Bike Ride

Before it gets dark, we ride our old hand-me-down bikes slowly to the small city. There are cars and weathered gray roads and dusted sidewalks. We ride next to lanes that enclose places I want to be. Long rows of old tasteful homes painted with colors I don’t usually see in the suburbs. We talk to each other as we go. We look at each other as we talk. We move in the direction where the buildings are the tallest. We try and ride side by side but the path is too small.

I listen to the leaves of planted trees on the curbside and her telling me about things she likes. She is not from here, but from a different southern town so small most people wouldn’t realize they've just ridden through it. A place of soggy grounds and mobile homes and tangled weeds. I’m not from here either, but from a city up north that smells of exhaust and street food. She wants to grab something to eat now and doesn’t want to cook by herself again tonight.

As we ride, we talk about the kinds of things that people talk about when just being together is enough. She’s smart but talks like she is not sure of anything and I listen the way a boy does when he wants a girl to like him. I’m just a few years out from college and working as a teacher at a school that’s still named after a Civil War general and where most kids are on free or reduced lunch. She works as a counselor at a behavioral center for teens in a building that looks like an abandoned warehouse purposely placed far away from anything.

When I look at her I think of things like “hazel nuts” and “mild.” She wears a bandana over her long hair in a way I like. It’s the same one she was wearing when we first met. I remember then how she laughed easily.

I live in a small studio with off-white drywall that feels like a dentist’s office. It’s just outside the city with roads still lined with broken red bricks. We spent time at her place over this past summer. Her apartment had carpet everywhere and the rooms weren’t shaped like any shapes we learned about in grade school. Her place smelled of fresh laundry and hints of cigarette smoke. Neither of us have big lamps nor have windows where they should be.

I like that she keeps holding my hand even in moments when it would have made sense for her to let go. I like just being next to her when she does simple things, like when she stops to pet a dog or when she gets something out of her purse.

I don’t tell her everything. I’m not ready to talk about certain details of my past, though my father once warned me to be careful of silence around hard things, for the quiet before heartbreak can be sudden. She told me once about her father. Bits and pieces.

“He wasn’t around much,” she said. “He did things he shouldn’t of.” She didn’t want to see him anymore.

As we pedal in and out of areas, we talk about the buildings we see, about what we did the day before, about a movie she liked, about how it felt that day, about how warm it was. It was the kind of warm weather that forced everyone to dress like they didn’t care how they looked.

We stop at the library to check out a movie and to return one. Then we get back on our bikes and head toward a burrito place around the corner that we already knew about but never tried. We order tacos and sodas and chips and salsa. We watch people outside go by as we eat. We notice a father carrying his child over to a patch of grass holding her close to him as he goes. The sunlight through the restaurant windows reminds me of someplace else.

“Do you think it’s possible to change God’s mind?” she asks.
I don’t say anything. I don’t tell her that I think all things eventually change.

After we eat, we ride back together. It’s darker now. The sky transitions from oranges and pinks to deepening blues. I’m home and my bike is home too, tired and at rest.

I think about her. I do. I remember how her face would look as she tilted her head in my direction. How her hair touched my face when I picked something up for her. I wonder what she learned about me today.

My potted plants on the front porch need watering. The heat turns them from green to brown and then to dirt. I grab my watering can from the kitchen and head back outside. There is a family across the street getting home—an older couple and their daughter who looks my age. I’ve seen her before. I’m surprised when she waves at me. I wave back.