Page 167 of The Temptation
A model of a vintage motorbike, half-built, waits patiently on the desk.
“Is this the same bike he used to ride?” I ask, pointing to it, even though I’m pretty sure it is. I’ve stared at the photograph Lucia gave me of my parents enough to recognise it.
“It is,” my grandfather answers. “A 1960 Triumph Bonneville.”
I step further into the room. It’s like walking into amemory I was never part of. It’s almost as if I’ve stumbled into a version of my father when he was nineteen years old, and very much alive.
My throat tightens. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to keep it together, but it doesn’t work. Not when I see the Polaroids pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. Some are of him, a younger version of my grandparents, his bike … my mother.
I don’t feel like a man meeting the past; I feel like a son meeting the father he never got the chance to know. And that’s tough.
Tears blur my vision, so I give myself a moment to pull my shit together before I turn back around.
“Come,” my grandfather says, placing his hand on my shoulder and leading me out of the room. “I want to show you something in the garage.”
“Would you be able to help me get lunch ready?” my grandmother asks Lucia. It makes me wonder if she’s saying it just to give my grandfather and me a moment alone.
I’m feeling a little apprehensive when we step into the garage. “I wanted to show you this,” he says.
My grandfather crosses the room and pulls off the dusty sheet that’s covering something in the far corner, and I can’t believe my eyes when I see what it is.
My father’s bike.
Well, I think it is. Either that or a carbon copy. But the following words out of my grandfather’s mouth confirm my suspicion.
“I couldn’t let this go after the … accident,” he says, running his hand over the smooth leather on the seat. “I had it towed back here and spent the next few months restoring it. I was surprised by how little damage it had, considering the crash took his life.”
He pauses, as his eyes trace the lines of the bike likethey still hold pieces of his son. “It felt like something I could save … when everything else was already gone.”
I shove my hands deep into my trouser pockets as I watch him. “I’m sorry. I can imagine how hard that must have been for you.”
He nods his head once before turning his face away. “It almost broke me,” he admits. “Gabe bought this bike when it was just a chassis and nothing but potential.”
“It’s a beauty,” I say, genuinely in awe.
You can see the love in every inch of it, the kind of work you only put in when it means something.
My grandfather looks at it for a long moment before turning to me. “I want you to have it, Romeo.”
Those words hit harder than expected. “No,” I say, shaking my head almost instantly. “I couldn’t possibly take it.”
His gaze softens. “I distinctly remember him telling me once, ‘Maybe I can give it to my son one day’.”
I stare at him as my damn throat tightens again. I knew this visit would stir up memories that would be hard, but I never anticipated it being this difficult.
“He’d want you to have it, and so do I. It still runs. I come out here and start it once a week, so the motor doesn’t seize. I’ll always have the memories of us building it together,” he adds quietly. “And all the road trips we did, travelling around to find the parts. They are good memories … precious memories, but it’s time to let the bike go. I’m an old man; it’s of no use to me. Maybe you could hand it down to your own child one day.”
Your own child.
Maybe it’s naive and selfish, but when he says that, a part of me wants to believe it’s possible, even if Lucia is not so sure about becoming a mother.
I want to be that kind of father. The one who doesextraordinary things for and with his kids. I want to build those kinds of memories. Be the kind of dad I never got.
Things I’m only now realising my father probably would’ve done with me … if he’d survived that accident.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that Lucia once told me she wasn’t sure if she wanted kids. That maybe a family wasn’t part of the life she pictured with me, but I still hold out hope. Hope that somewhere between the late nights and early mornings, and impulsive, reckless decisions, I’ll knock her up before she finds the words to say it again.
“Why don’t you think on it for a while?” I eventually find myself replying as I rub the back of my neck. “Don’t do anything impulsive that you might regret.”
