Summer Drive

The helmet didn't fit.
I cinched the strap so tight I couldn't swallow, but that didn't matter much.
There was a bad, black brute of a motorcycle beneath me, the man of my dreams pinched tightly between my knees and the freshly paved highway rushing swiftly by. A summer drive. Strictly for pleasure.
The distant fear that the loose helmet would be impotent to protect did nothing to dampen the joy of it all...the life in the surging wind and the roaring engine.
Can't swallow? Spit.
Sitting on a bench just off the highway we licked heaping ice-cream cones. $1.50 for a week's ration of sweet strawberry cream that the sun licked faster than me. I let the sticky runoff roll down the cone and pool on the ground.
On the ride home bugs rushed to their deaths against my jeans, my face, between my fingers, the sticky guts surprisingly cool on such a hot day. I smiled up to the sky, warmed by the blazing sun, kissed by the hot wind. I sucked in as much as I could. I'll need this memory when the days get shorter and the wind stops kissing and starts biting.