I opened the garage, and I took my new bike out onto the driveway. “Don’t go too fast,” I told Joe. “I haven’t done this in a lot of years. A lot of years. I had a perm the last time I rode a bike.”
“Wow, that’s a long time ago,” Joe said, and smiled at me. He had a nice smile, and he was free with it. Nothing seemed to bother him. Nothing. Not my hangover hair or global warming or cellulite or traffic. “Don’t worry. I’m not in a hurry. I’m more of a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of guy.”
It had been a long time since I had smelled roses. My husband, Steve, wasn’t a big flowers guy. One time he went to the Super Bowl with his office colleagues, and he brought me back peanut packets from the airplane. They were good peanuts, toffee covered, but it was a typical Steve gift. For my birthdays, he would hand me his American Express card and tell me to get myself something nice. I always appreciated that because Steve wasn’t a good shopper, so he knew I would get myself something nicer than he could.
Still, a bouquet of flowers now and then would have been nice. When I won him back, I would have to let him know how much I liked flowers, so he would give them to me.
“Ready?” Joe asked, waking me up from my thoughts.
I got on my bike. “What if we get hit by a car?”
“We’re going to take a trail, so no traffic. It’s up here a few blocks.”
“I guess I’m ready,” I said, but I didn’t quite know what I was ready for.
CHAPTER 9
“Selling Protein Drinks on Instagram”
I followed Joe up the street. He was true to his word about taking it easy. The trail started out flat and straight, and it followed the river. It was a lovely day, warm and sunny with a nice breeze. It almost made me want to be alive, despite the jackhammer against my head. It wasn’t as loud of a jackhammer as it was when I first woke up, but it still pounded every minute or so just to remind me that I shouldn’t drink.
Joe was careful to stay by my side, even though I was moving at little more than a crawl. “Nice trail, right?” he asked. I nodded in reply. I still wasn’t comfortable talking while I rode the bicycle. I needed to concentrate fully on my fear of falling. My hands were wrapped around the handlebars in a death grip. My knuckles were white, and I was feeling a burn begin in my upper arms from the exertion. So far, my legs were doing fine. I guess that was because we were going so slowly that I only needed to pedal once every few feet.
“Nice that the city made the trail next to the river so we could enjoy the view,” Joe continued. “There’s a picnic spot a couple miles up, too. Right on the banks of the river. There’s a fire pit and a picnic table.”
“Are we having a picnic?” I asked and was ashamed of the sound of hope in my voice, even though I had just consumed a mocha and two bear claws on top of a hangover.
“What’re your thoughts on baked ziti?” he asked.
“Pretty much all of my thoughts on baked ziti are good, all except for my thoughts about not having any baked ziti.”
“I make a mean baked ziti,” Joe commented.
I took in his words and rearranged them in my mind until I thought I understood what he meant when he talked about making a mean baked ziti. “Are you going to bake ziti for me? Is that what’s happening?” I asked, swerving my bicycle as I spoke. “Are we bicycling to your house?”
“It’s on the trail. I thought you would like to see it. There’s a view and some other things I wanted to show you.”
“And baked ziti?”
“And baked ziti,” he agreed. I dared to turn my head and saw him smile at me. He had a very nice smile. Still, I wondered if baked ziti was a euphemism for something I wasn’t prepared to give or consume. And then I wondered if baked ziti was a pretext for something I wasn’t prepared to give or consume. But I kept on pedaling, following Joe to his house.
The trail started an uphill climb, which I was surprised to find was manageable. I should have been concerned about going to Joe’s home. After all, he was more or less a stranger, and I didn’t know where he lived. Maybe he lived in an area with no cell service, not that I had brought my cell phone. Maybe he was a serial killer. Maybe he had a bone farm, and he wanted to add my bones to it. Maybe he wanted me to join his MLM and sell protein drinks on Instagram. The joke was on him. I didn’t have Instagram. So, I should have been concerned about following him to his home. But he was such a comforting presence. He made me feel calm when I was around him, so I trusted him. Besides, I couldn’t turn down pasta. It might come with garlic bread and a dessert. Joe had never let me down before. He was always delivering delicious snacks. He knew my tastes.
He would definitely serve dessert.
It took forty-five minutes to get there. At one point, we turned off the paved trail to a dirt trail that wove between trees and rocks and finally opened up to a large meadow above the town. There was a large farmhouse on the meadow, two bungalows, a couple of barns, and two shacks, all built in a large circle around about two acres of sublime meadow. In the very center was a large fire pit and a ring of wooden lawn chairs.
Joe got off his bike and helped me off mine. “You live here?” I asked.
He gestured to the meadow and the group of structures. “Welcome to my home.”
“Which one?” I asked.
He smiled, sheepishly. “All of them. The whole property. Although, I live in the farmhouse.”
“You own a compound?”
“I own a compound. It came on the market, and I knew it was my kind of place.”
