Riding Double

The dust from the trailhead parking lot coated my tongue before I even said hello. That's the thing about California they don't tell you. It's not all ocean and orange groves. Some parts are just hot dirt and the smell of sagebrush, waiting for you to show up in your rental car looking like a tourist.

We'd flown in from Houston that morning. Two flights, a layover in Phoenix, and a rental sedan that smelled like someone had smoked in it despite the no-smoking sticker on the dash. My wife, Dana, had her window down before we even hit the highway, letting the dry air whip her hair into a brown tornado around her face. She loves that. Says it makes her feel alive. I just kept my eyes on the GPS, watching the blue dot crawl toward the pin my sister had dropped for us.

"Your family really lives out here?" Dana asked. She had to shout over the wind.

"Apparently."

"Like, Little House on the Prairie out here?"

"They've got a house. It's just... far from things."

She laughed and squeezed my knee. Dana has this way of making everything feel like an adventure, even when I can feel the knot in my stomach tightening with every mile we put between us and the airport. Seven years since I'd been back. Seven years since I'd seen my dad in person, since I'd stood in the same room as my sister and pretended we were normal siblings with normal history.

The pin took us to a gravel lot at the edge of a canyon. Two pickup trucks sat parked in the shade of a scrub oak, and next to them, four ATVs, red and mud-caked and gleaming in the afternoon sun. A man I recognized as my father stood leaning against the tailgate of the newer truck, arms crossed, hat pulled low. Next to him, a woman in cutoffs and a tank top, her dark hair pulled back in a braid that hung past her shoulder blades.

My sister. Maya.

She saw us first. I watched her face change, the way her mouth opened and then closed, like she'd forgotten what she was going to say. Then she was walking toward us, boots kicking up dust, and I was out of the car before I'd even killed the engine.

"Hey, stranger," she said.

Her voice was the same. That was the thing that hit me. Everything else had changed. The lines around her eyes, the lean muscle in her arms, the way she held herself like someone who spent her days doing physical work instead of sitting at a desk. But her voice was exactly the same as it had been when we were kids, passing notes under the dinner table, whispering secrets through the wall that separated our bedrooms.

"Hey yourself."

She hugged me. Quick, hard, the way you hug someone when you're not sure you're allowed to. Then she stepped back and looked past me at Dana, who was climbing out of the passenger seat, brushing dust off her sundress.

"You must be Dana." Maya's smile was bright and practiced. "I've heard so much about you."

"All lies," Dana said, and Maya laughed, and just like that, the tension broke.

My dad came over then. He shook Dana's hand, gave me a nod that lasted a beat too long, and then turned to the ATVs like the reunion was over and we had work to do.

"You ever ridden one of these?" he asked.

"Can't say I have."

"Figured. We'll double up. I'll take Dana. Maya, you take your brother."

Dana looked at me, eyebrows raised. I shrugged. What was I going to say? That I didn't want to climb on the back of an ATV with my sister, feeling her body pressed against mine for the first time in seven years? That I'd been dreading this exact moment since we booked the tickets?

The machines roared to life. My dad showed Dana how to hold on, where to put her feet, how to lean into the turns. She nodded along, game as always, and then they were gone, tearing up the trail in a cloud of red dust.

Maya handed me a helmet. "You remember how to hold on?"

"I think I can manage."

"Good. Because I'm not taking it easy on you."

She swung onto the seat and I climbed on behind her. The machine was narrower than I expected. My thighs bracketed hers, my chest pressed against her back, my hands finding her waist because there was nowhere else to put them. She was warm. She smelled like sunscreen and sweat and something floral underneath, and when she twisted the throttle, I felt every muscle in her back tense against me.

The trail wound up through the canyon, steep and rocky, the ATV bouncing hard enough to rattle my teeth. Maya drove like she'd been born on this thing, leaning into turns, powering up inclines, not slowing down for anything. I held on tighter. She laughed and yelled something over her shoulder that I couldn't hear over the engine.

We crested a ridge and the world opened up. The canyon fell away below us, all red rock and green scrub, a river glinting silver at the bottom. Maya stopped the ATV and killed the engine. The silence was immediate and total, just wind and the distant call of a hawk.

"Holy shit," I said.

"Right?" She turned her head, and her face was close. Close enough that I could see the freckles across her nose, the ones she'd had since we were kids. "This is why I never left."

"I thought you'd leave. After..."

I didn't finish. I didn't have to. She knew what I meant. After everything. After the summer that ended with me packing my car and driving east, vowing never to come back. After the thing we never talked about, never acknowledged, never named.

"I almost did," she said. "But Dad needed me. And I couldn't figure out where else to go."

"Anywhere."

"Nowhere felt right."

She was still looking at me. The wind had picked up, blowing strands of hair across her face, and without thinking I reached up and tucked them behind her ear. Her eyes widened. My hand froze. The gesture was too familiar, too intimate, and we both knew it.

"I'm married," I said. It came out like a reflex, like a confession, like something I needed her to hear before I did something I couldn't take back.

"I know."

"To Dana. She's... she's good to me."

"I know that too." Maya turned away, facing forward again. "You don't have to explain. I'm not asking you for anything."

"I didn't say you were."

"You didn't have to."

The engine was still ticking, cooling in the shade. Somewhere below us, I could hear the other ATV approaching, the buzz of it growing louder. My dad and Dana, coming to join us. Coming to break whatever this was.

Maya put her hand on my thigh. Just for a second. Just a squeeze, light and quick, like she was checking that I was still there. Then she pulled it back and started the engine, and the noise swallowed everything else.

"You should hold on tighter," she said. "The next part's rough."

I wrapped my arms around her waist. She leaned into the throttle. And as we dropped down the other side of the ridge, I closed my eyes and let myself feel exactly what I'd been trying not to feel since the moment I saw her standing next to that truck.

Seven years. Seven years of telling myself I'd made the right choice. Seven years of building a life that made sense, with a woman who loved me, in a city that felt safe.

And now here I was, on the back of an ATV, my hands on my sister's hips, my chest against her back, my heart pounding hard enough that I was sure she could feel it.

The trail dropped into a grove of cottonwoods, and the shade closed over us like water. Maya slowed the ATV to a crawl, then stopped. My dad and Dana were still somewhere behind us, out of sight.

She killed the engine again.

"Get off," she said.

"What?"

"Get off the bike. I want to show you something."

I climbed down, my legs shaky from the ride. She dismounted and walked toward the edge of the grove, where a small creek cut through the rocks. The water was clear and cold, and she knelt beside it, splashing some on her face, her neck, her chest.

"This is where I come when I need to think," she said. "When I need to remember who I am."

I stood behind her, watching the water run over her fingers. The light through the leaves made patterns on her skin. She looked up at me, and her eyes were wet, and I couldn't tell if it was the creek or something else.

"I missed you," she said. "I know I'm not supposed to say that. I know we're not supposed to..."

She didn't finish. She didn't have to.

Behind us, the other ATV roared into the grove, and Dana's laugh cut through the quiet like a knife.