Dax smiles back, staring into my eyes, and leans across the table to catch the mug while I reach for another mug for his friend. This offsets the table’s balance and pops my side of the table up as his weight pushes his side down.
The table see-sawing while I hand off a mug means I can't grab my tray in time to stabilize it. And, in what feels like slow motion, the pitcher of beer is bucked toward me, sending it colliding with my chest, spilling its contents down my front. The tray and pitcher clatter to the floor.
Gasping in surprise from the cold brew, I jump back and collide with the person at the table beside Dax’s, who just happens to be standing up at the same time. The impact of our collision bounces me sideways.
“I’m so sorry,” I say as I attempt to pull the clingy white T-shirt from my chest. Reflex has me looking down at my clothes to assess the damage. At that moment, my feet get tangled, I twist, and lose my balance. As I fall, I windmill my arms hoping the action will magically help me regain my balance. As if.
But momentum has control and tosses me backward into the straps connecting the stanchions that are our restaurant’s perimeter. Beyond the barricade is the sidewalk, crowds of people, and motorcycles and occasional cars going up and down the street. As is common during Bike Week, bikers, many of who are patrons of the pop-up restaurants, have parked their motorcycles on the sidewalk to keep them out of the road.
The trajectory of my fall has me landing on a blood-red Harley Davidson Sportster with a tank painted with black skulls and crossbones.
The momentum from my impact pushes the skull and crossbones bike into the one next to it, and like a series of dominoes, four bikes parked in the row drop to their sides, one onto the other in a cacophony of metal colliding with metal.
I land with a yelp and roll to my side, horrified. Sharp pain shoots through my upper leg where the motorcycle's chrome foot peg jammed into my hip. I swear it touched bone. My first thought? Odds were good that one of the four owners of the knocked down bikes was going to kill me. So now would be a perfect time to die from embarrassment.