Along for the Ride(97)

He was still talking as I stepped around him and started toward the bike shop. Vaguely, I heard him saying something about understanding and obligation, commitment and future endeavors, all the buzzwords and concepts I did understand, and knew so well. Unlike what I was now approaching. Still, more than ever this summer, I’d learned that it’s not just where you go, but how you choose to get there. So I pulled that sign off the green bike – ENJOY YOUR RIDE! – and went inside to take the first step toward doing just that.

‘Guess what?’ Maggie said as soon as I walked into Clementine’s.

‘What?’

She clapped her hands. ‘I have a date for the prom!’

‘Guess what?’ I replied.

‘What?’

‘I don’t.’ Her mouth dropped open. ‘Oh, and,’ I added, ‘I bought a bike.’

‘What?’ she said, but I was already walking past her. I heard her fall in behind me, yelling to some customers by the jeans that she’d be with them in a second, and when I pushed open the door to the office, she was right on my heels.

‘Okay, let’s just slow down.’ She held up her hands, palms facing me. ‘First things first. What do you mean, you don’t have a date?’

‘Just that,’ I said, sitting down at the desk. ‘Jason bailed on me.’

‘Again?’

I nodded.

‘When?’

‘About twenty minutes ago.’

‘Oh, my God.’ She put a hand over her mouth: her expression was so horrified, like someone had died. ‘That’s the worst thing ever.’

‘No,’ I said, swallowing. ‘It’s actually not.’

‘No?’

I shook my head. ‘The worst thing is that right afterward, I marched right into the bike shop to ask Eli to go with me, and he said no.’

She threw up her other hand, clapping it over the one already covering her mouth. ‘Holy crap,’ she said, her voice muffled. ‘Where does the bike come in?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, waving my hand. ‘That part’s kind of a blur.’

Her eyes widened, and she dropped her hands, sticking her head back out in the hallway. After checking on the customers, she whipped out her phone. ‘Don’t move,’ she said, fingers flying over the keyboard. ‘I’m calling for backup.’

‘Maggie.’ I groaned. ‘Please don’t.’

‘Too late.’ She pushed one last button. ‘It’s done.’

Which was how, twenty minutes later, I found myself sitting in the same spot, now surrounded by not only Maggie but also Leah and Esther, with a large cup of coffee and two packs of chocolate cupcakes on the desk in front of me.

‘Cupcakes?’ Maggie said to Esther. ‘Really?’

‘I panicked,’ Esther replied. ‘What kind of snack does a situation like this call for?’

Leah thought for a moment. ‘The pharmaceutical kind.’

‘Well, they don’t have that at the Gas/Gro. So cupcakes it is.’ Esther looked at me. ‘Okay. We’re all here now. What happened?’

I picked up the coffee, taking a sip, and immediately wanted to drain the whole thing. Instead, I told them.

It wasn’t like I had a solid plan when I pulled open the bike shop door. All I could think was that here I had another chance, and this time, I was going to do it right.

It seemed like the best sign possible, maybe even ideal, that I spotted Eli the minute I stepped inside the door. He was behind the counter, his back to me, stuffing something into a duffel bag, and seeing him, I had the same reaction I’d had for weeks now, a sudden embarrassment about how I’d acted, followed by an urge to run in the other direction as fast as I could. Instead, I gripped the sign in my hand even tighter, and pressed on.

‘Hey,’ I said as I came up on the counter. My voice sounded loud and ragged, rushed, and I told myself to take a breath. Which got considerably more difficult as he turned around to face me.

‘Hey.’ He was looking at me with a wary expression. ‘What’s up?’

In a perfect world, I would have eased into what I had to say gradually. Worked up to it, phrasing it neatly and succinctly with all the right adjectives. As it was, I just blurted out, ‘Do you remember that first time we went bowling?’

Eli raised his eyebrows. Then he looked in the repair room behind him, where, distantly, I could see Adam and Wallace, standing in the door that led out to the back alley, their backs to us. ‘Yeah,’ he said after a moment. ‘Why?’

I swallowed, the sound seeming incredibly loud in my own ears. ‘I was all annoyed, because I wasn’t good at it. And you said I shouldn’t have expected to be, because I’d never done it before, and what mattered was that I keep trying.’

‘Right,’ he said slowly. ‘I remember.’

I knew I was on the verge of losing my nerve. I could literally feel it slipping away, second by second, like a wave slowly pulling itself back out to sea. But I kept going anyway.

‘That’s what happened with us,’ I said. ‘With me. What we were doing… what we had… it was my first time. You know, where it mattered. And I wasn’t good at it. I sucked, actually.’

He narrowed his eyes. Oh, Jesus, I thought. That didn’t come out right.