Ride or Die

The alarm went off at 4:15 and I lay there for a solid minute wondering whose idea my life was. Mine, apparently. Nobody else was dumb enough to sign up for a blind date at a farmers market that opens at five in the morning.

My name is Shay Ortega, I'm twenty-two, and I fly for a regional airline out of Gibbons. Which means I'm awake at weird hours anyway, but usually I'm getting paid for it. This Saturday I was unpaid and standing in a gravel lot in Port Marrow, Maine, under a sky the color of dishwater, waiting for a man named Trevor who did not exist.

I knew he didn't exist by 5:20. The market was up and running around me, all apples and squash and one guy yelling about late-season honeycrisps like they owed him money. My date was nowhere. I checked my phone for the ninth time. Nothing.

"Shay? Shay Ortega?"

A woman in a fleece vest and a lanyard came hurrying over, clipboard first.

"That's me."

"Oh, thank goodness. I've been looking everywhere. I have to apologize, we've made a terrible mess of your booking."

"Great. Love that."

She winced. "The couple who signed up for the sunrise ride package, well, they canceled. And our system matched you to their slot, but the way it did it, it, well. It never sent your actual date the information. So he never knew to come."

"So I got stood up by a ghost."

"Technically you got matched to a ride meant for two." She pressed a paper voucher into my hand like it was a hostage negotiation. "It's a tandem bicycle tour of the coastal path. Normally a couples' activity, but the voucher's yours either way. Please use it. I feel awful."

I looked at the voucher. It had a battered tandem bike printed on it and the words FREE RIDE in a wobbly font with a sun over the E.

"I don't even have a second person," I said.

"That's the problem, yes." The organizer smiled the smile of a woman whose shift started at four. "If you find one, you're all set. Again, so sorry."

She hurried off toward the honeycrisp guy, and I stood there holding a voucher for a bike built for two like the world's loneliest party favor.

* * *

The makeup stall was new. I'd noticed it last Saturday because I'd said something about it, out loud, to my then-boyfriend before I dumped him two days later. A woman selling cosmetics at a farmers market between the squash and the honey. It had struck me as ridiculous. I'd said so. Not quietly.

I recognized her the second I saw her again. She was arranging lipsticks on a folding table like they were museum pieces, dark hair pulled back, maybe twenty-six, wearing a canvas apron over a black turtleneck. Her stall had a hand-lettered banner: DINAH THORNE, FACE ARTISTRY.

She saw me looking and her whole posture changed.

"You," she said.

"Me."

"You're the one who said the farmers market didn't need a makeup counter."

"I said it was a funny place for it. Different thing."

"Is it."

"Not really," I admitted. "Listen, I was having a bad morning. I'm having a worse one now, if it helps."

"It does not." But she almost smiled, which was more than I deserved. "What do you want, airline?"

"How'd you know I fly?"

"Your posture. You stand like the seatbelt sign just went off."

I laughed before I could stop myself. "Okay, that's fair. I'm Shay."

"Dinah. We covered that." She pointed at her banner. "Why are you standing at my stall at five thirty in the morning looking like your dog died?"

I held up the voucher. "Blind date no-showed. Market screwed it up. Now I own a tandem bike ride for two and I have one."

She took the voucher from me and read it. Then she read it again, which I didn't love.

"These are forty-five dollars," she said.

"Forty-five?"

"Riders are supposed to split it. I've been looking at that bike every weekend. I keep not doing it because forty-five dollars for a bicycle is a scam and I have rent."

"So come with me."

She looked up at me. "I don't like you."

"You don't know me."

"I know you criticized my business model to your boyfriend in front of my entire stall."

"Ex-boyfriend," I said. "He got fired in the breakup too."

Something about that got her. She set the voucher down and folded her arms.

"Front or back?" she said.

"Come again?"

"On the tandem. Somebody steers. Somebody sits behind and pedals and trusts the person steering not to kill them both. Pick."

"I'm steering. Obviously. I drive a car for a living."

"You fly a plane."

"Same wheel, smaller audience."

"Nope." She was already flipping her OPEN sign to closed and pulling a windbreaker off a hook. "I'm front. I know the path. You sit in back and learn something."

"Learn what?"

"About trust, Shay Ortega, seatbelt posture."

"That's not even a real lesson."

"It is today."

* * *

The tandem was exactly as battered as advertised. The guy running it, a squat man named Gus who smelled like coffee and rope, walked us through the basics like we were children, which to be fair we kind of were.

"Front rider steers and brakes," Gus said. "Back rider pedals. Back rider does not lean, does not stand, does not try to help steer, because back rider cannot steer."

"She's going to be a problem," Dinah said, thumbing at me.

"She's going to be great," Gus said, with the confidence of a man who'd already been paid.

I climbed in back. The seat was higher than I expected and the pedals were synced to hers, which I learned immediately because she pushed off and my feet got dragged along like luggage.

"Hey! Warn a person."

"Pedal, Shay."

"I'm pedaling. You didn't say we were starting."

"I said get in. That's a start command."

The path unrolled along the coast, gravel giving way to packed dirt, the ocean showing up gray and flat on our left. October in Maine is not a forgiving month. The wind came off the water and bit through my jacket, and the only warm thing on the whole path was the huff of Dinah pedaling in front of me.

So I did what I do. I pedaled harder.

The bike sped up. I felt it fight her hands for a second, felt her correct it, and then I pushed harder again, because if she wanted to be in front she could earn it.

"Shay." Her voice came back over her shoulder, easy, almost lazy. "What are you doing?"

"Helping."

"You're not helping. You're racing a ghost date who doesn't exist."

"He'd be losing."

"Uh huh." She leaned back. Actually leaned, spine curving until her shoulders were almost against my chest, hands loose on the handlebars, and she was laughing, this low warm laugh the wind tried to steal. "Come on then. Show me what you've got, flight crew."

I put everything into it. My quads burned, the chain hummed, the whole machine picked up speed down the long straight stretch past the squash stall's parking overflow. She didn't fight it. She just held the line, steady as anything, letting me pour power through her like she was built for it.

"There it is," she called back. "That's the stuff."

"You're not even trying!" I yelled into the wind.

"Neither are you. You're angry-pedaling. It's different."

"How is it different?!"

"Angry-pedaling skips a gear. You keep dropping the chain rhythm. Smooth beats hard, every time." She glanced back, hair whipping, and there was something in her face I couldn't name, a bright thing. "Breathe with it. One, two, one, two. Stop trying to beat the bike."

"I'm not trying to beat the bike."

"You're trying to beat me. Same problem. The bike doesn't care who wins."

We hit the winding section where the path curled along the headland, and I was still going full tilt, stubborn down to the marrow of me. She took the curves without slowing, leaning the machine into them, and my hands found the rail on the back seat and gripped.

"Fast enough?" she called.

"No."

"Good."

"Gus said no leaning."