“No, B,” Noah says, “Lanie doesn’t need to hear about—”
“The boy didn’t know a throttle from a thyroid,” she goes on, turning her back to Noah so he can’t shut her up. “Matter of fact, he’s the reason I got my certification to teach.”
“You were that inspiring?” I say to Noah.
“Hell no!” Bernadette cackles. “I figured if I could teach him, I could teach a rock. Three days after I gave him a lesson, he took off on some used piece of crap for Colorado. His mama almost killed me, but he made it!”
I try to imagine Noah at sixteen, riding through the Rocky Mountains. Something twists inside me. “Why did you go to Colorado?”
“Why does anyone do crazy things?” Bernadette says. “For love.”
“Her name was Tanya,” Noah says, wincing at the memory. “She played volleyball and was in Colorado for a tournament. Let’s just say, neither she nor her coach was impressed when I rolled into town.”
Bernadette hoots. “He came back with his tail between his legs.” She sighs and rubs at a smudge on her windshield. “Ah, well. Loving a human is nowhere near as simple as loving a bike. That’s why Noah sticks to fiction now, and I stick to porkin’ torque.”
I bite back a laugh then turn to Noah, expecting him to do the same. But when he meets my eyes . . . is it two hours of riding in the sun, or is he blushing? I feel my own cheeks getting warm as Noah turns away and starts fidgeting with his motorcycle gloves like they really need his attention.
Bernadette glances at Noah, then at me. “Why don’t you two take the bikes for a spin around the neighborhood while I set up the course for your riding test? A little street practice wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Want to?” Noah says to me.
I’m already starting my engine.
We take it slow around the neighborhood, gliding through quiet streets and back alleys. Noah knows where to go to avoid the traffic, and soon I start to see Bernadette’s wisdom: This is much better practice for Italy than making circles in a parking lot.
I like looking at Noah on the bike. His olive skin glows against his white shirt. His hair is just long enough to peek below his helmet. As my eyes travel downward, I stop myself—
I’m still his editor, and we still need a book idea. So even if Noah looks distractingly good, and even if I am now single enough to notice, I need to try, for the sake of our careers, to rein it in.
The sky is gold with late-afternoon light by the time Bernadette gives us our tests.
“Remember,” she says over the rumble of the engines, “your eyes should always be where you want to be twenty seconds from now. Don’t look down at where you are, only out at where you’re going.”
“I think that’s a metaphor for something or other,” I say to Noah.
I keep my eyes ahead as I demonstrate how I’ve learned to turn, to weave, to smoothly shift gears, and to make a short stop. It’s glorious. It’s exhausting. It’s more fun and more challenging than anything I’ve done in a long time.
I roll to a stop before Bernadette. She jumps up and hugs me to let me know I passed. When she goes inside to print out the certificate I’ll take to the DMV, I stand before Noah, wondering, are we also going to hug . . . or?
“Nice weaves,” he says. “Very smooth.”
“Yours weren’t so bad, either.”
My eyes catch on his lips, and I notice that one of his bottom teeth is a little crooked. It’s charming. So charming I start to wonder things I shouldn’t wonder, like what it would be like to touch those lips, those teeth, with my own—
Bernadette comes out of the trailer, two certificates in her hands. “Who wants to get a celebratory beer at the Ice House—”
“I don’t know,” Noah says quickly, using the clipped tone I haven’t heard in weeks. “I’ve taken up enough of Lanie’s time.”
“Right,” I say—though if Noah hadn’t shut it down, I would have loved to grab a beer with Bernadette. She’s fun. And I enjoyed the insight into teenage Noah’s romantic lunges, maybe a little too much.
Did Noah see me staring at his lips a moment ago? Did I freak him out? Or maybe he has plans tonight?
“Yeah, I should get back,” I say.
“Next time then,” Bernadette says and hands me a card with her email address. “You’d better send me pictures from Italy.”
* * *
“I never said that!” I insist to Noah on the subway ride home.
“You absolutely said it!” Noah laughs, his smile big and open as he leans against a framed map of the MTA. “I remember it clearly—you were storming past the gates of the zoo. I was chasing after you. You spun on me. You had your hands on your hips, your cheeks were flushed”—he’s acting all of this out, badly—“you glared, and then—oh no!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you live on Forty-Ninth Street?” Noah points at the open subway doors, at the sign, which reads Lexington and Sixty-Third.
No way. Not possible. I missed my stop? I, Lanie Bloom, who has never, not once in my seven years of living in New York, not even before I knew the difference between Amsterdam and Park Avenue, ever missed my stop?
The next time these doors open, we’ll be on Roosevelt Island. After that we’ll be all the way in Queens. I look at Noah. A silent verdict passes between us. We bolt off the train just before the doors slam shut, and land in the station at Sixty-Third and Lex, where we double over, laughing.
“I cannot believe I did that!” I say, trying to catch my breath. “It’s your fault for distracting me with your terrible impression.”
“I think it’s a sign,” Noah says. “I think you were meant to take a sunset stroll with me through Central Park tonight.”
I meet his eyes, not laughing anymore. His smile quickens my pulse.
“But you said you didn’t want to get a drink with Bernadette. I thought . . . Don’t you have plans?”
“I didn’t want to get a drink with Bernadette,” he says, still looking at me. “But I’d love to take a walk with you.”
We stare at each other for a supercharged few seconds, and that’s when I feel it. It’s not just attraction I have for Noah. There’s something between us. He feels it, too.
I should not go for a walk with him right now. I should go home and . . . is cold showering really a thing that people do?
But what if this walk becomes the moment that inspiration strikes? What if I pass on the chance to be there, because I was worried I was starting to think about Noah in subway-fantasy-material ways?