Along for the Ride

  He was getting out of his car, which was parked right by the top of the boardwalk. When he turned and saw me, he stiffened, then lifted a hand to wave.

  ‘Auden,’ he called out, hurrying closer. ‘I’ve been trying to call you.’

  I had a flash of my phone, which I was pretty sure I’d left on the kitchen table. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’ve been running around all morning.’

  ‘Your stepmother said,’ he replied. ‘I finally looked up your dad’s home number. Luckily there are only a couple of Wests here.’

  Behind him, I could see Adam coming out of the bike shop, wheeling a red bike with a sign that said READY TO GO! hanging from its handlebars. He parked it by the bench, then went back inside, the door banging behind him.

  ‘So look,’ Jason said. ‘I need to talk to you about tonight.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m not…’ He stopped, then took a breath. ‘I’m not going to be able to make it.’

  I was surprised by the way I reacted, hearing this. My face flushed, my heartbeat jumped. It was like every time I got on the bike, a mix of fear and inevitability, all at once. ‘You’re canceling on me?’ I said. ‘Seriously? Again?’

  ‘I know.’ He winced. ‘It’s totally rude of me. I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again.’

  This was when I was supposed to proclaim otherwise. I didn’t. I just waited for the excuse, because there always was one.

  ‘It’s just, there’s this speaker coming today to the conference,’ he said quickly. ‘She’s a leader in student activism, has really made some big changes at Harvard, where she went undergrad, and now Yale, where she’s in law school. I mean, incredible policy-changing stuff. So she’s a great contact for me.’

  I said nothing as Adam came out once again, this time pushing a smaller green bike. It had fatter tires, a glossy black seat, and was polished so clean it was glinting in the sun. ENJOY YOUR RIDE! said its sign, which was swinging in the breeze.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jason continued, ‘her talk is this afternoon, but then she’s going to dinner with a select few attendees to talk about some of her experiences one on one. No first years were supposed to be invited, but apparently she’d heard about that recycling initiative I did junior year, so…’

  I was listening, even as I watched Adam push out another bike, this one a two-seater. YOU’LL LOOK SWEET! said its sign, with a heart around it.

  ‘It’s just,’ Jason finished finally. ‘It’s something I have to do. I’m sorry.’

  Right then, I realized something. I wasn’t upset that Jason was ditching me. That racing of my heart, the flushing of my face I was feeling: it was what happened when you got hurt, true, but also when you got back up and went on. Maybe Jason had never been meant to be part of my second chance anyway, and this was just the push that I, and fate, needed.

  ‘You know what?’ I said to him. ‘It’s fine.’

  He blinked at me. ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’ I took a breath, making sure this true. Weirdly, it was. ‘I’m okay with this.’

  ‘You are?’ I nodded. ‘Oh, God, Auden, thanks for understanding. I figured you’d be so angry with me! But you of all people understand the academic thing, right? I mean, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and…’

  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.

  ‘At being with you,’ I added quickly. ‘I was bad at, you know, us. It was all new to me. I screwed it up because I didn’t know what I was doing, and that scared me so I didn’t even want to try. It’s like the bike. Which you were also right about, by the way.’

  It was very, very quiet in the shop all around us, which made all of this sound that much more loud. In fact, I probably would have been completely humiliated, if I’d let my words catch up with me. All the more reason to keep going.

  ‘What I’m saying,’ I said, because God knew I needed some clarification, ‘is that I’m sorry. You can call it crazy, or call it chicken salad, or whatever. But I want to do what you said, keep trying. So I’m doing that by coming here and asking you to go to the prom with me tonight.’

  ‘Yo, Eli!’ I heard Wallace yell, suddenly, from behind him. ‘Train’s leaving. Time to go!’

  Eli didn’t respond, though. He was still looking at me, his face serious. As I stared back at him I tried to remember all those hours we’d spent together, and how they’d begun and ended in pretty much this very same space. Because of this, it seemed more right than ever to be there now, when I’d know for sure whether we’d continue, or end for good. I knew, too, that these were the two possibilities. But for some reason, I figured he’d pick the other one.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. And the thing was, it seemed true as he picked up his bag, slinging it over one shoulder. ‘But I can’t.’

  I felt myself nod stupidly. And then, with one last look – intense, and almost sad – he was gone, turning his back and walking through the office, past Adam and Wallace, and out of sight. A second later, the door banged shut behind him. Done.

  ‘Auden!’ I turned my head, still stunned, to see Adam coming toward me. ‘Are you looking for Eli? Because he just –’

  ‘No,’ I said too quickly. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Oh. Okay.’ He glanced at Wallace, who shrugged. ‘Well, is there something else you needed?’

  I was really just looking for a way to save face, to get out of there gracefully. But then, I looked down again at the sign still in my hand – ENJOY YOUR RIDE! – and it seemed, suddenly, to be just that. A sign.

  ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘There is one thing.’

  ‘Call it chicken salad?’ Esther laughed, clapping her hands.

  ‘That is so retro! I haven’t heard that since grade school.’

  ‘I,’ Leah said, ‘never understood what that meant.’

  ‘So that’s how you ended up with the bike,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Bike?’ Leah said. ‘What does a bike have to do with any of this?’

  ‘I just bought one,’ I told her. ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Because she also just learned how to ride one,’ Maggie explained. ‘I’ve been teaching her every morning, on the sly. She never knew before.’

  ‘Really?’ Esther looked at me. ‘Wow. That’s impressive.’

  ‘That I didn’t know, or I learned?’ I asked.

  Esther considered this. ‘Both,’ she said finally.

  ‘People! Let’s stay focused.’ Leah turned to me. ‘Okay, so Eli shot you down. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s just incredibly humiliating, and now I can never face him again.’

  ‘I wonder why he said no?’ Maggie mused.

  ‘Because he’s Eli,’ I told her.

  Leah rolled her eyes. ‘That’s a statement, not an explanation.’

  ‘What I mean is,’ I said, ‘I know what he’s like. I had my chance with him, and I blew it. So he’s done.’

  ‘Wait.’ Esther held up her hand. ‘Back up. When were you and Eli an item?’

  Once again, I had everyone’s attention as I said, ‘Um, we were hanging out a lot, a few weeks back.’

  ‘Doing what?’ Leah asked.

  I thought of Eli and me, in the car, driving through the dark streets of Colby, alone and together, all those nights. Shopping, eating, talking, questing. We’d done so much it seemed impossible to narrow it down to any one word. So instead, I decided to go with the one thing we hadn’t done, at least until the very end. ‘We couldn’t sleep,’ I said. ‘So we were just up, together.’

  ‘Until you blew it,’ Esther said, clarifying.

  I nodded.

  ‘What’d you do?’

  I looked down at my cold coffee. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Something happened, and I got scared and pulled away.’

  ‘Okay, well, that’s not vague,’ Leah said.

  ‘Leah!’ Esther said.

  ‘What? “Something happened”? What does that mean?’ They all looked at me again, and under their gazes I realized that this, too, was a point where I usually pulled back. Folded into myself, hiding away. But considering what I’d already been through that day, it seemed only fitting to go for broke. ‘My dad and Heidi separating,’ I said. ‘It… it kicked up a lot of stuff for me. And I dealt with it the way I did when my parents split.’

  ‘Which was?’ Esther asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Throwing myself into books and school, basically blocking everyone out. Especially anyone who might call me on it.’

  ‘Like Eli,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Especially Eli,’ I replied. ‘We’d had this one night where we really connected… and the next day, I just shut down on him. It was so stupid of me.’

  ‘Did you tell him that, though?’ Maggie asked. ‘Today?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘But like I said, it was too late. He’s done.’

  There was a moment of quiet as this was processed and considered. I picked up the pack of cupcakes, then put them back down.

  ‘Well,’ Leah said finally, ‘I say, screw it.’

  ‘Leah.’ Esther sighed. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘No, really. So you’re humiliated. It happens. And who needs boys anyway? We’ll all just go to the prom together tonight and have a good time.’

  ‘I thought,’ Esther said to her, ‘that you were determined to have a date, or you weren’t going.’

  ‘That was before I’d exhausted all my options,’ Leah explained. ‘Now, I’m embracing my single status and just hanging with the girls. Like we all are. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Esther said.

  They both looked at me. I said, ‘You know, having been rejected twice, I’m thinking I might just stay home.’

  ‘What?’ Leah shook her head. ‘That’s a total quitter attitude.’

  ‘Twice,’ I said again, holding up two fingers. ‘In fifteen minutes, within a hundred feet of each other. What’s next? An anvil on my head?’

  ‘This,’ Esther said to me, ‘is exactly when you need to go out with the girls. It’s a textbook situation. You go with us, we dance together, you’ll feel better. Right, Mags?’

  I hadn’t noticed until right then that Maggie had kind of shrunk back toward the door, one foot actually already out in the hall. When we all turned our attention to her, she flushed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Actually…’

  Silence. Then Leah said, ‘Actually what?’

  ‘I kind of have a date.’

  ‘What?’ Esther said. ‘What happened to sisterhood?’

  ‘You guys were totally blowing that off up until this very second!’ Maggie protested. ‘How was I supposed to know you’d actually come around?’

  ‘If you tell me you’re going with Jake Stock,’ Leah warned, ‘my head is going to explode.’

  ‘No.’ Maggie flushed again, then looked down at her hands. ‘Adam asked me.’

  Leah and
Esther looked at each other. Then at Maggie. Then at each other again. ‘Holy crap,’ Esther said, exhaling. ‘Finally!’

  ‘No shit,’ Leah said. ‘He finally got up the nerve!’

  Maggie brightened, stepping back into the office. ‘So you’re not mad?’

  ‘Of course we are,’ Leah said.

  ‘But,’ Esther added, ‘we’re also happy that this sexual tension that’s been going on for years –’

  ‘Years,’ Leah agreed.

  ‘– will finally be resolved, one way or another,’ Esther finished.

  ‘Oh, it’s not like that,’ Maggie said, flipping her hand. ‘We’re just going as friends.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re not.’

  She looked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘He likes you,’ I told her. ‘He told me. And I’m telling you because if you blow your chance, you’ll be really sorry. Trust me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I heard someone yell from the sales floor. ‘Is anyone working here?’

  ‘Whoops,’ Maggie said, turning around.

  ‘I’m on it,’ Esther told her, brushing past her to the hallway. Leah followed her, tossing her cup in the trash as she went. A moment later I heard them burst out, already chattering at the customer, as if to compensate for the silence.

  Maggie leaned against the doorjamb, looking in at me as I sat back in the office chair. ‘I wish you’d reconsider about tonight,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s still a memory worth having, even if it’s not exactly what you imagined.’

  ‘I know,’ I told her. ‘But honestly, I just don’t think I have it in me.’

  ‘Well, if you change your mind, we’ll be there. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She nodded, then pushed off the door, heading back to work. ‘Oh, I meant to tell you,’ she said. ‘Your bike? It’s awesome.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘A Gossie with Whiplash cranks, a Tweedle fork, and those fat Russel tires? You can’t go wrong.’

  I sighed. ‘Well. At least I’ll be leaving at the end of the summer with something.’

  ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that was already the case.’