The Breakaway(34)

“No-o-o,” Lincoln said, stretching out the word in a manner suggesting that he really meant “yes.”

“Like, on Tinder. I only matched with girls in the ‘free tonight’ category.”

“?‘Free tonight?’ That’s a thing?”

Sebastian nodded. Lincoln looked slightly horrified, before saying, “I guess it’s better than ‘booty call.’ Or ‘DTF.’ Or ‘U up?’?” He shook his head, then looked down as his phone chimed.

“What?” Sebastian demanded as Lincoln started laughing.

“Okay. I’m sorry. It’s—well. This one girl compared your bedroom to a clown car.”

Sebastian growled.

“It was funny!” Lincoln said.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sebastian said again.

“Yes. I agree. I agree completely. I’m on your side. Come on.” Lincoln pulled up the blankets and smoothed the pillowcases until his bed looked just as pristine as it had when they’d walked into the room.

“You know there are people who do that,” Sebastian said.

Lincoln just grabbed his bike from where it was leaning against the wall. “This will blow over.” He paused as Sebastian wheeled his own bike toward the door. “Except, here’s an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“Abby,” said Lincoln.

Sebastian tensed. Did Lincoln know he’d slept with Abby, too? And did Abby know about the video?

This was bad. Very bad. “What about Abby?”

“How about, just as a thought exercise, instead of trying to hook up with her, you try to be her friend?”

Sebastian stared at Lincoln. Lincoln met Sebastian’s gaze with his eyes wide open.

“I wasn’t trying to hook up with her,” Sebastian finally said, praying that Lincoln didn’t know he already had.

“I’m just saying, you have an M.O.,” said Lincoln. “And not a lot of female friends.”

“Lana is my friend,” Sebastian protested.

“Lana is my wife,” Lincoln said. “And, thus, the only woman who’s completely and indubitably off-limits to you.” He looked sternly at Sebastian. “It’s just an idea. But maybe, just this once, you try to do things differently.”

Sebastian nodded. He wasn’t holding crossed fingers behind his back, but he also wasn’t verbally agreeing to anything… which, he thought, would give him plausible deniability in case anything did end up happening with Abby. Although that wasn’t looking likely, he thought, glumly wheeling his bike out into the parking lot, preparing to start the day’s ride.





Abby


Lizzie had done a seven-day trip from Buffalo to Albany, along the length of the Erie Canal, and had warned Abby about the scenery—or, more accurately, the lack of scenery—that upstate New York would feature. “It’s pretty, but it’s not superinteresting,” Lizzie had said. Most days, they’d be covering similar terrain—a relatively flat path, sometimes paved, sometimes lined with dirt and crushed cinders, with a body of water—the Hudson River or the Erie Canal—off to one side, winding through forests, meadows, historic sites, and the scrubby backyards of small towns. Sometimes, they’d see the remnants of the railroad lines that had run before the trails had been converted—rusting trestles and decaying wooden ties. They’d ride through cemeteries, and pass monuments, old battlegrounds, reservoirs, and public parks. Pretty, Abby thought, as she led the group back onto the trail, but not very exciting.

They stopped for breakfast at a diner in Yorktown Heights and had lunch at a park in Brewster. Abby saw ducks and geese shepherding their goslings across the path, sometimes hissing at cyclists as they went by. There was also the occasional turtle sunning itself on a rock. Once, Abby saw a deer, standing in the forest maybe ten yards from the trail. It stared, wide-eyed, watching as Abby rode closer, before turning and bounding away.

It was another hot day, eighty-three degrees by noon, and humid. But fall was on the way, even if it still felt like summer. The leaves were beginning to change; the days were getting incrementally shorter, and the drugstore in Yorktown Heights, where they’d stopped to buy Lily some Bengay, had back-to-school supplies and Halloween candy on display.

Abby was riding sweep again. All the riders were up ahead, Sebastian and Lincoln in the lead, the teenagers behind them, the adults and senior citizens spread out in their wake, and Abby bringing up the rear, lost in thought.

Andy and Morgan, she saw, were riding side by side. Abby smiled to herself, remembering what it was like to be sixteen. She would pull out her phone after every class to see if Mark had emailed her on her AOL account, and she’d check the mailboxes at her parents’ houses every day after school, because he’d send her little gifts—a bag of Fritos once; a small box of Godiva chocolates for Valentine’s Day. He had wooed her at summer camp, and he’d never stopped, still never quite believing that she wanted him, always trying to win her heart.



* * *



Abby hadn’t been excited about the prospect of Camp Golden Hills’ boys. Back then, her heart belonged to Josh Hartnett and Adam Sandler. But Marissa had insisted that fat boys were better than no boys at all. “And you never know,” she’d said. “Maybe some of them will be hot by the end of the summer. Come on!” she’d said, leading Abby and Leah down the path. “They’re probably almost all here, and you’ve got to have someone picked out by Friday night.”