“Noted,” Teddy said with a smile.
She placed her hands on the bike handles and squeezed the grips, then lifted one leg over the frame and sat. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but she didn’t want to adjust a strange woman’s bicycle, so she decided to make it work.
“It’s just like riding a bike,” she muttered to herself, pushing one pedal, then the other. And then she was moving . . . well, gliding at a low speed through the parking lot. The wind might not have been whipping her hair back, but it was certainly caressing it gently.
Everett clapped from the car. “You’re Lance Armstrong right now! I wish I could think of someone who never got in trouble for doping, but cycling isn’t really my sport,” he called.
Teddy laughed, reaching the curb. She attempted to turn around but realized she hadn’t given herself enough space; she was about to hit a parked car. She panicked, put one foot down, then tilted to the side.
“Teddy!” Everett shouted, and from her new vantage point on the ground, she saw his vintage-y-looking white-and-red sneakers running toward her. She looked up to see his face, surrounded by the gray clouds in the air.
“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling beside her. He quickly ran his hands over her arms, like he was checking for an injury, and her entire body shivered.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I fell off a bike. This happens a lot to children when they’re learning.”
“Yeah, but they’re closer to the ground,” Everett said, appraising her skeptically. “I don’t know how injured you can get when you roll off a tricycle.”
“What is your sport?” she asked.
“What?”
“You said cycling isn’t really your sport. So what is? We’ve never talked about it.”
Everett smiled then, his big, easy grin. “Basketball. It’s indoors, it’s fast-paced, and it has Shaq. Or had, anyway. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’m a huge Shaq fan. I can show you a really amazing portrait of him, if you’d like. It’s by this fantastic local artist who’s learning to ride a bike.”
“She sounds great,” Teddy said, trying to keep her smile from taking over her whole face. Weren’t you supposed to show some sort of restraint on a first date instead of staring at a man with complete adoration?
“What about you?”
Teddy frowned. “My sport? I prefer a more intense competition. More cutthroat. Brutal.”
Everett’s brow furrowed. “Hockey?”
“Kids Baking Championship on Food Network,” Teddy said. “Sometimes they have to make cupcakes that look like mashed potatoes, and I think that’s the only true way to judge an athlete’s skill.”
Everett laughed, loud and unselfconscious, and Teddy suddenly felt her breath leave her body. It was like the air had been knocked out of her, but not by the fall—by Everett’s presence, his nearness, the fact that she’d made him laugh.
And then Teddy realized she was still basically lying on the ground, so she sat up. “Thanks for caring,” she said.
Everett picked up the bike, then held out a hand for her and pulled her up. “What do you mean, thanks for caring?”
She thought about all the times Richard had rolled his eyes when she’d tried something new, sighed at her whenever she messed something up, made her feel like of course she couldn’t do anything right. If she’d fallen off a bike around him, he would’ve laughed and assumed she’d pick herself back up.
And perhaps it went without saying that he didn’t care about Kids Baking Championship. She never would’ve watched it around him—he watched prestige television where terrible men made horrible decisions. It’s not that she didn’t like those shows, too, but sometimes a person just needed to watch Valerie Bertinelli comfort a small child whose custard had curdled.
“I mean . . . don’t worry about it.” Teddy brushed herself off as a raindrop hit her nose. “Is that . . . ?”
Another raindrop on her arm, and then another on her cheek. Suddenly raindrops were pelting them, the big, fat kind, and a burst of lightning flashed in the air. “Uh-oh,” Everett said, looking up.
Children squealed with delight, running down the sidewalk with their parents, bags full of hard-earned candy clutched to their chests.
“We should probably get in the car,” Everett said. “I mean, I’ve always heard you shouldn’t stand outside when there’s lightning. Especially not if you’re holding what is essentially a big piece of metal.”
“That does seem to be the conventional wisdom,” Teddy said, watching a father lift a tiny werewolf onto his shoulders. Everett carried the bike to the car and shoved it in the back, then opened Teddy’s door for her and she slid in.
Her bangs were wet and she knew they were going to dry in some unflattering, unpredictable way. Her skirt had parking lot dirt on it and she was pretty sure she had gravel embedded in her knee. But when Everett St. James walked around the car and sat in the driver’s seat, there was nowhere she’d have rather been.
“So,” Everett said, drumming his hands on the steering wheel, “bike riding is out. Where to now?”
39
“Are you sure this is what you want to do?” Everett asked, unlocking the door to the station. “I mean, visiting my place of work seems like a very boring date. Especially because it’s after hours, and nothing is going on right now.”
Teddy took a deep breath, wondering if she should tell Everett the truth. On the one hand, it felt bad to start a . . . whatever they were starting without telling him that she’d been watching his show regularly, and that it was sometimes the only bright spot in her day. But on the other hand, that was a little over-the-top, right? What if he thought she was some obsessed fan who was going to chain herself to the Everett’s Place sofa and refuse to leave?
“It’s not boring,” she said in a rush, “because I love the show. I’ve seen every episode.”
Everett paused, the door partially open. “Every episode?”
Teddy nodded. “I don’t have a kid or anything. I mean, I have a niece and a nephew, and that’s how I started watching, but I kept going on my own. Now they prefer to watch PJ Masks, anyway.”
Everett shrugged. “Who can blame them?”
Teddy clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. That was rude,” she said, her words muffled.
Everett laughed. “I think I’d have to be a pretty big narcissist to care that children enjoy watching a show about kids who fight crime in their pajamas.”