Your father, the cop, was the one they called Pezzini. You, they called Pez. Everyone did, eventually, at some point. Even Lenny, who been through the academy with your father, and was now on the motors squad, when he brought over your first motorcycle on your and Maria's isxteenth birthday.
"Bike, Pez," he'd said in his slow drawl. He'd brought that up with him from Texas when he'd come to the NYPD twenty five years ago, along with the shiny-toed boots he wore on his feet. "You call it a bike. Nobody says motorcycle. They'll laugh if you say that."
Maria was sitting on your front porch, watching everything, and doing just that.
"Shut up," you told her.
"Make me," she said, with a smile that brought out the dimple on her left cheek.
Lenny made you ride the bike around the block so he could watch and make sure you knew what you were doing, even though you'd been riding one of his old ones, off and on, for the past two years. You went through your paces, mustering a rare measure of obedience, until he was satisfied and set you loose.
Maria hopped down from the porch, swung herself up behind you, and wrapped her arms around your waist.
Lenny scowled.
"Hey! You shouldn't be taking on other people! Not until you get used to it yourself!" You were playing with the throttle; he had to shout to be heard.
"I'll be fine!" you shouted back, and peeled out of the driveway.
You rode for hours. You figured out that the clutch was temperamental, and then how to get it to do what you wanted it to do before you made it out of the city. No helmet, for this first ride; it was still sitting on the dining room table in the middle of the paper it had been wrapped in. Your father would yell at you for that when you got back home. That would all happen later. Right now, your hair was whipping around your throat and getting into your eyes.
And into Maria's face, too, you guessed, when she hitched forward, legs clenched tight around your hips, and took her hands away from your waist. She brought them up to your face, catching at your windblown hair, and rode the rest of the way with her fingers curled tight to your scalp, and her face tucked into the smooth stretch of the leather jacket across your shoulder blades.
This was the template for your next two summers.
*
Maria loved that bike. But not in the same way you did. You kept looking for that moment when you were crouched in the seat and the wind was slipping right past you, unable to make the distinction between your body and the fiberglass and steel you held beneath you. Maria never tried to trick the wind. She would sit ramrod straight, like you never saw her sit anywhere else, and dare the wind to come and catch her. She would start with her fingers locked around your waist, then let her hands slide apart, moving over your ribs, over your hips, until it was only her nails in your jacket keeping her behind you, and she was almost, almost falling.
The leather of your jacket grew scarred from her nails. You grew expert at keeping your balance even while flinging your hand behind you, groping for a handhold on Maria.
She would push your hand back towards the clutch, where it belonged, and tighten the vise of her thighs. "I'm fine," she would shout into your ear. "Just drive."
And you would. Until the next turn, when she'd lean back. Then you'd downthrottle with your right hand, and reach back with your left.
You loved that bike for different reasons, but in the end, it affected you both in the same way. You'd come roaring into the driveway after riding all afternoon, slamming on the brakes at the last minute to keep the speed going for as long as you could. Climbing off was no different than riding; Maria would still be holding on to you. You'd leave the bike clicking away in the heat as you yanked open the back door so fiercely it made the springs screech.
Dad was gone on the evening shift, and with no one else there to watch, you didn't bother to make it look like anything other than what it was as you stumbled, speed drunk, down the hallway to your room. Sometimes you got Maria's shirt off first; sometimes she would hold back the impossible tangle of your hair as you fought with the zipper on your jacket. Either way, you kept to your pattern: strip you both down to the waist, then kiss her, hard, as you worked on the buttons of the jeans.
Maria would keep her hands in your hair, making the knots worse, until you got her jeans pulled down enough to work your fingers against her wet clit. Then she would melt, and her hands slide down through the sweat on your back. Her knees buckled when you walked her backwards to the bed.
First and second fingers inside of her, thumb against her clit, and the elastic of her waistband abrading your wrist, until her hips were moving without pause, and you thought you'd die if you didn't get your goddamned jeans off right this second. You'd leave her panting on your bed, laughing, as you yanked off boots and jeans, socks and underwear, yours then hers, then you'd crawl up over her and kiss her until she was whimpering into your mouth.
Sooner or later she'd push you away, saying, "I want to come. Now, Pez." You'd sit up and get her half onto your lap, bent back over your thigh, in a way that never looked comfortable, but would let you work all four fingers of your hand deep into her cunt and still bend down to kiss her breasts.
Her crying out while you had her in your arms was the most beautiful thing you'd ever seen.
You kept your hand on her as she worked through the shuddering, and then for a long minute after that, until she sat up and kissed you quickly. Then it was your turn to lie down and tuck a pillow up under your hips. You laid there with your eyes closed, sucking on the fingers that tasted like her while Maria licked, and sucked, and did things you couldn't guess at because you were too caught up in how they felt. It took a long time, but you came. You opened your eyes to find Maria looking down at you, insufferably smug, waiting to see if you would smile back. You did. She climbed out of bed, snagged a cigarette from the pack in the inner pocket of your jacket, and leaned naked out of the open window to smoke it.
"Someone will see you," you said.
"Let them look. I don't care."
"I do."
She turned around, giving the world a view of her back instead, and filled your bedroom with the smell of her cigarettes.
*
You went to college, even though you didn't see the point in it, when you already knew what you were going to do with your life. "Sara. It's not the dark ages, anymore," your dad said. But you were stubborn. You had that in common with him, too.
"I don't need a degree to get into the academy."
"Not to join up, maybe. But they're going to want to see it before they'll give you a gold shield."
He was right, of course. So you went to NYU, and you majored in Criminal Justice.
You always thought they'd gotten that wrong. It should've been called Societal Justice. Justice wasn't deserved by criminals. It belonged to the people who had been wronged. That was the kind of crusade you were interested in.
Once you were there, you spent all of your time in class. Or studying. Or working, so Dad wouldn't have to take on the entire bill alone. Barely room in the postage stamp they called your dorm for you to live, let alone keep your bike, so it stayed at the house. You took the subway back there on weekends, whenever you could get away. Dad said you wanted to see your bike more than you wanted to see him. He wasn't joking, and he wasn't wrong, but you still got the impression he understood.
There was a long year in the middle of college when you didn't see Maria at all.
It wasn't intentional. There hadn't been a falling out. You had no reason not to see each other, really. Just life, and all the things you had to do instead.
It was a Friday night in March when you saw her again, on one of those blustery days that made you wish the city wasn't laid out in a grid, to channel the wind like it did up the avenues. You were eating dinner in a restaurant on Amsterdam and 117th. It was only a block from the east gates of Columbia University. The guy you were dating was a student there. He was either studying physical chemistry or chemical engineering--he explained the difference to you, more then once, but you couldn't seem to remember what it was--and you were eating the shrimp off his half of the pizza. He didn't notice. He was staring over your shoulder at the television above the bar, watching the Yankees beat the Orioles. He did not talk, except to offer a soft, "Yeah," of approval at the end of every half-inning.
He was definitely not the one who leaned down and said, "Hey, Pez," into your ear.
"Hey," you said, then, "Hey! Hi," much more welcoming, once you realized that the blonde hair belonged to Maria. "I haven't seen you since--" You tried to count out the months, but you couldn't remember if it had been this past year she'd shown up, uninvited, to Carla's Christmas party, or if you were confusing it with the one the year before.
"I've been around." She was standing, and you made to get up; your date grunted when your attempt to rise blocked his view of the game. Maria put a hand on your shoulder to stop you. "No, it's all right. I can't stay long." She tilted her head at a man standing between the register and the front door. "He's got tickets, and he says they're good seats. I just wanted to say hi to you."
"Hi," you said again, stupidly. Then you thought of a hundred things you needed to tell her. None could be said with words that would fit into this place, not with your date sitting across from you, and not over the drone of the television in the background. "Call me. Okay? Do you know my number now?"
"Yeah. I think so. Or I'll call your dad. I can get it from him."
That was when you knew she was lying.
"No, wait, I'll give it to you," you said, knowing you sounded desperate, but not caring, digging into the lining of your coat because your pen had fallen through the hole in the bottom of your pocket again.
"Don't worry," she said. "I'll call." She bent to kiss you, catching her lips on the corner of your mouth, brief enough that you couldn't kiss her back. Her hair tumbled against your face. The smell of it made you want to kill someone for her. "Don't I always call, when you aren't expecting it?"
"Yeah. I guess."
She smiled down at you.
"See you, Sara."
And as she left she ran her hand through your hair, tugging on it as she stepped away, and you felt once again like you were racing too fast down the back roads, Maria clinging to you through the turns, except this time she really was falling off, really, truly, and she didn't care at all that you were breaking with the need to catch her.