A Midnight Clear by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner

touching beside the point. His hands were in his pockets, and her heart was in her mouth.
    The expression on his face was one of abiding patience, as if he’d wait forever. But more than that, the set of his jaw and arch of his brow was controlled, disciplined. It said her opinion mattered. That he’d wait because she wanted him to.
    “Where are we getting dirty?” she asked when she couldn’t take the silence anymore.
    A smile cracked Joe’s focus. He threw back his head and laughed, his shoulders vibrating with amusement.
    “You anxious to fly?” he asked when he’d calmed down.
    “I don’t see a plane.”
    “Oh Frances, there are many ways to leave the ground.”
    He started off down a path and she followed.
    “So this is a metaphor?” she called after him.
    “I’d take you flying if I could, but the Navy wouldn’t approve. They wouldn’t approve of what we’re going to do either, but I figured you could keep it secret.”
    She gasped in mock horror. “Are you asking me to conceal something from my father? How scandalous.”
    Actually it was thrilling. Not the concealment itself, but that Joe wanted to give her something for herself, something that her father’s opinion of didn’t matter. Something selfish and private.
    “You can tell him you met me, we went walking. That’s true enough.”
    “What should I report about our conversation?”
    “We talked about the weather. ‘It’s sunny out here.’” He said the final word with a New England accent. Where was he from? He turned and gave her a warm smile. “See? It’s true.”
    “There’s a bank of clouds right there.”
    “Hmm. I didn’t notice them. Sunny with clouds, then. You can tell him when I tried to make love to you, I was rebuffed.”
    His smile evaporated, burned up by something much hotter. Frances’s mouth went dry. She’d always been a very practical girl. She’d never let men pour honey into her ears and the few words of love she’d heard almost by accident she hadn’t believed.
    But with his smiles, his good humor, his quick wit, his persistence… well, she suspected that she’d be quite susceptible to Joe’s sweet nothings. Which was why she couldn’t let him speak them.
    “The weather hasn’t been interesting enough for him to believe it,” she said.
    They walked in silence then, neither of them speculating—at least not aloud—about whether she’d just admitted she wanted him to make love to her.
    “It might have been a metaphor,” Joe said as he led her into a clearing, “but I can deliver on the flying.”
    Sitting there was a motorcycle, small and chrome. Bits gleamed in the sunlight, though most of it was smudged and greasy.
    “The brother of a friend of mine owns it. He’s been fixing it up, and he’s got a ways to go. That’s why I said the thing about the clothes.”
    Frances plucked at her old tweedy cleaning trousers. She’d chosen well. “This is forbidden,” she said, giving Joe an assessing looking.
    “Strictly speaking, it’s prohibited for midshipmen to own or operate one.”
    “Strictly speaking?”
    “You said you wanted to fly. And this was easier than sneaking you into the hanger. You’d never pass as a boy.”
    “I could bind—”
    “No.” He gave her bosom a quick but penetrating look.
    He was risking his place in the Academy, his entire future to give this to her. In taking it, she would be selfish indeed. She turned back to the motorcycle. “Do you know how to drive it?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ve driven it before?”
    He laughed. “Yes.”
    Well, that did put a different spin on it. He wouldn’t be breaking the rules only for her then. “How fast does it go?”
    “Fast enough.”
    “How do we—”
    “First you need this.” He handed her a leather helmet.
    Once she had it on her head, he helped her with the strap, his fingers warm and callused against the underside of her chin.
    “You’re set now.” His words were rough around the edges, like he hadn’t