“I won’t let that happen,” he answers quietly. “Not again, Cherry.”
There it is again, that burning warmth that passes down the entire column of my body at the sound of his strong, baritone voice saying my name. My flimsy, silly name.
“How do you know my name?” I dare to ask, regarding him fearfully.
Leon’s eyes flash dark momentarily, as though I’ve offended him. No, softer than that. Like I’ve hurt his feelings or something. But surely a man like this doesn’t get his feelings hurt very easily? Besides, what could I possibly have done to him?
“You don’t remember me at all, do you?” he asks, a little sadly.
Sunlight dappled through gem-blue water. Wondering if this is the last thing I’ll see as my chest grows tight, the sharp pain in my lungs threatening to drag me into unconsciousness as the oxygen in my brain dissipates into nothing.
Hands around my wrists. Just like now. Holding me up, up out of the water.
I gasp at the realization. “I… I remember you,” I whisper, scarcely able to believe it.
“The girl from the shore,” he says, almost fondly. His thumb traces a soothing circle over my hand as he opens his mouth to say something else.
Just then, there is the distant wail of police sirens, jolting us from our shared reverie. The cops are coming. Panic floods into my veins and I tense up. Leon takes my hand and pulls me along behind him. “We’ve got to go!”
“Where are we going?”
“I’ll know when we get there!” he calls back over his shoulder. We run out the door and across the parking lot. There’s only one helmet hanging off the handlebars of his motorcycle, and he tosses it to me, eschewing his own safety to ensure mine. “Hop on!” he orders.
Before I can think better of it, before I can ask what will become of my rental car, before I can talk myself out of it, I do exactly as he says. I climb onto the motorcycle behind him, clinging to his hard chest as we peel out onto the road in the opposite direction of the police sirens.
7
Leon
My bike feels unfamiliar with the weight of someone else on it. I live on my bike more than I do on my own two feet, more often than not, and my bike feels comfortable enough under me that it’s like just another appendage. So having someone hanging on behind me feels as unusual as a new arm.
“Where are we going?” I hear Cherry shout from behind me as I tear through the streets, but I don’t bother trying to answer. The wind would just take the words from me, if she isn’t used to talking on a bike.
Instead, I just nod to the alley I’m about to turn down, and I pull her hands a little tighter around my waist before taking a sharp turn around a corner.
I have to be quick. The local police are probably the only ones who know the back alleys of Bayonne as well as we do, and I don’t know which officers are tailing me. For all I know, it could be some rookie too new to town to know not to answer this call, or it could be a couple of seasoned veterans with an FBI agent right behind them. The wake of a shooting isn’t the time to take those kinds of chances.
Mickey’s isn’t far from the worse-off parts of town, but as I take us through the back alleys and narrow side-streets that make up the older parts of Bayonne, things get a little rougher pretty quickly. We pass by yards with run-down cars in them, a few of them with cinderblocks holding them up where the tires should be. There’s an old American flag waving on tarnished flagpoles over a house with a couple of boarded-up windows. There’s a family with at least ten children holding what looks like a little quinceañera outside, the father wearing tattered overalls and the mother with a tired look on her face as she herds the group around.
This is where most of the workers live, and I know it’s thoroughly our territory. The sooner we can find somewhere to hide out in a place like this, the easier it will be for the two of us to utterly vanish. As we pass by, some of the locals who happen to be in their front yard give us friendly greetings. A young man with arms stained black from working at a repair shop gives us a smile and a wave while he gets his mail as I drive by, and I nod back. An older guy with a limp who I recognize as a local school bus driver does the same as he gets out of his vehicle, just now off work.
A middle-aged woman tending her garden down the road notices us approaching, and she makes her way to the sidewalk and flags us down. I recognize her as one of the workers from the factory a few blocks off the docks; she and her wife have shared a drink with the club more than a few times.
“What’s goin’ on?” she says by way of greeting, giving both of us a curt nod. “Everything alright? Got a new face with you, Prez.” She’s not a club member, but it’s become kind of a town nickname for me. A few people have talked about making me president of the union when we get things back together, but for the time being, I know it’s just a term of endearment.