“Okay,” Andy said.
Morgan looked at him. What do you think of me now? she wanted to ask. Do you look down on me? Do you think I’m dirty, or dumb? Are you hoping I’ll sleep with you because I slept with some other guy? But Andy didn’t seem to be thinking any of those things. Maybe she’d underestimated him. Maybe he was better than that.
That, somehow, made Morgan feel even worse.
“You’ll help me?” she made herself ask him. Andy swallowed hard, then nodded.
“Sure,” he told her. “Whatever you need.”
Abby
She’d tried her hardest to avoid Sebastian, but it felt like everywhere she turned, every time she looked over her shoulder, there he was, pedaling along, smiling at her. When they’d stopped at Utica Bread that morning, before they’d gotten on the trail, he’d ordered her a chocolate croissant. That afternoon, at lunch, he’d offered her a packet of electrolyte powder to dump into her water bottle. That night at dinner in Syracuse, at Dinosaur Barbecue, he’d asked the waitress for an extra pitcher of water and kept her glass full. “So tell me,” he said, nudging a plate of corn bread toward her, then making a show of pulling out his skinny reporter’s notebook, “how you got started riding your bike?”
Abby pushed her plate away, and sat her hands flat on the table, thinking about how to begin. If she was going to be honest, she’d say, Biking saved my life. Only that sounded horrifically cheesy; not the kind of thing she could say to Sebastian. She’d never even said it to Mark.
And a guy like Sebastian had never needed his life saved, had he? The world was an endless series of red carpets for a guy like that; unrolling, one after the other, so that his feet never had to make contact with the dirt. Every door (and many pairs of legs) would open at a touch. The Sebastian Piersalls of the world glided. The Abby Sterns of the world, on the other hand? They thumped along, gracelessly. They had to hustle and grind. Or shrink.
Abby shook her hair out of its bun, then smoothed it over her shoulder, thinking about how to begin.
“My parents split up when I was thirteen. My dad moved out, to a house five miles away.” Four point seven miles, actually. Abby knew the precise distance. She’d ridden it hundreds of times as a teenager. Even after she’d gotten her license, there wasn’t always a car available for her to drive. And she’d still preferred to travel under her own power. “My parents shared custody. I spent three nights a week at my mom’s house and three nights a week at my dad’s, and I’d switch off every Saturday.”
“That must have been rough,” Sebastian said. Abby nodded, still trying not to look at him, not wanting to be so vulnerable in his presence. She still barely knew him. It was possible he was the kind of guy who would weaponize a confession to serve his own ends.
“So both of your parents got remarried?” Lincoln asked.
Abby nodded. “Right. Parents split up, dad moved out.” Abby remembered how they’d broken the news, calling her and her brother and sister into the infrequently used living room, where they both sat, her mother in an armchair, face perfectly composed, legs neatly crossed, her father on a love seat, his jeans rumpled, shirt untucked, hands dangling, looking like he’d been crying.
“Your father and I have decided to separate,” Eileen had said… and, for all the fighting they’d done, for all the times they couldn’t agree on anything, Abby had found herself dry-mouthed with shock. Eileen’s voice had been uncharacteristically gentle as she’d explained how it would work, how Abby’s dad would have an apartment nearby, until he found a house. How the kids would spend Saturday nights and Wednesday afternoons with him. How he’d call the house every night, how he’d be available to them. Abby’s father’s voice had been muted and hoarse when he’d told them, “I’ll always love you, and I’ll always be your dad.”
“You watch,” Marni had said after Abby and Simon had gathered in Marni’s bedroom. Abby’s big sister had been summoned home from college for the announcement. She’d been gone only a few months, but, in her college sweatshirt, with a blue streak of dye in her hair, she already looked like she’d outgrown their house and her brother and sister. “Either she’s got a boyfriend or he’s got a girlfriend, or both of them have someone else. And this whole ‘Dad’s got an apartment and you’ll see him twice a week’? All of that ‘I’m always going to be your father’?” She’d made a dismissive flicking gesture with one hand as Abby had stared at her, numbly, and her brother, red-faced and visibly miserable, had looked at his feet. “That won’t last six months.”
Marni had been only half-right. Eileen did have someone else. Either Gary Fenske had been waiting in the wings or Eileen had found him with impressive rapidity after her separation. But Marni was wrong about Bernie Stern, who had never given up on being a father. He’d found a house nearby, where Abby had her own bedroom. He’d gone back to school, to become ordained as a rabbi. He’d learned to cook.
Abby told Sebastian and Lincoln how her dad would make all of her favorite meals on the nights she spent at his place—chicken Parmesan, grilled sirloin, his famous Meat Loaf Surprise. “The surprise was bacon,” Abby stage-whispered. She didn’t mention how, at least once a month, her father completely forgot when it was his night and would be surprised (and try to hide it) when he got home from the synagogue and found Abby doing her homework in his kitchen. Nor did she tell him how wonderful it was when her father cooked because of what she ate at her mother’s house. Grilled boneless, skinless chicken breasts, SnackWell cookies, and Lean Cuisine were the staples of Eileen’s table. When she did cook from scratch, it felt like her goal was to remove as much fat, salt, and, subsequently, flavor from any dish she prepared.
“My dad taught me to ride my bike when I was little. Once my parents were divorced, that was how I got back and forth between their places.” She told them how, in eighth grade, she’d started taking bass lessons at the School of Rock in Philadelphia. “I had to bring Shirley with me when I changed houses on Wednesdays. I’d ride through town with a bass guitar on my back.”
“Shirley?” asked Sebastian. “Oh, wait. I get it. Shirley Bassey.”
“Exactly,” said Abby, secretly pleased that he’d gotten the reference so quickly. Mark hadn’t understood the joke, not even after Abby had explained.
She tried to tell them how her bike had given her freedom from her mother’s high standards and restrictions and her dad’s occasional cluelessness and carelessness; how being able to go to the places she chose, under her own power, had made her feel like she could take care of herself, at a time when she didn’t entirely trust either of her parents to do it. Biking was her refuge. She could escape from Eileen’s cool silences or judgmental glares, her mother’s meals of barely dressed salads and unbuttered sweet potatoes. She could get away from her father’s hurt looks and heavy sighs, the chagrined look on his face when she was forced to tell him that there was no food in the refrigerator or no gas in the car or that he’d forgotten about her recital or performance or dentist appointment.