Page 3 of Fun at Parties
My fingers tense on the handlebars. I keep scrolling and see the hashtags again and again. They planned this, my regular riders. It’s a show of solidarity, a message telling me they support me. That they think Caleb is wrong.
“Breathe and keep going,” I repeat. “It’s what you’ve always done.”
The thing is, I’m not sure my ride-or-die crew is right.
Four weeks ago, I was heating up homemade lentil soup on Caleb’s stove when he told me he wanted to break up.
I dropped the ladle and broth splattered on the backsplash. “What?” Two weeks prior, he’d painted my name across his forehead to cheer me on while I ran a half marathon.
He was in love with Paige, he told me. He hadn’t really been visiting his parents in Orange County all weekend. He’d been with her, and he’d be going back to her after I left. “I don’t know how it got to this point.” He shook his head. “But it did.”
“Youcheated?” I asked, still a few steps behind.
He had the audacity to look offended. “In my mind, we broke up on Friday.”
“And these feelings you have for Paige magically appeared that day? That’s convenient.”
His eyes went wide. I squeezed the edge of the countertop. In almost two years of dating, we’d never had a fight. “No, I mean—it’s hard to say. You and I have been going through the motions for a while. Remember what it was like in the beginning?”
My chest throbbed. On our first date, in a private dining room at a restaurant owned by one of Caleb’s friends, he’d told me he was going to fall in love with me. So certain, so open about it. After everything that had happened with Nate, it was exactly what I needed.
“I thought we were comfortable,” I sputtered. “We’re good together.”
“Thereweregood things about this relationship. We’re both driven, we’re both focused on growing our brands. But there has to be more. I mean, are you really content withthis?” He motioned at the space between us, and I felt small. I’d thought I’d done everything right this time, but it was happening again: Me, completely misjudging reality. Me, not being enough. “It’s nothing you did,” he added, like he was reading my mind. “It’s just us.”
Did we, like, yearn for each other when we were apart? Did we rush to confide in each other first when something big happened? I guess not. Had we braided our lives together, becoming one unit with two hearts or whatever? That’s not a real thing. But we got along, we cared about the same things, we supported each other’s goals. I thought that was healthy.
Blood rushed through my veins like river rapids, my chest pounding. I tried to reason the pain away. This wasn’t the worst thing, I told myself. He was an untrustworthy shithead, and I was lucky to be rid of him. I wouldn’t have to care that Michelle hated him anymore. Everyone at work would be impressed with how gracious I’d be about it.I can handle anything, including this,I told myself, willing it to be true.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked.
Fuck you,I thought. “I’m fine,” I said, and walked out the door.
The video popped up four weeks later. Some people are saying Caleb’s words were an attempt to alleviate Paige’s insecurities about the shady way their relationship began. But when I heard them leave Caleb’s mouth—she’s a cold, empty person—I realized they were true.
Caleb was in love with the idea of being half of a power couple. And I liked that too. The difference is, he realized it wasn’t enough. I was okay with a relationship that lacked depth because it benefited me in other ways, just like I was okay ditching my best friend, Bailey, for my career and leaving my parents behind. And I don’t know how I became this way.
“Breathe and keep going,” I say again as the cool-down song starts. “It’s what you’ll always do.”
This ride is ’90s R&B–themed. In retrospect, I should have reconsidered the playlist, because the lovely voices of Brandy and Monica crooning “The Boy Is Mine” hit like knives in my gut. Why are these two women lettingthis guy consume all their attention and energy? Why are their relationships with him dictating their happiness?
That red mist I breathed out before the ride fills me back up again like a cloud of poison. I open my mouth before I know what’s going to come out. “You know what? I have something else to say. A bunch of people took this class today just to see if I could hold it together. You wanted to know if I’d be a heartbroken mess or if I really am a heartless robot. And I hope that all of you had a great ride, I really do. But let me tell you something: I am so much more than my love life. It’s probably the least interesting thing about me, just like I suspect there’s a lot more to you than the person you may or may not be romantically involved with, and I’m tired of people acting otherwise. Guess what? The highlight reel of my life wouldn’t contain a single picture of me with someone I dated. And it’s still pretty fucking spectacular.”
When the ride ends, the studio is silent. I take my time clipping out and pat my face with a towel, trying to buy some time to figure out how to salvage this before—
“Quinn.” Tracy steps toward me, her hands raised, and for a second I believe, desperately and delusionally, that she’s going to hug me. Instead, she cocks her head and gives me an owlish look. “What happened?”
“I’m not…” I lick my dry lips.
“That wasn’t you,” she says, and it crushes me.
All I wanted was to give her confidence that she could count on me to perform in big moments, and I’ve done the opposite. “It was authentic,” I try, even though the memory of what I said is already an adrenaline-muddled blur. “People like that, right?”
“You give people optimism, levity, an escape. Not rage.”
I know where this is going. If people want catharsis, they can do a heavy emotional ride with Amani. If they want to cry tears of suffering, they can subject themselves to a punishing set of intervals with Diego. If they want a light, positive experience and a moderate difficulty level, they choose me.
She’s right, of course. Our riders pick classes based on what they need. Since the strategic changes took effect, Tracy’s been emphasizing that we need to “deepen” our “niches” more than ever.
