BAMBI

XXVIII

While listening to the soothing sounds of the horns radiating from the speakers he had placed around the room, my thoughts began to fade away. The train wreck I'd turned into earlier seemed to take every ounce of energy out of me, my eyelids becoming heavier and heavier before finally falling against my cheeks.

When my eyes finally opened again, I noticed a white mug sitting on the coffee table in front of me, the string of the tea bag wrapped around the handle, keeping it secure, "How was your nap?" Prince asked from the other end of the couch, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth.

"It was good." I sat up, "How long was I out?"

"About a half hour."

I rubbed my eyes, feeling a lot better than I had before my impromptu nap, "Sorry, I don't know what happened."

"Mmm, I don't know, by the time I came back with our tea you were sound asleep."

I arched my back, bringing both of my hands towards the sky, stretching the sleepiness out of my body, "Did I snore?"

A wide smile lined his face, his eyebrows desperately trying not to give the truth away, "No."

"Oh, I did, didn't I?" He didn't answer, but kept that same smile. "Well, hopefully it wasn't too bad. I don't wanna scare you away." I chuckled.

Prince wrapped both arms around me, pulling me down so my head rested in his lap. Looking down at me, his soft fingers tracing the shape of my face, "I'm not going anywhere." His plump lips meshed with mine, only for a moment.

An unexplainable feeling ran through my body when his words escaped his lips. A feeling of total ease, of total acceptance from him. That feeling made me want to talk; get all of the weight I'd been holding onto off of my chest.

While his eyes wondered around my face, trailing the movement of his fingers I could feel my breath shallow. Like the feeling you get when you're about to rip a bandaid off, that slight adrenaline rush. "Prince..."

"Hmm?" Everything stopped, his hands resting within my hair, his eyes fixed on mine. It felt like time stood still.

Taking in a deep breath, I just went for it, "Aaron loved motorcycles. Even when we were younger he'd always say he was going to get a motorcycle and take me riding. Then in high school he saved up a little bit of money from a paper route he had and bought himself this piece of shit motorcycle from some guy for $100. I thought he was crazy but he knew that the bike was a sought after model. So he fixed it up, rode it around for a while and sold it. When he sold it, he made about $2500 off of it. That's how his whole business started."

Slowly, Prince began massaging my scalp with his finger tips. "So he sold motorcycles?"

I nodded my head, then continued, "After college we moved from Minneapolis to Sturgis."

"Sturgis, South Dakota?" His face crinkled.

"Yeah..." I snickered, "Aaron thought that he'd have a larger customer base selling the bikes there since they do that rally every year. And he was right, about 75% of our annual revenue was brought in during August alone. Anyway..." I shook my head slightly, "I'm kinda going off on a tangent... He picked up this bike, it was a 1931 Indian Scout from some guy in Arizona. The guy sold it to him for like $500. As soon as he came back with it, he started working on it. His plan was to sell it that upcoming August, which was only two months away at that point. So Aaron worked hard, I mean day and night. I remember hardly seeing him around that time because he was always at the shop. The day he finished it, or the night I should say, he'd been working on it for 16 hours straight."