She wished Lizzie were there. She wished she had the kind of relationship with her mother that would allow her to ask Eileen her questions. Abby pedaled onward, with her head down, keeping her thoughts to herself. She rode all day and spent most of each night talking with Sebastian, when their mouths weren’t otherwise engaged. He told her more about his mother’s drinking. She told him more about her parents’ divorce. He told her his parents hadn’t dropped him off when he started college. She told him how she’d been banished to Camp Golden Hills.
They talked about everything except Mark and what would happen when the trip was over. It was like swimming underwater in the ocean; visiting a world that was strange and beautiful, knowing you couldn’t stay too long; that you couldn’t hold your breath forever. At some point, Abby knew, she’d have to come up for air.
On the eleventh day of the trip, the last day of real riding, they followed the trail from Medina to Buffalo. Sebastian pedaled beside Abby. The weather was still summer-warm, but, as they’d gotten farther north, the signs of encroaching autumn had become harder to miss: the leaves changing colors; the absence of riders under eighteen on the trail.
Lily and Morgan were back on their bikes, riding side by side. Morgan had spent two days in the sag wagon, and Lily had ridden with her, out of sympathy and solidarity, and because she still wasn’t an enthusiastic or seasoned cyclist, and the mileage had been killing her. She’d been happy for the break, and Morgan, from what Abby could tell, was happy for the company.
On their way into Buffalo, Abby told Sebastian about the bike trip she’d taken in college through the Finger Lakes, with a couple who’d brought their eighteen-month-old toddler along in a Burley trailer, and how the child had cried, nonstop, every minute and mile of every day.
“She was teething, I guess.” Abby smiled a little at the memory. “And she’d just learned how to walk, so she didn’t want to be strapped into the trailer all day long. The only words she knew besides Mama and Dada were ‘no’ and ‘down,’ but oh my God, she screamed them. All. Day. Long.” Abby shook her head, remembering. “Everyone on the trip would take turns riding behind whichever parent was towing her and singing lullabies or making faces. Whatever we could do to keep her calm. It was a nightmare. Three people actually asked for refunds.” She shook her head, thinking that it was funny now, but it had been extremely unfunny at the time. “And there were newlyweds on the trip—this couple that had gotten married the month before. They were doing the trip as part of their honeymoon. When we started, the woman was saying that she couldn’t wait to get pregnant, that she loved babies, that she was so excited to start a family. I swear to God, when the trip was over, her husband had scheduled a vasectomy.”
“Sounds awful,” Sebastian said. And it had been. Only Abby could picture it differently. A baby in a trailer, hitched to the back of Sebastian’s bike. Abby riding with Sebastian, telling him stories, making him laugh. The three of them, at the end of the day’s ride, sitting around a campfire, underneath a starry sky; together in the tent, all night long （with the baby conveniently disappearing for that part of the fantasy）。
“Do you think you’ll stay in Brooklyn for the rest of your life?” Abby asked.
“I like being there now. But I can also imagine settling down someplace a little quieter. And a lot less expensive.”
“I was thinking,” Abby said, a little hesitantly, “about what we were talking about last night.”
Sebastian grinned. In Medina, they’d gone out for pizza for dinner, and the group had stayed in a boutique hotel in an old stone building, where the rooms were small and quirky, oddly shaped, decorated with cycling posters and paraphernalia. Abby’s room had an antique Schwinn hanging on the wall. And a queen-size bed underneath it.
“Remind me what we talked about?” Sebastian said.
“My job,” Abby said, with a touch of asperity. “We talked about what I’m going to do with my life.”
“Ah,” said Sebastian. Abby cringed a little, remembering the speech she’d given about how she loved dogs but didn’t want to walk them for the rest of her life. She’d been curled against him, her cheek resting on his chest, his hand stroking her hair, and she wasn’t sure how closely he’d been listening.
“So what’s the thing you like best?” he asked.
“Leading bike trips,” she said. “Except it’s not really the kind of thing you can do year-round if you want to live in one place.”