Page 34 of Love in Tandem
Meet you in 30.
Thirty minutes later Charlotte opened the door to Mucho Mucho and spotted Ty making a beeline for her. “You just missed him,” he said, grabbing her hand. “But come with me. I want to show you what we’ve come up with so far.”
“Missed who?”
“Zach, silly girl. Who else?”
Charlotte waved with her free hand to Nita and glanced around for Sophia, all while Ty continued dragging her to a booth where Rick stood, trying to balance four giant Styrofoam cups in his hands. Ty guided Charlotte to one side of the booth, then plopped down on the other.
“Did you tell her?” Rick said, setting the cups back down on the table and stacking one on the other, so he could hold two cups in each hand.
“Not yet. You want to tell her?”
“No. You go ahead,” Rick said, motioning to Ty with his chin.
“But it’s technically your news. You should be the one to tell her.”
“But you’re more excited. It’ll be better coming from you.”
“Will someone just tell me something?” Charlotte blurted.
“We found you a tandem bike,” they both said at the same time before Rick continued. “Well, one of the kids in my youth group did. It was just sitting in his grandparents’ garage gathering dust, so they said you could have it.”
“Isn’t that great?” Ty said, bouncing up and down in his seat like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Well . . .” Sure. Great in the sense she didn’t have to spend two thousand dollars on a bicycle she didn’t want. Not so great in the sense she was one step closer to having to bike five hundred miles on a bicycle she didn’t want.
“I better get this salsa home to Kate before she puts a hit out on me.” Rick lifted the cups and shot Charlotte a wink. “Good luck, kiddo. We’ll be praying for you.”
“Thanks.” But she had a feeling Ty was going to need those prayers more than she did if she and Zach failed. Ty was still bouncing and rambling about the greatness of it all. She’d never seen him so excited. Might be best to give him a heads-up that she and Zach weren’t exactly a do-or-die couple. The chances of them completing this challenge . . .
She cleared her throat. “Listen, Ty, before this goes any further, I need to let you in on something. Zach and I, well, we’re—”
“Scared? Of course you are. Who wouldn’t be? It’s a lot of pressure. That’s why I took the liberty of helping you out.” He began unfolding a map and spreading it across the table.
“I’m not sure scared is the right word I’m looking for in this situation. Maybe more like . . . oh, I don’t know, regretful? Because believe me, I get more than anyone how handy twenty-five thousand dollars would be, but—”
“Twenty-five thousand?” Ty looked up from what appeared to be a day-by-day itinerary scrawled across a piece of notebook paper and reached across the table to grip her hand. “No. No, no, no. Didn’t you hear? You seriously need to start reading the paper, woman. Hopkins said to make this a more valuable experience, he’s decided to add another zero to the prize. We’re talking two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Why do you think I’m so excited?”
Before she could say anything, he slid the notebook paper in front of her, tapping a bunch of words with his finger. “Now I know this is totally out of your element, and I know Zach’s not much of a planner, so I made sure to map everything out for you.”
Charlotte stared at the notebook paper full of town names she’d never heard of and mileage distances she rarely covered one day in a car, let alone on a bicycle. “Why does that say Nashville?”
“Because that’s where the Natchez Trace starts. And honestly, Hopkins was doing you a favor when he picked it. It’s all paved noncommercial highway, so you won’t be battling lots of traffic, definitely no semis. The speed limit is 50 miles per hour the entire route, and there’s plenty of camping sites along the way, which is good. Save you some money. Plus I hear it’s very scenic.”
He ran his finger down the map. “Now the Trace only goes around 440 miles, so you’ll have to do nearly sixty off the trail to get to the finish line. And technically, yes, the finish is a little further than five hundred miles. But not by much.” He tapped a dot on the map. “Tiny little town in Louisiana called Jackson. Now you’ll still need to get somewhere you can pick up a rental car and make the drive back, but other than that, it sounds perfect, don’t you think?”
Charlotte stared at the notebook paper. The map. The notebook paper. The map. “Pretty sure perfect isn’t the word I’m looking for in this situation either.”
Zach’s arms burned as he powered through another set of push-ups. They weren’t really going to go through with this, were they? He finished the push-ups, then flipped onto his back for rapid crunch repetitions.
He’d be the first to admit his moral compass didn’t always point due north, but entering a challenge for couples to win any amount of money when they weren’t really a couple seemed unethical even by his standards.
They shouldn’t do it. Plain and simple. That’s all there was to it.
Unless . . . they decided to make some sort of commitment? Maybe be a real couple? The type of couple who kisses?
Jumping up, he grabbed the Nerf Chicago Bulls basketball that went along with the miniature hoop still attached above the door and began pacing the creaky hardwood floors of his childhood bedroom. He tossed the ball from hand to hand.
