Chapter One, Part II

Los Angeles. A stretch of hours between two flights.

“Come on, then. Watch where you step — floor’s a mess.”

He leads Adrian through the door he’d come out of, back into the workshop proper. It’s louder here, warmer, smelling of hot metal and oil and coffee gone cold on a workbench somewhere. Two motorcycles sit half-disassembled on lifts, an old truck cab is propped up in the corner missing a door, and tools hang on the wall in an order that only makes sense to the man who put them there.

“Custom builds, mostly,” Jack says, running a hand along the tank of the nearer bike without really thinking about it.

“Bikes, some classic car work. The shop out front’s my sister’s idea — said I needed somewhere to put things that didn’t have wheels or an engine. Turns out people like buying stuff a guy made with his hands instead of some factory in a warehouse.”

“It shows,” Adrian says, and means it. There’s an honesty to the place he wasn’t expecting. It reminds him, oddly, of his own job in reverse: Jack builds things that stay in one place, that people come back to. Adrian spends his life somewhere over the Atlantic, belonging to no single ground.

“You ride?” Jack asks, glancing over.

Something shifts in Adrian’s face — not hesitation this time, but memory.

“Not a motorcycle, no. But I had a Vespa once. A PK50 — my father bought it for me, brand new. I was thirteen, fourteen.” He almost smiles at it.

“We spent six weeks every summer in a village south of La Spezia, and I rode that thing from morning until dark. Every day. Every single day for six weeks. I still remember the sound of it — that particular two-stroke rattle, almost a whine. I’d know it anywhere.”

“That’s dedication.”

“I loved it. Still do, the idea of it — those small coastal roads where you genuinely don’t know where they lead, just going, no plan.” Adrian shrugs, a little self-conscious now.

“I’ve wanted a proper Vespa ever since. A big Piaggio, not a toy. Never got around to it.”

“And a motorcycle?”

“Motorcycle, I think I’d want to be on the back of.”

Adrian hears the sentence properly only after he’s said it.

Jack glances at him.

“Someone else driving,” Adrian adds.

He should probably leave it there.

“I’ll hold on.”

That does nothing to improve matters.

Something flickers across Jack’s face — quick, unmistakable, gone almost as soon as it arrives.

“Careful,” he says, voice a shade lower than before.

“I’ve got two bikes in this shop that run fine.”

The same stupid heat threatens Adrian’s face again.

“Two bikes that run fine,” he repeats, aiming for casual and not quite getting there.

“Noted.”

“You say that like a warning.”

“Maybe it is one.”

The answer comes out before Adrian has quite decided whether he means it that way.

This time, though, he doesn’t look away.

He meets Jack’s eyes, and for a second neither of them says anything at all.

Jack breaks it first, pushing off the workbench.

“So — La Spezia, and now Aarhus. How does that happen?”

“My parents divorced when I was ten. They agreed that it probably would make more sense for my sister and me to go with my mother. She was from Jutland, a peninsula on the other side of the country, so that’s where we ended up.” Adrian says it simply, worn smooth from repetition.

“But every summer after that, until I was eighteen, nineteen — we went back to La Spezia. My sister and I, every year, to stay with my father. And my grandparents.”

“Every summer.”

“Every single one. Ten weeks, sometimes. My grandmother would already have a list of what was wrong with how thin I looked the moment we walked through the door.” A small laugh.

“My grandfather taught me to fish off a little rock past the harbor, badly, because he was worse at teaching than he was at fishing. And there was the Vespa, and the road up to the church nobody went to anymore, and figs falling off the tree in my grandmother’s garden that nobody ever seemed to eat except me.”

Jack has gone quiet in a different way now — not distracted, but listening, the rag finally still in his hands.

“Sounds like it mattered. More than just a holiday.”

“It was the only place that ever felt like it was mine without asking anything of me.” Adrian hadn’t meant to say that much. He glances down at the bike beside him, tracing a thumb along the edge of the seat.

“Aarhus was home. But Italy was — ” He stops, searches for the word.

“Weightless. Does that make sense?”

“More than you’d think.” Jack’s voice drops a register.

“I had a place like that too. Different ocean. Same feeling, probably.”

Neither of them moves for a moment. Somewhere behind them, the radio hums on, oblivious.

“You’re good at this,” Adrian says eventually, needing to say something.

“Good at what?”

“Making a stranger tell you more than he meant to.”

Jack’s mouth curves, slow.

“You’re good at telling it.”

He nods toward a stool tucked near the workbench, half-covered in a folded tarp.

“Sit, if you want. I’ve got about twenty more minutes before I owe those two out front an oil change, and I’d rather spend it not talking to myself for once.”

Adrian hesitates — the sensible part of him doing the math on layover hours, on the fact that he came here to walk, not to sit in a stranger’s workshop feeling something he hasn’t felt in a long while.

He sits.

“So,” Jack says, dragging a second stool over, close enough that their knees nearly touch, not quite.

“Cabin crew. Scandinavia. Tell me something that isn’t in the file.”

“The file?”

“The version you give people at parties. I want the other one.”

Adrian studies him for a second — the grease still under his nails, the patience in the way he’s waiting.

“That’s a dangerous thing to ask a stranger.”

“I run a garage, not a confessional.” Jack shrugs.

“But I’m listening either way.”

Before Adrian can answer, a voice cuts across the shop.

“Jack! You said fifteen minutes twenty minutes ago!”

One of the two customers is leaning through the doorway, not annoyed exactly, more the tone of someone who’s clearly said this sentence before.

Jack doesn’t even turn around fully.

“It’s a process, Dennis. Can’t rush the process.”

“You’re not doing anything, you’re sitting on a stool.”

“Strategic planning.” Jack raises his voice just enough to be heard, deadpan.

“Give me five.”

Dennis mutters something that might be a laugh and disappears. Jack looks back at Adrian with the faint, unhurried apology of a man who isn’t actually sorry at all.

“Sorry. Small shop, big mouths.” He stands, stretching.

“I should deal with that before Dennis starts telling my sister I’m slacking off.”

“Of course.” Adrian stands too, grateful for the excuse to breathe normally again.

“I should probably go anyway. I don’t actually know how far I’ve walked.”

“Probably further than you think.” Jack nods toward the door.

“That road doesn’t really tell you.”

“No,” Adrian agrees.

“It doesn’t.”

They stand there a second too long — not awkward exactly, just unfinished.

“Go deal with Dennis,” Adrian says finally, half amused, half grateful for the reprieve.

“I’ll get out of your hair.”

Jack studies him a moment longer.

“You will, huh.”

He says it almost to himself, like he’s testing the shape of the doubt in it.

Before Adrian can answer, a figure appears in the doorway to the street. Mid-fifties, sun-worn, a battered ballcap pushed back on his head.

“Jack. You still owe me that drill bit set.” The man’s eyes catch on Adrian for half a second — not unkind, just cataloguing — before sliding back to Jack.

“Heading into town, figured I’d ask before you forget again.”

“I haven’t forgotten, Mike, I’ve been strategically delaying.” Jack straightens.

“Actually. You driving anywhere near the water? Hotels along there?”

Mike shrugs.

“Passing right by them, yeah. Why?”

Jack looks at Adrian, a little sheepish.

“He walked here. From one of the crew hotels on the coast road. Longer walk than he thought, probably a worse one going back with the sun where it’s headed.”

“I can walk,” Adrian says, mostly on principle.

“You can,” Jack agrees easily.

“Doesn’t mean you should.” He nods at Mike.

“Take him as far as his hotel. It’s not out of your way.”

Mike looks between the two of them a beat too long, something amused settling into the corner of his mouth.

“Sure. C’mon then.” He tips his head toward the door.

“I don’t bite. Can’t speak for the truck’s AC, though.”

Adrian hesitates, glancing back at Jack — a strange reluctance in leaving, disproportionate to the twenty-odd minutes they’ve actually spent together.

“Go,” Jack says, quieter now.

“Before Dennis starts telling my sister I ran off a paying customer by making him walk home in the heat.”

“I wasn’t paying for anything.”

“You bought the bottle opener.”

Adrian blinks.

“I didn’t—”

“You’re buying the bottle opener,” Jack says, already reaching for it off the counter and pressing it into Adrian’s hand before he can protest, closing his fingers around it a beat longer than necessary.

“On the house. Call it a souvenir. Lifetime guarantee, remember. Outlives you, outlives me, probably outlives this whole street.”

Their hands are still touching, and for a second neither of them seems particularly interested in resolving that.

“Thank you,” Adrian says, quieter than he means to.

“Don’t thank me. Just don’t lose it.” Jack finally lets go, stepping back, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“Go on. Mike doesn’t have all day, even if he pretends he does.”

Adrian follows Mike out through the shop, past the two customers still browsing, out into the flat gold light of late afternoon. The truck is parked at an angle at the curb, dust on the wheel wells, a St. Christopher medallion swinging gently from the mirror. Adrian climbs in, the bottle opener still warm in his palm.

Mike pulls out into the road, glancing sideways.

“So how’d you end up in Jack’s shop? Not exactly on the tourist maps.”

“I was walking. The door was open.” Adrian turns the bottle opener over.

“I didn’t plan any of it.”

“Mm.” Mike lets that sit a moment, eyes on the road, though there’s clearly more behind it.

“He make everyone the tour, or just you?”

Adrian doesn’t have a good answer for that, so he doesn’t offer one, and Mike, mercifully, doesn’t push.

They drive in something close to comfortable silence, windows cracked, the ocean flickering between buildings on the right. Adrian watches the coast road unspool the way it did on foot, except now it takes minutes instead of the better part of an hour, and he can’t decide if that feels like relief or loss.

The hotel comes into view sooner than he’s ready for.

“Here you go.” Mike pulls up at the entrance, throws the truck into park.

“Tell Jack he still owes me that drill set.”

“I will.” Adrian opens the door, then pauses, one foot already on the curb.

“Thank you. For the ride.”

Mike just nods, something knowing still sitting easy in his expression.

“No trouble. Small town, favors go around.” A beat.

“He doesn’t usually give the tour, you know. Or the bottle openers.”

Adrian doesn’t quite know what to do with that, so he just says thank you again, and gets out, and stands on the curb watching the truck pull away until it turns the corner and is gone.

He looks down at the bottle opener in his hand.

Lifetime guarantee, he thinks, and doesn’t examine too closely why the thought makes something in his chest pull tight.