“I’m a city kid. I learned to ride in Central Park, and on the Hudson Greenway,” Lincoln said.
Abby finally let herself turn toward Sebastian. “How about you?”
“I grew up in the suburbs, so I’d ride to my friends’ houses.” It sounded idyllic. Which figured. Of course this handsome, confident man had enjoyed a perfect childhood, with two married parents and just one house. “I didn’t really get into it until I moved to New York, after college.”
“I made him ride with me,” Lincoln said.
“That is true,” Sebastian said. “And I’m grateful every day.”
“You should be,” Lincoln said. “If it hadn’t been for me, the only exercise you’d get would be…” Lincoln’s voice trailed off. Abby felt her neck get hot and she tried not to squirm as she refilled her water glass.
“What about Mark?” Sebastian asked. His tone was calm, almost indifferent. His eyes were on his notebook, but the set of his jaw looked pugnacious. “Does he want to learn to ride someday?”
Abby blinked. “Biking is my thing. Just like running is his thing. It’s fine. I think it’s fine when women have their own interests.” She did believe this. She just hoped she sounded convincing.
Sebastian looked skeptical. “So how often do you ride? Like, two or three times a week?”
“Something like that.” It was actually more like three or four times, and that wasn’t counting the riding she did to run errands, or to visit Lizzie’s house, or to get from her apartment to Mark’s, or from Mark’s place back to hers, or to work in the morning. Most Saturdays she did a group ride with her bicycle club, and almost every Sunday she did her own thirty-mile loop first thing in the morning, as a way to center herself and prepare for the week ahead.
“And how far do you go? Twenty-five, thirty miles?”
“Depends on the day,” Abby said.
“On average.”
She thought. “Twenty-five or thirty for the weekday rides. Longer on the weekends.”
“So two or three times a week, for three or four hours at a time, you’re literally riding away from this guy.” Sebastian’s voice was neutral. Abby’s head was churning with fury and guilt. It felt like Sebastian had peeked into her brain and effortlessly plucked out one of the only things about Mark that she wished were different, like he was now holding up that thought, pointing at it, making it impossible for her not to see it.
“I once dated a woman who didn’t ride a bike,” Ed was saying, from his spot at the middle of the table. “Didn’t last.”
His wife patted the side of his arm. “It didn’t last because she emptied out your retirement account and used the money for her essential oil business.”
Ed’s expression was mournful. “Well,” he said, “there was that.”
Abby forced herself to look directly at Sebastian. “Have all of your girlfriends been stage-five clingers?” she asked. “Were you joined at the hip, every minute of the day? Oh, but wait—you don’t have girlfriends, do you?”
Lincoln murmured, “Yikes.” Sebastian’s expression was no longer neutral, or thoughtful, or anything close to pleasant. He was, instead, unabashedly glaring at her, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. If looks could have killed, Abby would have been bleeding out into the shawarma.
“When actual grown-ups love each other, they’re okay with spending time apart,” she said, and hoped she’d delivered the line coolly.
His expression and his posture didn’t change—at least, not overtly—but she could tell that he was angry. “It just doesn’t seem to me like you’ve got a lot in common with this guy.”
Abby’s knees were trembling. She felt breathless with fury. “Mark and I have a lot of things in common.”
“You just got through telling us how much you love riding your bike, how it’s your favorite thing, how it made you who you are, how it ‘saved your life.’？” He’d actually hooked his fingers into air quotes to deliver the last line. Abby felt her skin go icy. It was her own fault, for being honest like that, for being so vulnerable in front of a guy she barely knew.
Sebastian appeared not to notice her distress. He said, “It’s important to you. And he hasn’t learned how to do it.”
“You don’t get it,” Abby said. Her voice was calm as her pulse thundered in her throat. Her fists were clenched. “You don’t have any idea about what it takes to be part of a couple.”