The Breakaway(18)
He wasn’t some callous jerk with only one thing on his mind. But he liked sex, and variety, and situations that didn’t allow for misunderstandings or confusion. With a few exceptions, the women he met on the apps were in perfect agreement. And thus had the first decade of Sebastian’s postcollege life zipped by in a happy, horny blur.
There had been one girl, once: one girl he actually had wanted to see again. She hadn’t come from the apps, which would have made it easier for him to find her again. He’d picked her up at a bar just before closing time. They’d had a memorable night together, and, when he’d woken up, she’d been gone. She hadn’t left a note, and he’d never even gotten her last name. It had felt like a message from the Universe, that there was no such thing as love… or, at least, that Sebastian’s time to find it had not yet arrived.
Except now, here was the girl, standing right in front of him! And they’d be together for the next two weeks. Sebastian beamed, pleased at yet another example of the world raining its blessings down on him; another instance of how things usually worked out the way he’d hoped they would.
“Nice to see you again,” he said to Abby, in what he’d been told was his Barry White voice. Instead of looking pleased, Abby just looked… irritated? Frazzled? Scared?
“Wear your pinny, please,” she said, and hurried away, leaving his friend staring at him.
“I take it you two know each other?” Lincoln’s voice was extremely dry.
Sebastian knew that if he confirmed it, he’d be spending the entire trip listening to Lincoln complaining about Sebastian’s wanton ways, and how there were fewer women in the world he hadn’t slept with than women he had. Sebastian didn’t need the hassle.
“Is there a reason she didn’t seem entirely pleased to see you?” Lincoln inquired.
“No worries,” said Sebastian. “It’s all good.” He smiled to himself, thinking that this trip, which he was already looking forward to, had just gotten exponentially more interesting.
Abby
The introductions had wrapped up with the Landons, Richard and Carol, an affluent-looking married, middle-aged white couple from Connecticut. Abby greeted them while she did her best to calm her racing heart and to not stare at Sebastian, or even look in his direction.
“Okay,” she said. “Was everyone able to download the route, or grab a printed cue sheet?”
The moms and dads consulted their phones. The teenagers consulted their parents. The men of the Spoke’n Four fiddled with their cycling computers, while the woman who was either Lou or Sue (Abby had already forgotten which couple was tall and which was short) unfolded one of the cue sheets that Abby had printed. Morgan Mackenzie stood behind her mom, an icy oasis of teenage silence. Ezra Presser was being lectured by his mother—“No, you can’t just follow me. You need to learn to read a map. It’s an important life skill!” Abby heard Kayla say. Andy Presser, meanwhile, had sidled even closer to Morgan.
Abby walked to her own bike, the Trek touring bike that she’d bought secondhand for three hundred dollars of babysitting money and bat mitzvah gift cash when she was sixteen. She’d purchased it in advance of the first trip she’d ever taken, a five-day ride on Cape Cod with Lizzie. They’d packed tents and sleeping bags and ground cloths, and they’d spent two nights in Nickerson State Park in Brewster, one night in a hostel by the ocean in a town called Truro. For their final night, they’d slept on Race Point Beach in Provincetown. The sunset had been spectacular, and when they’d woken up in the morning they’d seen minke whales, mothers and calves, frolicking close to the shore.
Abby loved her bike. More than that, she identified with it. Trek had been making the 520 model since 1983, longer than any other bike it manufactured. The bikes were legendary: steel framed, practically indestructible, stable and sturdy, with brazed-on attachments that let riders mount racks for panniers alongside the back and front wheels. Touring bikes had what was known as relaxed geometry, a longer frame that prioritized comfort and stability over speed. When they were parked next to road bikes, they looked massive; like hippos that had wandered into a pack of gazelles. They were not fast or flashy, but they were hard to damage, they could carry almost any load and manage almost every surface. They weren’t pretty, but they got the job done.
Abby’s 520, which was almost twenty years old (“practically vintage,” as Lizzie liked to say), had navy-blue paint with gold accents. Over the years, Abby had added a kickstand, three cages for water bottles, a handlebar mount for her iPhone, a floodlight for riding at night, and a bell in a case that looked like a rolling eyeball and made a pleasant but appropriately loud ding when she thumbed its lever. She had cushy handlebar tape, a back rack and front racks for panniers. Up front, her capacious Ortlieb handlebar bag was loaded with everything she might possibly need: a multitool, a flat-tire repair kit, her own extra tube, an extra battery for her phone, a first aid kit, a hand towel, emergency snacks.
“I’ll be riding sweep, which means I’ll be bringing up the rear,” she told the group. Don’t look don’t look don’t look, Abby thought, but she couldn’t help her gaze from slipping to the Bros. She looked away before Sebastian could make eye contact, trying not to wonder what he was thinking. She still couldn’t quite believe he’d remembered her name. “You should all have Jasper’s number in your phone. Any kind of trouble—wrong turn, flat tire, existential malaise—pull off to the side and wait for me. If you don’t see me, call him. Any questions?”