by Robin Lovett
I step forward, resting my bike and then my hands on the stone wall along the road. “This is why I came here.” It wasn’t for the language or French men. It was for this feeling, that I can go anywhere my mind wills, even climb mountains to breathtaking sights.
“Worth the trip?”
“Yes.” And not just the bike ride. To France. “This is what I’ve wanted, every day since I came here.” The freedom of the world, like there are no boundaries.
I thought I wanted to define my own rules, not the ones of my parents or my teachers. But that wasn’t it. I’ve wanted the freedom to define my life, the way I want to live it. I’m only discovering what that means. I can’t define my life until I know how I want to live it. I want this freedom, the limitless horizon.
I can’t believe I submitted the form to leave here early. I’m not allowed to come back here for years.
Taking the Fulbright was a mistake. I should have found some other way to come to France that would let me travel here again. But this was all I could afford.
I’m here now. I should enjoy this.
Behind me, Terrence has a very satisfied expression on his face. “It feels good, doesn’t it? The workout and then the goal at the end.”
“Yeah.” A smile transforms my face, and I can’t help it growing wider.
He wanted to give me this. This gift was not about the bike or riding with him. My body feels so alive: my muscles stronger, my limbs awake, my mind wrapped in euphoria.
Past us, the road continues upward, disappearing around the next bend. “There’s more?” I ask.
“Yup.” He follows my line of sight. “This is just the first view point. The road goes to the top of the Col d’Èze. It’s a professional grade climb. They use it for time trials in races. We ride it at least once a week.”
“You train on this?”
He nods. Pride bristles my chest and squares my shoulders. I made it up a hard hill, or part of one. Seeing the road go on makes me want to go all the way to the top. Maybe someday.
He unbuckles my helmet and cups my chin. “So worth it,” he whispers against my mouth.
His kiss is inviting, not taking or giving, just savoring. I lean into him. The excitement from the ride makes me greedy for more. My gratitude to him brews and bubbles from my mouth.
His body, his movements on the bike, those legs, and the playfulness—I wonder if he would play with me like that in bed.
I pull back and stare in surprise, searching his face. Does he know that I’m thinking about having sex with him?
His eyebrow quirks with amusement. “What?”
“Nothing.” But the denial doesn’t stop the flush running from my belly to my cheeks.
“Here. Eat this.” He hands me a protein bar and a bottle of water. “It will keep your sugar up until we get back to my place.”
I take a bite of the candy and chew, vigorously.
“The ride back is all downhill,” he says. “The descent is the best part.”
“I forgot about that.” I wiggle my hips. My sore bottom has no desire to get back on the bike seat. I forgot about it on the ride up but, ouch, it hurts now.
He pulls out his phone. “Selfie.”
I laugh. “No way.”
“Hell yes.” He turns our backs to the view and presses his cheek to mine. “Smile.” He holds up his phone, and it clicks twice.
I don’t do selfies. I think the whole thing is silly. I don’t want pictures of myself or to send them to other people. But he makes it fun. Maybe it’s more about taking the pictures than looking at them.
“Let’s go.” He hops on his bike.
It’s a balancing act to get my feet in the toe clips, and before I manage it, Terrence zooms ahead.
“Hurry up, slowpoke,” he teases from down the road. “This is the easy part.”
“I’m coming, hold on.” I spin my pedals a little, but going downhill the gear is too easy. I twist the brake levers like Terrence showed me.
It doesn’t work, or it does but I’m doing something else wrong. I try again, pushing harder, but I hear a loud clack, and it sounds like I’ve broken something. Then the pedals don’t work at all; it’s like spinning through air.
“Terrence!” I shout. “Wait up. Something’s wrong with my gears.” But before I finish, I hear a car behind me. I glance out the corner of my eye to see how close it is.
I look back for too long. When I look straight again, I’m in the middle of a hairpin turn.
There’s no way I’ll make the turn in time—I either go into the car or into the woods. I scream and squeeze my brakes as hard as I can. I try to put my feet down but they’re stuck in the damn pedals again.
The car gets closer, louder.
I squeeze the brakes until my hands burn. I get my feet out of the pedals, but too late. I go off the road, bumping over the ditch, and crash into a bush.
I land in a pile of branches and leaves. My legs are tangled in the bike, and there’s a rock jammed against my thigh.
But that’s not the worst part. It happened so fast, I barely know what happened. I hear crying and swearing, and don’t realize it’s coming from me until Terrence is beside me.
“Lia, are you okay?” He frees me from the bike, and he pulls me out of the branches, off the rock, and onto soft grass.
“I hate this—this stupid bike.” I kick it and wipe my nose. “I told you I can’t ride.”
The helmet bobs on my head, and I can’t get it off. My fingers shake too much to undo the clasp. “Get it off me!” I cry, my heart bursting with panic. “The car—it—it almost hit me.” I hiccup, and when my helmet is gone, I bury my face in my knees. “I couldn’t get the bike to stop and then it was too late to turn and I—”
Terrence wraps his arm around my shoulders. “It’s all right. You’re okay.” He rubs my arm. “You did good. Falling in the bushes is the best place to go.”
“I guess.”
“Way better than the street,” he says lightly.
“Or the car.”
“Yes. The car would have been bad.”
I smile a little and let my head flop on his shoulder. Being closer to him helps.
He kisses my forehead and hugs me. “Are you hurt or just scared?”
I internally check for pain. “Nothing’s broken.” I shift on my seat, and my hip stings. “Ow. I think I’ll have a nasty bruise from that rock.”
“Let me see your hands.” He lifts them, and there are scratches on the backs from the brambles, the heel of one hand scraped.
“Not too bad.” He mimes kisses over the rough spots.
“I broke the bike.”
“Broke? I doubt it.” He picks up the bike and clears away the branches. “The chain fell off. No big deal.” He fiddles with the gears and the brakes, then turns the pedals, fixing it like he’s lacing a pair of shoes.
“Want me to call Gary?” he says. “He can pick us up.”
He’s too nice. My mother would say, You’re not hurt. Get back on the bike. My father would tease me that I can never be a doctor if I cry over a bike crash.
“I’m okay,” I say. Part of it is bravado, I don’t want to be weak, but also, my wounds aren’t that bad. “How far is it?”
“Not far. Twenty minutes, coasting down to the Promenade. Can you make it?”
“I think so.”
He helps me stand. “I’ll make you a smoothie when we get there.” He wiggles his eyebrows, like it’s sexy.
I laugh. “A smoothie?”
“Best ride recovery drink ever.”
The words “I should go home and work” threaten at the back of my throat. But he’s looking at me the way he does. Like he wants to spend more time with me. His optimism is contagious.
“Okay.”
“Good.” He pecks a kiss on m
y cheek and hands me my bike.
Chapter Sixteen
It hurts. The bike seat pokes me in places a girl should never be poked, and my bruised thigh throbs like a motherfu—I mean, something not good. Terrence carries both our bikes up the stairs to his apartment. I waddle behind him, aching the whole way.
He stacks our bikes by the rest of the team’s fleet and opens the door for me. “I’ll get you some ice.”
Light from the wall of windows permeates the room. I limp into the apartment with a growling stomach. I could eat two croissants, right now.
The silence in the space is deafening. It screams intimacy, and while part of the reason I’ve come is for, hopefully, more kisses, now that I’m here I’m too nervous to think about it.
With the house empty, the opportunity is glaring: we could have sex right now.
“Have a seat.” He pulls out a chair from the table and hands me a bag of ice, and I sit and clutch it to my thigh.
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry about you crashing,” he says. “I shouldn’t have ridden ahead of you like that.”
Maybe he’s not thinking of sex. Maybe I’m just a perv.
“I’m okay, Terrence. Don’t worry. I’m not a doll.”
He nods. “Smoothie time.” With a lift to his step, he parades to the kitchen and pulls food from the fridge, a blender from the cabinet.
“Isn’t anyone else home?” I ask.
“Not sure. They must have gone for a ride.” He takes off his sweatshirt and tosses it on a chair next to me. “Though I’m surprised Caroline isn’t home.”
I shouldn’t be here. I should be at the school or at home studying.
The blender motor erupts in the silence, so loudly I leap in my seat. The buzzing fills the apartment, then stops.
A vibrant blue jersey hangs over a chair, and I ask, “What does BG stand for?”
Terrence pours a creamy purple froth into two glasses and chuckles. “You haven’t looked it up?”
“No. What kind of name is it?”
He hands me a smoothie glass and sits in the chair opposite me. A smile brightens his eyes; he’s suppressing laughter. “You’ll never believe me.”
“Why?” I take a gulp of smoothie.
“It stands for Bimbo Grande.”
I laugh and choke on my drink.
He pounds my back. “Sorry, should’ve said it after you swallowed.”
I spout words between coughs. “You’re serious?”
“You know what bimbo means in Italian?”
My eyes water from too much laughing and too much coughing, but the way he says the word differently this time, with an Italian accent—bee-mbo instead of bimbo—clarifies it. “It’s short for bambino. Baby.”
“Sergio’s company started out as a baby furniture store. They’ve branched out into bigger things, but that’s the name he’s stuck with.”
“So you guys are racing in jerseys that basically say ‘big bimbo’.”
“By contract, we can’t ride or train in anything else.”
“Wow.”
He doesn’t quit smiling. “Ralph wears a baby bib to team presentations sometimes. We own it. It’s funny. We’re a real underdog team, though. The big ones are all sponsored by banks or cell companies. Us? Sponsored by a baby store.”
“That is not what I expected.” My coughing calmed, I take another drink of smoothie. It sloshes down my throat, a hearty mixture of sweet and satisfying.
“Good, right?”
“Uh-huh. What’s in it?” I take two more slugs.
“Yogurt, honey, fruit from the market, aaaand—veggie protein powder.”
I grimace. “Yuck.”
“But you don’t taste it.”
“I guess that’s what makes it filling. I would be eating a croissant right now.”
He frowns. “The pastries are really heavy with sugar and butter. I can’t eat those.”
My eyes are wide. “Not at all?” I don’t think I could give up croissants for anything.
He shrugs. “I’ve got to get over the Alps this July if I want to win in Paris. The more weight I shave off, the easier it will be.”
“But you’re all muscle.” I gesture at his torso. “I don’t think there’s any fat left on you.”
He leans back with a very satisfied smirk. He flings his arm over the back of the chair, his chest exposed, his legs spread. “By normal standards. But I’m not normal.”
His sex appeal radiates and cascades over me. He’s turning it on, on purpose, his cocky pride in his masculinity. I should scoff at him or hide my reaction, but I can’t. The way he sits directs my eyes lower.
I resist and hide my eyes in another gulp of smoothie.
“How much trouble will you be in tomorrow?” he asks.
“Huh?”
“For calling in sick?”
I lick smoothie from my lips. He shouldn’t be allowed to sit there, looking like that, and then ask me a serious question.
My anxiety about calling in sick this morning returns. “I need to get back to work.” I back out my chair.
“Wait. Tell me about teaching. You don’t like it?”
“It’s a lot harder than I expected.”
“How come?”
I could talk about generic stuff, how my students don’t do their homework and never pay attention. But I’m surprised—I want to tell him about the harder stuff. It’s never come up between us—my Filipino-ness. I’m reluctant to mention it, not because I’m ashamed or don’t want him to know, there are just so many divides between us.
He leans forward, his eyes round, his mouth downturned. “What’s wrong? You look so worried.”
The need to tell him spurs me. “I have trouble with some of my students believing I’m an American.”
He scowls. “What? Why?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “Because I’m not white.”
“Oh, yeah.” He scratches his neck. “That.”
I hate the awkwardness. “Yeah.”
“What do they say?” His question is hesitant; he’s trying to be delicate. It’s a delicate thing. I wish it wasn’t.
“Nothing too bad. Just offhand things that they don’t even realize are racist.”
“Oh, that sucks.” He looks at his fingers. “So, what are you, exactly?”
I stiffen. I’m not playing the guessing game again. “I’m American.”
“No, I know.” He holds out his hands, and his words rush out. “It’s just, well, I’m German. Pennsylvania Dutch, actually. My great-grandmother grew up speaking German. So, I mean, where’s your family originally from?”
My shoulders relax. He’s just trying to learn more about me. As much as I’m an American by birth, my heritage is part of me. It’s worth sharing with him. “My parents are from the Philippines. But I was born in the States.”
“And your students don’t believe you?”
“Some of them. It’s like they can’t comprehend how I can be both Filipina and American.”
“Do you call them on it? Explain it.”
I adjust the ice on my leg. “Sometimes. I don’t like bringing it up.”
“But they’re the ones bringing it up. You’re the teacher. Teach them. They don’t know unless you tell them.” He spreads his arms, and I’m struck by his magnetism. If it were him, he’d tell them, right away, probably find a way to make a joke of it. He wouldn’t let it pass without a word the way I do.
Being around him makes it seem so easy. I can do it. It’s my classroom. I am the teacher, even if I still feel like a student most of the time.
“I bet you’re a hot teacher.”
“You did not just say that.”
“I did.” He licks his lips, drawing my eyes to his mouth.
The silence of our
aloneness echoes again.
I look at my empty smoothie glass, but my breath gets faster, knowing he’s still staring. He’s touching me with his eyes. I like it. It tingles down my belly, and my legs shift in discomfort.
My bag of ice drops with a crack.
He picks it up before I do. “Let me help.” He holds the bag to my thigh, not actually touching me, the ice separating me from his hand. It becomes an icy burn, as if him touching the bag turns it to a frigid heat that both broils my insides and chills my skin.
His eyes graze my chest, leaving a fiery trail, and my nipples like it. I cross my arms to hide them. But it attracts his attention more, and his brown eyes dilate to whiskey-gold. They entrance me, like I’m slipping inside a tunnel of temptation.
Voices ricochet from the stairwell, and the front door pops open.
I sit to attention and grab the ice pack, expecting Terrence to take back his hand. He doesn’t. He stays there, leaning toward me, staring at me, his hand on my leg.
Gary enters, followed by a woman. He sees Terrence and says, “What are you doing back? Why aren’t your legs up?”
Terrence looks at me. “I had other plans. What’s your excuse?”
“Shopping.” Gary holds up bags.
The woman turns toward me, and she is pre-heh-gnant. Her round belly precedes her to the table. She can’t be much older than me, twenty-five at most. Terrence gives her his chair.
“Thanks.” She sits down and looks at me. “I’m Caroline. Who are you?” She has straight brown hair to her shoulders, a pale complexion and a stern mouth.
“I’m Aurelia.”
“What are you doing here?” Her abruptness is bridging on rude, but she seems tired so I’m willing to give her some room for judgment.
“Caroline,” Terrence says. “I told you about Aurelia.”
“I know I did,” Gary says, putting shopping bags in the hallway. “She was here for the Mardi Gras light show.”
“Oh yeah?” She reclines in the chair, rubbing her belly.
“I took her home from Sergio’s party last night,” Terrence says.
“Really?” Caroline’s eyes narrow at me. “So she’s not a one-nighter?”
My stomach plummets.
