It was Jan who heard it first.
We were sitting outside my father's store, the three of us, just sitting and nursing our sodas. Jan had a cola, and Sally a root beer, and I was rolling the taste of orange over my tongue. The liquid was fizzy and cold, which was good because this was summer and the air was hot.
And there we were, the three of us, eighteen and watching the day go by, talking and gossiping and giggling. There was a little breeze to break the heat, not much but some, and it felt nice the way it sometimes flowed under the skirt of my dress and over my bare shoulders. Sally was talking about Rob and their date last night when he had taken her to the cinema and tried to put his hand on her breast. She wanted him to and we wanted to hear about how he had -- we were eighteen, after all -- but she also wanted him to wait, being only eighteen, you know.
So there we were.
It was the noise, first, low and rumbling around the corner of First and Main. Jan grabbed my arm, indicated as the motorbike rounded the turn. It was a big one, wide handlebars, meant to cruise the highway, not like the little buzzing bikes Morty and his friends drove.
A man's bike.
And a man on it.
He pulled in to the gas station across the street, shut the motor down. We were all watching now, the story of Sally and her boob and Rob's hand put aside as the rider pulled off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair. It was dark and wild, that hair, just a bit wet from his sweat, and he ran his fingers through it again before climbing off the bike.
"Wow," said Jan.
Sally nodded.
We looked at men, we three. Back in school they were boys, mostly, young and gawky, but there were some who were handsome, too, in that way budding masculinity can be. They liked to strut, too, these ones, because they knew we looked at them the same way we knew they looked at us.
Yeah, it's nice to be looked at.
I asked myself if this man, this rider, could tell we were staring.
It was hard not to. He wasn't big, but even under his leather jacket and the t-shirt he wore you could tell there was muscle there, real strength. This went down, too, to his jeans, the way he filled them out, those slender hips, that rounded butt honed from riding. No fat there.
"Wow," said Sally.
"Yeah," Jan answered.
So we stood there -- I don't know how long it was, as he crouched down beside the big bike and fiddled with something -- but we stood, three girls in our summer dresses, our bottles of pop hanging neglected in our hands.
"That's just fine," I said.
He stood then, and he glanced our way. Jan and Sally looked away, trying to look innocent the way you do when your mom catches you with your hand in the cookie jar, but I didn't. I don't know why I kept looking; I'm usually the shyest one of the three of us, but there was something about him, about this rider, that kept my gaze glued.
He saw this too.
And he nodded.
If he hadn't, none of the rest of it would have ever happened. He would have just gone on his way, and I would have gone on mine, and everything would have been the way I was always told it was supposed to be. You married your high school sweetheart, dropped three or four kids, kept the house and managed the money and then in fifty years or so the both of you retired and you held your grandbabies in your arms and spoiled them as they got older.
All here, in this same little town a hundred miles from nowhere.
But he nodded, and that was that.
Now, it was my father's shop, the little five-and-dime, and it had been his father's, and when my brother Todd was old enough it would be his too. He was a big man, my father, with a healthy belly that told of my mother's cooking, and he had a real eye for numbers, for balancing the books. I was one of those books, too, because I worked there, part time, and that in fact was why Jan and Sally had come over, because part of the deal was that we each got a free soda every day as part of my "salary".
Only one, though. Once I had gotten a second for us and he had caught me and docked my allowance. He said what he always did then:
"What are we, a charity?"
Dads.
But there I stood, and after he nodded the stranger turned his attention back to his motorcycle, filling the tank and then paying. As he did this we stared, Jan and Sally's gazes moving back to the seat of his tight jeans as he did.
"There is a God," Jan commented.
I nodded. I don't know why. And I don't know why I stepped into the store and pulled a cold bottle of pop from the cooler, then stepped back outside.
"Ellie?" Jan asked.
I said nothing, only stepped across the street to the filling station, stopped in front of his bike.
He turned to me.
"Hello," he said.
He had a deep voice that just hinted at thirst, and I smiled and extended the bottle of pop to him.
"Hi. You thirsty?"
He grinned -- a grin to die for -- and looked me over. "Yeah," he said. "I am -- thanks."
I extended the bottle, lemon-lime, beads of moisture beginning to gather around the cold glass, and he took it. His finger just touched mine, warm and a little rough, and I smiled sweetly as he twisted off the cap and took a deep swallow. Wiping his brow with the cold bottle, he looked at me again and grinned again.
"That's good. Appreciate it."
I smiled my best smile, spoke to fill the quiet.
"I'm Ellie."
"Good to meet you," he said.
Now, any girl with a set of eyes and a brain knows when she's being watched, especially from this close. Guys think they are clever, how they hide it, but we know. And when they look away, trying to pretend they're not looking, we know it too.
But he didn't look away, not this stranger. No, his eyes went over me the same way mine had gone over him. I'm pretty; maybe not June Gorgeous, maybe not Miss America, but enough. And my dress was light, thin, like a good summer dress should be, and so I guess he could see enough, because he smiled and took another drink.
A funny tingle came in my belly then. Nerves, maybe. I looked away from him to his motorcycle.
"That's a nice bike," I said.
