BICYCLE

I almost drove past her. The only reason I noticed her, probably, was the rain. 

I wanted to be home after a long day. Nothing else, really, was on my mind. I hadn’t even turned on the radio. But the sheets of rain flowing down the windshield, hammering the roof of my cheap little car, made me have to focus to see anything, leaning forward. 

That’s when I saw her.

She was riding a bicycle along the side of the narrow, windy road. Or, really, she wasn’t riding, not really. She was walking the bike along the shoulder of the road, the pedals swinging uselessly, sometimes backwards. But every few steps, she would try to swing her leg over the bike, then jump back and start walking again. 

With the hood of her black raincoat up and her shoulders hunched, it was hard to tell at first that she was a girl. It seems to me that men are more likely to be guilty of the poor planning that must have led up to a bike ride in the pouring rain. Only when I was close enough to notice that she was wearing a pleated skirt and knee high socks did I also realize she was headed in the same direction as me — that’s how slow she was moving. At her rate, she might as well not have been going in any direction at all.

I slowed, and as I did so she made another attempt to get on her bike. She threw her foot over and sat on the seat, then winced and shouted something inaudible over the rain before springing back to the bike’s side and walking it again.

Normally, I’m not the type of person who gets involved. I had never offered anyone a ride in my car before, and I haven’t since. Maybe I stopped because she was a pretty girl my age — I wouldn’t be able to blame you if you thought that. But I think it also had to do, strangely, with how tired I was: I couldn’t help but imagine myself in her situation, trying to ride my bike home in a downpour after a long day at work. The road cut through an evergreen woods with modest towns on either side: I could tell that she, like me, was on her way back to one of the small houses in the residential neighborhood at the other end.

So I pulled up beside her and I rolled my window down. At first, she didn’t notice me: she was too busy trying — and failing, again — to get up on her bike. This time, when she sprang back, I could see that she was crying.

“Uhm,” I said.

She turned abruptly, wiping her eyes quickly with the sleeve of her raincoat (which only managed to make her face more slick and wet). “Wh-what?” she said sharply. But she didn’t sound mean or rude — just exasperated by being caught at a bad time. She seemed to regret being terse right away, and so she sniffled and said, “Hey. Um…what’s up?”

“I, um, thought you might like a ride. At least into town — that’s where I’m going.” I started to feel very self-conscious. “I’m not…I’m not, like a creep, I just thought…”

She looked away, and for a moment I thought I’d completely freaked her out. I thought she was about to tell me to go fuck off, or maybe call me a pervert or something. But instead, she sniffled, rubbed her eyes again (with her hand, this time, which was white from cold) and then looked back at me nodding.

“Yeah,” she said, sounding out of breath. “I-If you wouldn’t mind.”

Talking hadn’t been going so well, so instead I just reached over the passenger’s seat and pulled the handle. She gratefully opened the door, then looked down at her bike.

“Oh, um,” I said, “you can put that in the back, if you want…” 

As soon as I said this, I realized how unappealing an offer that was. My car isn’t exactly spacious, and getting an entire bike into the trunk would be tough. 

I was about to get out and try to help her when, instead of looking at the trunk, she turned around and hurled the bike towards the trees. It tottered down the small embankment before collapsing in the ferns. 

“I have to walk back this way tomorrow,” she explained. “No one’s gonna take it — barely anyone comes down this road. Besides, I hate that stupid thing.”

I didn’t argue with her.

She opened the door gratefully and sat down with a loud grunt before slamming the door closed and rolling up the window, muting the hissing noise of the rain. Suddenly, the world seemed to be in greater focus. I could smell her perfume, although I can never tell what scents things are — it reminded me of the white-flowered bushes in the neighborhood I grew up in, mixed with the tang of a freshly-cut apple. She had straight black hair that had gotten wet in the rain and was now tangled, shimmering like puddling oil. Her eyes were hazel, her cheeks freckled, her nose slightly upturned; her front teeth were slightly crooked in a kiddish way that was kind of cute. 

Right away, I had an odd sense she looked familiar. She started to peel off her raincoat and I realized why I might have recognized her: she was wearing a black polo shirt with white trim that was part of the wait staff uniform at a restaurant I’d been to a few times. I can’t say for sure I saw her, but it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d spent a lunch break awkwardly trying to look as though I wasn’t looking at her. That place had a good number of cute girls working there, enough that it made up for sort of lousy food. 

If you’ve been single as long as I have, most waistresses seem pretty — but this girl was different. Pretty in a different way I can’t quite describe.

She pulled the seatbelt across her body, clicked it, then sat back in the seat panting softly. She must have been caught in the rain because her polo shirt was soaked straight through. Even still, she took it by the hem and used it to dry off her face. I looked away quickly, but not before catching a glimpse of her flat tummy that made my heart skip a beat.

I started driving, and she lolled her head towards me and smiled warmly. “Thanks,” she said. “I never would have made it home.” Her voice was bitter in the way a person sounds after a very long day, but it still sounded kind.

“N-No problem.” I tried to look back at her, but I accidentally saw that her nipples were stiff against her wet polo. Silently berating myself for being such a perv, I fixed my eyes back on the road. She didn’t seem to notice. 

As she caught her breath, she sighed contentedly and cupped her hands over the hot air.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Not far. I live in the cul-de-sac behind the fire department.”

“Oh, I know that place. I live in one of the new apartments down the block.”

“Really?” Her eyes, which were still red-rimmed from crying, suddenly lit up. “I so want to move into one of those. I still live with my mom.” 

“Yeah? That’s cool.”

She scoffed at that. “It sucks.”

I laughed. “I get that. But living on your own has its own problems.”

“Trust me — anything would be better.”

The rain hissed against the windshield, flowing in blurry stripes like television static. She shifted in her seat; she couldn’t seem to get comfortable. One moment she would pull in her knees, but then she’d wince and stretch her legs out all the way. She would bite her lip, then, glancing over at me as though trying to see if I was watching.

After a moment, she peered closer at me. 

“Do I know you?”

I nodded towards her uniform. “I’ve been to that restaurant before. Maybe you saw me.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see her eyes light up again in recognition. “Oh yeah,” she said, snapping her cold fingers and pointing. “Yeah…” Her voice trailed off into some unshared thought. I could feel her carefully examining my profile. 

Even with my eyes on the road, I could see something change in her expression. Perhaps she only said what she said next to break the silence, which was starting to feel heavy. Perhaps she really meant it — who knows?

“A couple of the other waitresses thought you were cute.”

I blinked and glanced over at her. The image will always stay in my mind: she’d curled up her feet and was looking at me expectantly, her curled finger resting on her cheek, just by her lip. Her eyes were sparkling, all of the frustration and sadness gone from them, even though space beneath still glistened with dried tears.

Maybe it was that expectant look that made me say what I said next, which was out of character for me. Maybe I was just having an out-of-character day — who knows.

“Not you, though?”

She laughed, pulling her rain slicker up like a blanket. She had a lovely laugh: it made me think of a warm, sunny day, even though rain was still pounding on the roof

That’s probably why I said what I said next.

“I don’t know about the other waitresses,” I said. “But I think you’re pretty cute.”

For a moment, she said nothing, but I could tell she was pleased. She just let her happiness radiate through the car like the hot air on full blast. She shifted again so that she had her knees up and at an angle and was sitting on her thigh, as though she was trying to back away from me to get a better look. 

“Thanks,” she said finally. Then, grinning, she added, “Is that why you picked me up?”

I laughed that time. “Maybe,” I said. “But mostly, I just knew you weren’t getting anywhere on that bike.”

Her face fell at the mention of the bicycle, and she covered it with both hands. “My mom’s gonna be so mad that I left it there,” she groans. “She’s gonna…” She brought her hands down and trailed off.

A moment of silence passed, but it didn’t feel heavy any more. It felt like the pauses between the lines of a poem. Each pause was springing us into the next verse, the next stanza of our conversation. I don’t know. It seems weird, but that’s what it was like.

“So,” I said finally, “what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems like you were having a bad day. Like you were…upset.”

“Oh,” she said, wiping at her face again. “It was nothing.”

I took a turn at a red light. The evergreens had fallen behind us. The sidewalks here were empty, and as we climbed the hill, we started to see single-family houses. We weren’t far.

“Just…”

She stopped again. I looked down at her — down, because by now she was slouching low enough in her seat that I seemed a head and shoulders taller than her. She had her eyes fixed on the road ahead and a look on her face that seemed like she was considering whether or not to say something.

“Just…my mom,” she said finally.

“Ah.”

“She’s…really strict. About a bunch of stuff.”

I said nothing. She shifted again. We took another left and started heading downhill.

At this point, she looked upset again. She brought her thin black eyebrows together and wrinkled her nose. It seemed like she was in the middle of a nasty conversation in her mind with a person who wasn’t around.

“She’s gonna be mad at you…about the bike?”

She rolled her eyes. “She’s mad at me about everything.” Her frown deepened, and her voice took on a note of indignation. “Which is so dumb. It’s her fault I couldn’t even ride my stupid bike!” She sighs, sounding exasperated, and runs her hand distractedly through her hair. She takes a strand of it and starts to suck it between tight lips. 

“Is there something wrong with it?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“The bike,” I said. “I saw you were walking your bike instead of riding it. Is there something wrong with it?”

She shook her head firmly but didn’t say anything else.

We continued to drive, and the rain started to let up. Now it was only a slight trickle, and I could turn my wipers to the lowest setting. If she noticed the bitter irony of this, she didn’t mention it — she seemed lost in thought.

As I started to get closer to her cul-de-sac, my mood started to dip. I realized suddenly that it was because I was about to drop her off. The ride was coming to an end. Before my mind had even processed the fact that I wanted to be with her more, my heart was sinking in my chest at the thought of her getting out. My emotions are strange like that sometimes: it feels as though my thoughts are on a delay timer, and I feel certain ways before I know why. It makes me think of how everything seems terrible when you’re hungry, but you never realize that’s what’s happening until you’ve eaten. Only this time, it was in reverse: my brain thought everything was fine, but my heart knew something terrible was about to happen. She was about to leave.

But then, just as I was about to turn onto her street, she said suddenly: “Don’t turn yet.”

I had slowed almost to a stop. I looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Her cheeks were pink, maybe from having warmed up after who knows how long in the rain. 

I passed the turn and continued to drive.

“Here,” she said finally. We had come to the end of the road, and the turn-off brought us into the parking lot of a dog park. No one was out in this rain, of course, so all of the spots were empty. She pointed to one by the far end. “Park there. Just for a second.”

The rain, at this point, had almost completely let up. Sun was starting to break through the clouds, spilling dry white light on the whole wet world. She turned to me as I shifted the car into park, and I turned to her. She looked deep into my eyes, her lips slightly parted, her dark, tangled hair starting to lighten as it dried, and she said the last thing I could have ever expected to hear.

“My mom still spanks me.”

“Wh…what?”

“I’m twenty-years-old, but she still spanks me. I’ve told her I’m too old for it, but she doesn’t listen.” Her face is rosey now, not from the car’s warmth but from a rising blush. It starts in her cheeks and seems to spread to her ears. “This morning, I sorta…well, I sorta didn’t make my bed and was talking back and stuff like that. So she spanked me, and that’s why I was walking my bike instead of riding it.”

I honestly don’t even know what my face must have looked like in that moment. I must have had my eyebrows raised, maybe my mouth open. I had no idea what to say. But she was on a roll now, and she couldn’t seem to stop herself — or maybe she just didn’t want to lose the momentum and have to deal with the sudden stillness. 

So she went on.

“It’s really embarrassing, obviously. I-…I try to keep it a secret. None of my best friends even know. Like, I haven’t told anyone about it — except you.” 

She looked at me then, as though I might have a better explanation for that then she did. I did not. She looked down again. 

“But that’s…that’s why I can’t, like, sit still. My butt is still…sore.”

The silence after she stopped talking was the kind that seems to make you aware of sounds you’ve never heard before. I could hear the dry click of her throat as she swallowed. I could feel my pulse in my ears. I could hear every twitch of her body, every rustle and squeak of her skirt and her legs on the carseat, like it was inside of my own head.

“Do you wanna see it?”

Again, it was like my mind was having a delayed reaction. I nodded before I had any idea what she meant. But I think, somehow, I knew. Before the thought had occured to me, I knew, in some other part of myself. My heart, maybe.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned herself around so that she was kneeling and facing the headrest. Then she lifted her skirt up, flipping it up onto the small of her back; her panties were white with faded pink stripes. Next, she pulled her panties down to her knees. All the while, she was blushing so hotly that I swear I could feel the heat from it pouring off her face. But she didn’t seem to be able to stop herself. She moved quickly, making soft, breathy sounds as she bared her bottom to me and then slid her hands nervously up her thighs.

Her behind was full, shapely. Each cheek was round, and the crease betwen them was dark and lovely. Her thighs were pale white to about 6 inches above her inner knee…but then, her upper thighs and buttocks were a deep, glowing, rosy-red. 

As I looked, her butt cheeks tensed together. I can still remember that movement — so slight, but so wonderful, like the movements of a newborn deer. I could see the outline, in some places, of a hand — mostly, though, the color blended into a single shade, darkest towards where her legs ended and her butt began. I stared at the cherry-redness until I could see it on the insides of my eyelides. I drank in every line, every shadow. My favorites were the dimples just above her bottom and the cupping indents just below each cheek, sloping in towards her sex. As I looked, she looked over her shoulder at me.

“Touch it,” she said, in no more than a whisper.

I reached out my hand and placed it on her nearer cheek. It was warm, as though the heat of impact was still on it. She shivered slightly and made another soft noise from her throat, closing her eyes, but she didn’t pull away. She reached back and took me by the wrist, pressing my hand firmer against her backside.

I don’t know how long we were like that in that empty parking lot. I can only imagine what might have happened if someone happened to walk by — what would they even think? But that couldn’t have possibly occured to either of us, then. We were outside of time.

Finally, she let go of my wrist and I took my hand away. Just as I did, she moved forward and kissed me, holding both sides of my face in her hands. It was a deep kiss, long and sweet, but still over too soon. When it ended, I watched her lean back and her eyelids flutter open. She looked at me as though seeing me for the first time.

“Thanks for the ride,” she said, still flushed and smiling shyly. Then, with a flicking motion she pulled her panties back up, smoothed down her skirt, threw open the door, and got out of the car before I could gather my wits enough to tell her to wait.

Sometimes, now, I still think about how I almost passed her. I think of how different it all would have been, if it weren’t for the rain. But it was more than just the rain. Neither of us knew it in our delay-action heads, but we’d been looking for each other. She’d been looking for someone she could tell, someone she could show. And I’d been looking for her my entire life.

I’m almost finished looking, now, which is good because the rain has started up again, heaveier this time. I just have a few more doors to knock on in the cul-de-sac past the fire department…