Page 40 of My Brother's Bad Best Friend

She hesitates but walks over, taking the handlebars from Randy. She steps over and sits down, one foot on the ground, glancing up at him.

He nods, beaming. “Perfect fit,” he says. “Just perfect.”

“How much is it?” she asks.

He glances at me. “For your friend? Eighty. For other people? Two hundred.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “Come on, man, that’s too good of a discount.”

“Truthfully I found that in the dump last week, but it was already in great condition. I put in maybe a half hour of work and twenty bucks worth of parts, so I’m still coming out ahead on this deal.”

I look at Lizzie, eyebrows raised. “What do you think?”

She squeezes the handlebars and looks at the bike before looking back at me. There’s this strange look on her face, like she’s about to cry.

“I love it,” she says.

“Good.” I steer Randy back to the front counter. “Got any helmets?” I ask him.

“’Course. Got a decent one for her.”

I give him a hundred even for the bike and the helmet, which seems to make him happy. Lizzie walks the bike out the front and stops on the sidewalk, teal bike shining in the morning sun, blue helmet dangling in her hand.

“I’ve never had a bike before,” she says softly.

“Really?”

She nods a little. She leans the bike up against my Jeep and sits down on the curb, hugging her knees to her chest.

I sit down next to her. I can tell she needs a second, so I don’t say anything. I just sit there watching as the sun climbs up in the sky, lighting up the ocean and the city in waves of reflected sparkle.

“My dad wouldn’t let me have a bike,” I say to her finally after a long silence.

She looks over at me. “Really?”

“Really. He was an asshole. A lot like Royal, actually.” I say that pointedly, and she seems to understand.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t know.”

I shrug. “It wasn’t so bad for me. Worse for my mom.” I look over at her, forcing a smile on my face. “But I really wanted a bike back then, really bad. So one day, I was maybe ten at the time, I saw these older kids outside of a gas station filling up their bike tires.” I think back to that day, to the smell of the gas, the concrete under my shoes, and I have no clue what I was thinking. Those boys were all bigger than me, tougher than me, but I wasn’t afraid. I wanted something, and nothing stops me when I want something.

“I waited for the first guy to get finished,” I tell her. “The other two were arguing over who was going next as he got onto his bike and started to test it out. It was this BMX thing, shiny and metal and too big for me. I waited for him to ride past the bushes I was standing in before I stepped out and shoved him as hard as I could.”

Her eyes go wide. “You pushed him off his bike?”

“Yep,” I say. “I was a little asshole. The kid hit the ground and started yelling, but it was too late. His friends weren’t ready, and one of them already was starting to fill up his tire. I hopped on the bike, yanking it from the kid’s hands, and rode off as fast as I could. I thought they were going to kill me, but I never saw them again.”

I smile a little bit. I was a little savage back then, totally uncaring about my own safety or the safety of others. I was willing to hurt and fight to get what I wanted, because the only way I knew was violence, just like my daddy taught me.

“You stole your first bike.” She’s smiling a little bit.

“Yeah, I know. I was an asshole. But that kid’s parents probably bought him a new one, while my dad whooped my ass when he found it a week later.”

She laughs softly, shaking her head. “I know you got beat but you kind of deserved it.”

“Yeah,” I say softly. “I kind of did. Good thing though, dad walked out a month later, said he was going to meet up with a friend at a bar and never came home.”

“Shit,” she says softly.

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