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Oblio showed up at the Penthaüs one evening without warning, his posture eager, his movements frantic, practically begging me to come with him. I tried to convince him to come inside and spend the night, but he would have none of it.
“You don’t have plans tomorrow, do you?” he asked me.
“Nothing important. Why?”
“Put on something warm, we’re going for a ride.”
I was too shocked to react at first. It was the first time he had offered to let me ride on his motorcycle. I had expected some sort of preamble, some ceremony, some spectacle to mark such an occasion, but no.
“Jeans would be best,” he called to me as I wandered into my room to change.
Jeans. Did I even own a pair of jeans? I rummaged through a few drawers and looked through my closet, but it was as I suspected. No denim in sight. I walked into the living room where I had left Kerith watching some sporting event I hadn’t paid attention to while I had been digitally touching up some of my latest photos.
“Brother, dear?”
“Hmm?” he answered me, distractedly, his eyes glued to the screen.
“Do you have a pair of jeans I can borrow?”
That snapped him out of his trance, and he turned to look at me, bemused. “A pair of what? Jeans? You?”
I shrugged.
“Whatever do you need them for?” He stood up from the couch and we walked together to his room.
“I’m going out, apparently. On a motorcycle.”
He scoffed as he walked to his closet and pulled out a pair of black denim jeans in roughly my size. “You wouldn’t be caught dead in denim, so you’d better be careful. Maybe wear a belt, these are probably a tad big.”
I kissed him on the cheek as I took them from him. “Always prepared for anything. Thank you.”
“Of course. Just come home safely. Whenever.” He tossed his hand dismissively as he left me to change and went back to his game.
I dressed and joined Oblio by the front door.
“Where are we going?”
Instead of answering, he grasped my head in his hands and kissed me, taking my breath away. I let out an involuntary noise of pleasure as I wrapped my arms around him.
“Get a room, you two,” Kerith called.
Oblio pulled away and rested his forehead on mine for a moment, smiling. He backed away a step and called back, “Have a good night, Kerith.”
“Take care of my sister,” came the loud, slightly aggressive reply.
“Come on,” Oblio said softly to me. “It’s a surprise.”
He took my hand, and we took the elevator down to ground level. His first surprise was that he had bought me my own motorcycle helmet. It was silver and black and glittery and perfect. He helped me put it on correctly and showed me how to sit on the bike. He instructed me to wrap my arms around him and hold on.
“It’s going to be loud,” he told me. “I won’t be able to hear you if you talk, so if something is wrong and it can’t wait, squeeze my shoulder and I’ll pull over as soon as it’s safe. Oh, and Jaryn?”
“Yes?” I responded, as I tried to surreptitiously slide my fingers under the hem of his shirt.
“Please don’t distract me. I don’t feel like dying tonight.”
I smiled inside my helmet, even though he couldn’t see it. “Yes, sir.”
He slid his visor down over his eyes and started the bike. We rode out of the city for about an hour, first taking the highway, then some twisty road out to the middle of nowhere. Eventually we turned off the road and ended up in a field, where we finally stopped. I could just make out a fence in the distance, and a barn of all things.
He helped me off the bike and rummaged through the saddlebags before pulling out a blanket which he tucked under his arm.
“Where are we?” I held my hand delicately over my nose as the pungent scent of manure tickled my nostrils. “It smells… terrible.”
“You’ll get used to it. Come on.” He set our helmets down on the bike and strapped them down somehow. He took my hand and led me forward in the darkness.
“I can’t see. What if we fall and land in a ripe pile of…”
He clicked on a flashlight, and I could see that it was just grass in every direction. Nothing untoward or suspicious. Where, then, was that awful smell coming from?
“The cows are on the other side of the fence, don’t worry.”
After some indeterminate amount of time of aimless wandering, we finally stopped. Oblio spread the blanket out on the ground and laid atop it, gesturing for me to join him.
“You want me to get down on the ground? Here?”
“It’s only grass, Jaryn. It won’t bite you.”
“But my clothes…”
“They’re not even your jeans. They’re your brother’s.”
He had a point. I gingerly sank to my knees on the blanket, expecting to be bitten or stung or accosted by some wild beast at any moment. Oblio took my wrist and gently pulled me on top of him. He kissed me again and my eyes fluttered closed. A moment later he rolled us over as we kissed. I barely noticed the rock jabbing into my back.
He pulled away. “Keep your eyes closed.”
I did as he asked, shivering with anticipation for what he would do next. Several minutes went by and… nothing. I frowned.
“Oblio…”
“You can open them now.”
I did, and found him lying on the blanket next to me, staring at the sky. The flashlight was off, but the few minutes with my eyes closed had helped my night vision. He held his arm straight up.
“Look.”
Irritated, I settled back onto my back with my hands behind my head. “What am I looking for? A UFO?”
“Just watch.”
I sighed and did as he asked, wondering in the back of my mind if we were going to end up lost out here in this field in the middle of nowhere forever. As I relaxed, I noticed how beautiful the stars were. I saw more wink into existence one by one as my pupils dilated to adjust to the lack of light. Out of nowhere, I saw a shooting star whiz by.
I gasped. “Did you see that?”
Oblio just chuckled.
As I continued to watch, every few seconds I saw another bright flash shoot across the sky. Suddenly, I understood.
“A meteor shower.”
“The Orionids, to be precise.”
I sat up and threw my head back. Logically, I knew the couple of feet of elevation between myself and the ground and the stars wouldn’t make a difference, but it felt right somehow. His fingers found mine in the dark and we clasped hands as we stared up at the most spectacular display of nature’s beauty I had seen in a long, long time.
I squeezed his hand and made a wish. And another. And another.