He grinned at my obvious joy. “I thought you might.”
“Seriously, I’m this close to buying one secondhand,” I said. “My parents would flip if they ever found out, but that felt too good.”
“You’re such an adrenaline junkie,” Pin said. “I can’t believe you never tried a bike before.”
I shrugged. “I just didn’t think I was a biker person.”
It was the truth plain and simple. I had never seen a group of bikers and thought, “Ah, yes, now that’s where I belong.” But one ride behind Pin had me rethinking that.
“You might need some lessons before you’re ready for your own bike,” Pin said. “I’m happy to teach you.”
I threw my arms out to show how ready I was. “When can we start?”
Pin reached out and grabbed one of my hands, seemingly on impulse. He pulled me close to him and placed a big kiss on my lips. It was a fun quick kiss. The kind of kiss you gave your significant other in public, just because you can’t help yourself.
He pulled back, and I smiled to let him know I was ok with it. He kept holding my hand as he led me towards the boardwalk.
“That’s one of my favorite rides,” Pin said. “I like to have the highway under me and the ocean to my side.”
“It was beautiful,” I said.
“And there’s a place over here that has the best ice cream,” he said.
The sun was out, and it was the perfect day for ice cream. I never would have guessed that a mint chocolate chip cone tasted best after riding several miles on the bike of a bike with a helmet making you sweat. Pin and I sat on a bench and enjoyed our cones.
When I was a little girl, my parents would ask me what I wanted to do with my free time. I would wake up on a Saturday, and my mother would say, “What should we do today?” My dad would say, “You pick our activity.”
And every single time I would answer the same way: “Something we’ve never done before.”
My parents would get frustrated. They would want me to come up with specifics, but I didn’t have specific plans in mind, I just wanted something new.
“What about the park?” my dad would say. “You like the park.”
“Or we could do finger painting,” my mom would say. “You enjoyed that last time.”
They were right. I did like the park. I did like finger painting. But I had already done those things.
I don’t know why I thought of that sitting next to Pin near the beach. And once I remembered, I started to wonder when my parents had just stopped bothering to ask. Them not asking hadn’t changed anything. I still knew what I wanted.
The question tickling the back of my mind was if it might be ok to do the same thing more than once with a person who was interesting enough to make every single time feel different. Because, maybe, I did want to take another ride with Pin. And maybe I would be more than happy to take the same route and get off at the same boardwalk and go get the same ice cream. If it was with Pin.
I sighed and stared out over the waves. They were a deep blue today, and the tips sparkled and gleamed like buried treasure. That question was not going to be answered in one day.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Pin asked.
I glanced up at him through my lashes. “They’re not for sale.”
Then I reached over and grabbed his hand and just held it in mine. I would start worrying about the investigation later. I would wonder about what feelings were real and which emotions were just part of the case.
I would think about all that later.
For now, I just wanted to be a girl sitting with a guy, after a pretty amazing date.
Fifteen
Pin
A perfect hook-up was one thing. A perfect evening spent watching TV and chatting, while harder to come by, was still possible.
