Page 48 of Love in Tandem
“Yeah, that’s my story.”
“That was lame.”
“I didn’t say the story had to be amazing. I just said a story from childhood you’ve never told anyone before.”
“Well, I can see why you’ve never told anyone that before. It’d put them to sleep.”
“Okay, Charles Dickens, let’s hear your story then. At least I came up with one.”
“If I’d known the bar was going to be set so low, I would have too. Like oh, I know, that time I ate a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in kindergarten, and I bit off too big of a bite. I had to chew at least ten times before I could swallow. Can’t believe I never told anyone that story before.”
A spray of water splashed her in the face. “Hey,” Charlotte said with a gasp. Zach had lifted his water bottle as if to take a drink, then sprayed it over his shoulder. Charlotte couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t blame me when you run out of water later.”
She adjusted her position on the seat, realizing she hadn’t thought about her sore rear in all the time they’d bantered back and forth. Zach’s intention, no doubt.
“So tell me a real story,” Charlotte said.
“What? After all the heckling you just gave me?”
“You know heckling is my love language.”
He straightened in his seat, cracking his neck side to side. How he could keep his balance without holding the handlebars amazed her. Also made her nervous. “Can you keep one hand on the handlebars at all times, since my life is in your hands when you pull stunts like that?”
“What, stunts like this?” He lifted both hands above his head. “You can’t see me, but I’ve got my eyes closed too.”
“You better be joking or I’m going to kill you.”
“Then we’ll definitely crash.”
“Zach!” She smacked him on the back.
“Ooh,” he said, lowering his hands to the bar and arching his back like a cat. “Could you do that a little lower and more to the center. And use your nails this time.”
“I’m not scratching your back.”
“But that’s one of the responsibilities of the posterior rider. Everybody knows that. The anterior rider leads and keeps the bike from crashing. The posterior rider keeps the anterior rider comfortable and happy. Didn’t we go over this? I could have sworn we went over this.”
Charlotte shifted on her seat, the adjustment painful, but slightly more bearable. Maybe she could make it through the day without crying. Or dying. “So . . .” She poked him in the back. “About that next story.”
Sophia jammed her foot on the gas pedal to make it up the steep hill, not sure who was groaning louder— herself or the car. “Come on, baby, I know you’re ready to be put out to pasture, but I can’t afford another car right now, so you’re just gonna have to keep climbing. You hear me? Climb.”
Her car clearly didn’t hear her. Or perhaps didn’t appreciate her attempts at singing “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in her best Reverend Mother voice.
So maybe driving straight here after work this afternoon had been a mistake. Maybe she should’ve figured out what was wrong with her car first. Especially since finding Mr. Hopkins’s house required taking the whee-way.
In high school Sophia’s friends had nicknamed this back country route the whee-way since it had so many rolling hills that made them yell “Whee!” Now it only made Sophia want to yell “Why?”
Why did Mr. Hopkins have to die before she got the chance to talk to him? Why didn’t she talk to the cutie-pants Clark Kent guy when she had the chance at the hospital? Why were there so many hills in the second-flattest state in the continent?
“Come on, girl. You think you can, you think you can . . . Almost to the top.” Of this hill. Sophia didn’t have the heart to tell her Little Engine That Could that they had at least two more after this one. From its sputters, Sophia guessed her car already knew.
After several morbid rattles, then one steamy hiss, her car must have given up the ghost. It drifted into deathly silence, leaving Sophia just enough time to steer it to the side of the road before stopping completely.
Well, great. She set the parking brake. At least getting a tow shouldn’t be a problem. One of the perks of having a dad who worked at a mechanic’s shop. She pretty much had Rusty on speed dial. Or Trusty Rusty as she liked to call him.
Sophia began digging into her purse for her phone, then remembered. She didn’t have her phone. In her rush this morning to swing by Charlotte’s and feed the cat, she’d forgotten her phone on the kitchen counter.
Okay, maybe not exactly forgotten. Maybe more like purposefully abandoned.
