“Oh,” I say with a raise of my brow as I lean against my bike, “that changes everything, then, doesn’t it?”
I listen as she talks to me about her week and all of the goings-on in her life – her newest loose tooth and how much money she hopes the tooth fairy will bring her, her current favorite thing to do in her school’s playground, and what she ate for dinner tonight – laughing as I watch the evening sun disappear from the sky.
At least fifteen minutes pass before my brother can be heard for the third time, telling her that it’s time to brush her teeth andget ready for bed, to which she responds with an exasperated sigh that I’d expect to come out of a teenager.
“Be nice to your parents, they’re old,” I tell her as I pull my key from its place in my pocket. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?”
“Okay,” she pouts. “Miss you.”
“Yeah, you too, monster,” I chuckle. “G’night.”
“How’s Katie?” Connor calls to me from his perch on the seat of his bike as I clip my phone into the mount above my gas tank.
I cross the few parking spaces between us, running a hand along the bike’s lime green tank with a low whistle as I reach it.
“She’s seven going on seventeen,” I answer. Using my chin, I gesture toward his bike. “She looks clean. You off to a meet?”
He nods as he pulls up the zipper on his jacket. “You should come with me.”
My eyes scan from his bike to mine while I consider for too many moments too long taking his offer. He revs his engine with a suggestive quirk of his brow to tease me until I finally shake my head.
“I gotta get home,” I tell him with a pat to his shoulder as I move toward my own bike. Stopping as I’m just about to throw my leg over the bike, I say, “Hey, you said yousawJules throwing up last night?”
“No, I just ran into her in the bathroom,” he says with a shake of his head.
I hum as I slide my helmet over my head, offering Connor a quick two-finger wave as he pulls out of his parking space and leaves the lot.
I don’t take my usual scenic route home tonight – and by scenic, I mean the route with which I can occasionally manage to get myself a two-second glimpse of the beach as I zoom past it. Instead, I keep to the back roads and a series of questionably-legal detours to get myself home as quickly as possible.
Without pulling off my helmet, I dial Julia’s number as I pull into the garage and step off of my bike, making my way toward our shelving unit as the line rings.
I reach for a high shelf, shoving aside a smaller helmet to bring down hers; white, adorned with a pink bow printed at the top of it. The suit that I pull down for her matches both in color and style. She’d promised that, if I got her ‘cute’ gear, she’d try to get over her fears and ride with me more often.
That was almost five years ago now, and she’s only been out for a small handful of rides since.
“You’re calling me from the garage?” Jules giggles through my Cardo as the door to the house pulls open and her head pokes out of it. Her eyes move to the gear in my hands and she shakes her head. “No.”
“It’ll be good for you,” I insist.
“I’ll fall off,” she argues.
“When have I ever let you fall off?”
A playful smile crosses her face, and for just a split second, she looks the same way that she did when I brought home my first bike. I think she slapped me across the arm fourteen times that day, squealed fifty times, and when I finally got her on the road with me, I couldn’t count the number of times that she screamed.
“You have to go slow,” she tells me as she finally breaches the doorway and steps closer to me. “And don’t do any tricks, okay?”
“I promise,” I laugh. “Both wheels on the ground and both feet on the pegs.”
I help her into her suit, pulling the zipper to secure it into place while she ties a pair of low-hanging braids into her hair. As I gently slide her helmet into place and secure the strap beneath her chin, she reaches up to slap my visor shut with a giggle.
Hooking my fingers underneath her helmet, I pull her closer to me and raise my visor to offer her a warning look, met with only another giggle in response.
“Please don’t let me fall off,” she pleads.
Moving my hand to the top of her helmet, I playfully give her head a shake before pushing down her visor and moving toward my bike. Jules stops to blow a kiss to the guardian bell secured onto the pegs for good luck before hopping on behind me.
She’s bought one for every bike that I’ve owned, but like this bike, I think this bell might be my favorite. It’s a simple silver bell, embossed with a web and a spider on the front of it. Jules hates it; she’s not a bug girl, outside of butterflies and the occasional ladybug, but she was happy to put it on the bike for me.
