“Hey,” he said.

He. Said. Hey.

Then—and again just now. A husky-voiced hey as warm as a caress. Like he’d been waiting for me to turn around—his lush lips curved on the word. And it felt like a fast turn on the back of a motorcycle. My skin was buzzing and my heart was cartwheeling and every single cell of my being went to riot or revolution.

It’s true I got the flu later. My mom likes to point that out. “That wasn’t love,” she laughs. “That was the flu.”

But it happened back then and it was happening now, and it happened every single time I looked at him: that feeling of a fast ride on a steep curve. And I never got the flu again—it was just that one time. That was not the flu. It was love.

—

140 words

Totally cheated this week. This is not related to the location but rather what the photo made me think of.  When I thought about this picture, all I could think about was what it feels like to ride on the back of a motorcycle–a subject I once wrote about–and so I lifted this excerpt from a finished work I did.

This has been an edition of What Pegman Saw. To read more stories inspired by the prompt or to submit your own, click here.