His nose was blunt, square at the tip. A wrinkled necktie poked out of the pocket of his ill-fitting suit coat. And that long, wild hair, all curls and tangles, looked like a finger painting of a van Gogh night sky made from a sloppy pot of black ink.

For more than ten years, ever since Nealy’s first presidential campaign, she’d tried to say the right thing, do the right thing, always smiling, forever polite. Now she, who’d long ago mastered the art of small talk, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead she felt a nearly irresistible desire to sneer, ’S’up with you? But of course she didn’t.

He jerked his head toward the rear of his bike. “Wanna go for a ride?”

Shock radiated through her body, shooting from vein to capillary, piercing skin and muscle into bone. She shivered, not from cold, but from the knowledge that she yearned to get on that bike more than she’d wanted anything for a very long time. Get on that bike and flee from the consequences of what she’d done.

He shoved his necktie deeper into the pocket of his suit coat, and her feet began to move. It was as if they’d detached from the rest of her body. She tried to make them stop, but they refused to obey. She came closer to the bike and saw a battered Texas license plate along with a dog-eared bumper sticker that covered part of the worn leather seat. The print had faded, but she could still make out the words.

GAS, GRASS, OR ASS. NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE.

The message hit her like a shock wave. A warning she couldn’t ignore. But her body—her treacherous body—had taken control. Her hand tugged on the choir robe. One foot came off the ground. Her leg straddled the seat.

He handed her the only helmet. She pulled it on over her wretched bridal up-do and wrapped her arms around his waist.

They shot off down the alley, the choir robe billowing, her bare legs catching the edge of the wind, his hair flying, whipping her visor.

She tucked the robe under her legs as he cut from one alley to the next, took a sharp right turn and then another, the muscles in his back flexing under the cheap material of his suit coat.

They rode out of Wynette and down a two-lane highway that stretched along a craggy limestone bluff. The helmet was her cocoon, the bike her planet. They passed lavender fields in bloom, an olive oil factory, and some of the vineyards that were springing up across the Hill Country. The wind pulled at her robe, exposing her knees, her thighs.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, and the growing chill cut through the robe’s thin fabric. She welcomed the cold. She didn’t deserve to be warm and comfortable.