“It has to be this way for me,” he’d said. “The surgery was a tool. I’m the one who has to keep on top of the food, and the exercise. It’s just easier for me to not eat sugar than to try to eat just a little bit, or just once in a while.”
“I understand,” said Abby, who didn’t. She couldn’t imagine a life without any sugar, ever, and was not sure such a life would be worth living. Eventually, she got to the point where she rarely ate desserts around Mark, keeping ice cream and brioche and chocolate croissants at her apartment instead of at his, limiting herself to the occasional pain au chocolat or warm pita when they were out.
Mark was worth it. He’d never seemed ashamed of her. He’d been happy to take Abby out on dates, proud to introduce her to his friends. Eight weeks into their relationship, he’d brought her home to remeet his parents, who lived out on Long Island, and with whom he had a warm and functional relationship, the kind that Abby admired. She and Mark both liked reading and doing puzzles, strolling along Forbidden Drive or exploring the city’s neighborhoods. And if Abby had more of an appetite for dancing and live music and karaoke nights than Mark did, if the sex was consistently satisfying without ever making her feel like the world had rearranged itself, those were quibbles, minor complaints, barely worth a mention.
Abby didn’t understand her own hesitation. All she knew was that the thought of actually giving up her apartment, emptying its rooms, taking her posters off the wall, her dishes out of the cabinets, carrying her furniture down the stairs, commingling her belongings with Mark’s, made her knees feel trembly, and her belly feel like she’d swallowed frozen rocks.
Mark was talking about heated bathroom floors when Abby’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She felt an unseemly rush of relief as she pushed her chair back. “It’s Lizzie,” she said.
Mark nodded, gesturing for her to take the call. That was Mark. He was not threatened by Abby’s friendships. He didn’t resent the other people in her life or begrudge the time she spent away from him. He was wonderful. Practically perfect in every way. So why wasn’t she jumping at the chance to move in with him? Why wasn’t he enough?
Abby pressed her phone to her ear and hurried away from the table, threading her way through the high-ceilinged, tiled rooms, hearing laughter and conversations, passing the hostess’s stand, and stepping out onto the sidewalk.
“Abby?” Lizzie said.
“Sorry, yes. Hi. I’m here.” Abby realized she’d forgotten even to say hello. “Are you okay?”
Lizzie, who was in her sixties, had gone through a bout of breast cancer eighteen months ago. Abby had driven her friend to appointments and, on the day of Lizzie’s lumpectomy, sat in the waiting room until the surgeon came out and said, “Good news!” She’d taken Lizzie to her subsequent radiation sessions and to follow-up mammograms and MRIs. Lizzie had healed, and had tolerated the treatments well, and so far, everything looked fine, but they were still in the five-year window, and Abby still worried.
“I’m fine. But I’m having a bit of an emergency,” Lizzie said. “Work related, not health related,” she quickly added. “It’s a Breakaway thing.”
It took Abby a few seconds to remember that Breakaway was one of Lizzie’s employers, a bicycle touring company that hired Lizzie to lead trips in the summer. Or, at least, they had hired Lizzie to lead summer trips in the pre-COVID years.
“So listen.” Lizzie was speaking quickly. Possibly she was imagining that if she delivered her request fast enough, Abby wouldn’t say no. “Marj just called me. They’re running a trip from New York City to Niagara Falls, and the guy who was supposed to lead it flaked at the last minute. The trip leaves Sunday, and they’re desperate.”
“Sunday as in this Sunday? As in, four days from now Sunday?”
“Yup. Is there any chance—any chance at all—that you’d lead it?” Lizzie sounded a little breathless after blurting out her pitch. “You’d be saving Marj’s life.”
This wasn’t the first time Lizzie had asked her to lead a Breakaway trip. Abby had always turned her down. But that night, out on the sidewalk, with Mark waiting for her at their table, Abby found her heart was beating quickly. Part of her—most of her—was thinking No way, while another part—the dark, frightened part that had been pulsing, quietly but emphatically in her brain as soon as Mark had started talking about Abby’s lease—was thinking, Yes, you can.
Instead of the no Lizzie was surely expecting, Abby said, “I haven’t ever led a bike trip.”
“You lead rides all the time!” Lizzie countered.
This was true. At least once a month, on a weekday morning, Abby would lead a group of eight or ten fellow members of the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia on a twenty-five- or thirty-mile jaunt that always included a stop at a farmers market or a restaurant or a coffee shop. “Okay, but those are just rides, not an entire trip.”
“And what is a trip, but consecutive days of rides?” Lizzie asked rhetorically. “Listen. You know how to manage a group of riders. You know how to change a flat. And it’s a supported trip, so you don’t have to help set up tents, or cook over a campfire. The guy driving the sag wagon is great—I’ve worked with him before. It’s two weeks. Fourteen people. Very reasonable mileage. And Marj said she’d pay two thousand dollars.”
Abby licked her lips. Two thousand dollars wasn’t much less than she earned for an entire month at Pup Jawn.
“And you’re not doing anything pressing at the moment, right?”
Abby slumped against the restaurant’s brick wall. “No. Not now, and not ever.”
“Stop that,” Lizzie said sharply. “You can have your existential crisis later. Right now, just tell me if you can do this or not.”
“How many people have you and Marj already tried?”
“Not important,” said Lizzie. Translation: lots.
Abby considered. Riding her bike was her favorite thing in the world. It had been, ever since she was a girl… and she loved bike trips. She was rarely happier than when she got to load her gear and her clothes into panniers and head out for an all-day, sixty- or seventy-mile ride, on paved rail-to-trail pathways, or packed dirt towpaths or back roads or on the wide shoulders of busy city streets, alone or with a friend or with a group. She loved how it felt when she was starting out, when the sun was just coming up and the streets were quiet and it felt like she had the whole world to herself. She loved how it felt when the ride was over, and she’d climb off her bike, take a long, hot shower, rinse the road grit and sunscreen off her arms and legs and scrub away the grease that her chain left on the inside of her right calf as the aches in her legs and in the small of her back faded. She loved the first sip of beer, the first bite of pizza, after a long day in the saddle, and the feeling of climbing into her sleeping bag in her tent or tucking herself under the covers in a hotel room and falling into sound, dreamless sleep.
Even though she’d never led a trip, Abby knew that she was at least somewhat qualified. She’d been through her club’s ride-leader training, and she’d taken a class at her local bike shop, where she’d learned basic safety and repairs and first aid.