copse of trees across the way. I didn’t say anything else. Something about what I’d just said had her retreating back inside her head… lost in thought. I let her stay there so I could study her profile.

Again, she was stunning. Her body coming into its own as a woman had none of the awkward angles or knobby points she had just been coming out of at the age of sixteen. Her neck was long and graceful to the point I just ached with wanting to put my lips against it, to feel her warm pulse against them, to breathe in her sweet and spicy scent that was just purely her.

All of the feelings I held when we were teenagers came raging out of nowhere as if they’d never left and it was devastating. It was as if a nuclear bomb blast went off in the center of my being and the blast was simply this is real… It was like it finally hit me, there, in the restaurant of all places that my quest was over. I’d found my princess… but then again, didn’t I have to defeat some mega boss to make her mine?

I ran a hand over my face and shifted in my seat and she turned sharply. Her quick brown eyes roving over my face, quickly assessing, calculating, but whatever she was thinking she kept it to herself.

My phone buzzed at my elbow and I picked it up. Dragon had responded and I frowned slightly at the text.

D: Well bring it on home. We’ll figure out what to do from there.

I was way ahead of him. I already knew what I was going to do, I just needed my systems and a place to lay low until it was done. I smiled faintly to myself and texted back,

Me: Stay in the cage, P. I got this.

He shot back with a quick: We’ll see about that, and I chuckled.

Me: Mali wants a hot shower when we get there. Not sure what can be done about that.

D: YOU stay in the cage. If anything the rest of us got a better idea of dealing with females at this point.

Me: Mali’s different.

D: That’s what every single one of these assholes says about their girl.

Me: She’s not my girl, D. She’s just a friend.

D: Sure. That’s why you dropped everything to ride to the rescue.

Me: Fuck you! lol

D: I’ll leave that to her.

Me: Seriously, just a friend.

D: Uh huh. Get your asses back here.

Me: Sir, yes sir!

D: Fuck you.

“What’s so funny?” Mali asked, expression slightly soured, tension radiating from around her exotic eyes.

“Just the guys,” I answered and she frowned slightly, letting her eyes rove my cut. She opened her mouth to ask something but, as if on cue, our waitress returned with our plates. Mali shut her mouth and leaned back as the girl set hers in front of her.

“Thank you,” she murmured quietly and I had to smile to myself. As caustic as Mali could be when she was scared or on uncertain ground, she was ever, unfailingly, polite. That said more about her than she realized. Now, did I imagine for one minute she would be so polite when it came to the guys and how bossy they could be? Nope. In fact, I figured this was going to be a somewhat rocky homecoming. Not just because Mali was… well… Mali, but also because I’d kept her a secret all of these years.

The guys didn’t know, and I don’t know why I’d kept it that way. Maybe because I was afraid I really would never find her. Probably because I didn’t want them to see me as a failure, not about this… I couldn’t stand to fail when it came to this, to her.

“Kyle, why are you staring?” she demanded, shoving some collard greens into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully, staring at me right back.

“Guess it’s finally sort of sinking in that this is real, that I finally found you.”

“Well I’m not a mirage and this sure as fuck isn’t a dream. A nightmare, maybe, but certainly not a dream.” She looked down at her food and speared another bite with maybe a little more force than was absolutely necessary. I watched her for a minute and deliberated on asking the question on the tip of my tongue.

If there was one thing the MC life had taught me, and hell – even life on the internet – it was that you didn’t ask questions that you weren’t absolutely sure you wanted the answer to. I bit the bullet and asked for this one anyway, though; just without phrasing it like a question.

“Sounds like you maybe aren’t all that happy I found you.”

She dropped her fork with a clatter and gave me a look that could peel paint. I couldn’t help but smile, reading her loud and clear. I ducked my head over my own food, pleased that yes, she was indeed happy to see me, she just was having a tough time, like me, with processing all that entailed.

“Don’t be a dumbass,” she grated quietly under her breath and picked up her silverware.

“I’ll try not to be,” I answered and she startled again like she hadn’t realized she’d just said that out loud.

“Good, we don’t have time for it.”

I smiled again and told her, “You ain’t gotta worry about a thing, now. I’ve got this, I promise.”

She snorted and shook her head like she didn’t believe me but didn’t contradict me much beyond that. It was a role reversal, for sure. All growing up she’d had all the street-smarts while I’d been the book-smart one. I just think that she, like me, was still struggling to reconcile the adult in front of her versus how we’d each been when we’d last seen each other.

I knew one thing for sure, I would give anything to be back under our tree, gazing at her sun-dappled hair, laughing about the movie we’d just seen rather than trying to stitch together the ragged ends of our childhood with who we were as people now.