Page 35 of Joker
Unfamiliar.
Like something I used to do all the time and somehow forgot how.
We fall into a rhythm after that, conversation slipping a little easier between us with each mile. Nothing heavy. Nothing that feels like either of us is digging where we shouldn’t.
Just…talking.
He tells me he prefers older music when he’s driving, something about newer stuff trying too hard to be something it’s not. I tell him I grew up listening to whatever my dad had playing in the garage, which meant a lot of rock, a lot of country, and the occasional song that probably should not have been played around a kid.
He asks about Lexi without making it feel like an interrogation.
“What’s her thing right now?” he says.
“Her thing?”
“Kids always have a thing. Phase. Obsession.”
I glance back at her, the way she’s curled around Bunny like it’s part of her. “Stuffed animals.”
“Yeah?”
“Not even one specific one. It rotates. But this one…” I nod toward Bunny. “This one’s stuck.”
“Security,” he says.
The word is simple.
Too simple.
But he says it like it’s obvious, like it doesn’t need to be explained, and something in my chest tightens again because he’s right.
“She takes it everywhere,” I say quietly. “Sleeps with it. Eats with it. Talks to it.”
“She trusts it.”
It’s not a question.
“No,” I admit. “She trusts that it won’t change.”
He nods once, like that makes sense to him. It probably does.
We ride like that for a while, the conversation threading in and out of silence without breaking, until I find myself asking something I hadn’t planned to.
“How’d you get your road name?” The second the question leaves my mouth, I wonder if I crossed a line.
But Joker doesn’t hesitate. “Had it before the club,” he says.
That surprises me. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
He exhales through his nose, like he’s debating whether to answer. Then he says, “Group home.”
I go still. That wasn’t what I expected.
“There was a kid,” he continues, voice even, eyes still on the road. “Big for his age. Thought that gave him the right to push people around.”
