21. Jeremy
There weren’t many places to ride a bike in New York City. Not for little Jeremy Rinci, the son of a children’s book illustrator and a mechanical engineer, who was, for lack of a better phrase, not given any genetic inclination toward sports. He had learned how to ride a bike in college while dating a Bed-Stuy hipster who rode a fixed gear and played bicycle polo, but he never really did anything with it until the stress of his MFA caused him to find some type of physical outlet. A few people in his cohort had decided to try a spin class, and Jeremy had fallen in love. The lights, the sounds, the way he could feel as though he was a part of something else, to push himself but still embrace that individualized self-confidence that came with dancing alone in his apartment. The best spin classes reminded him of the best nights out at clubs, that fiery mix of dopamine and sweat and a good beat that was worth any headache you would wake up with.
However, Jeremy was quickly finding that his previous history of Ladies of the ’80s spin classes and hipster bikes was essentially useless when it came to mountain biking.
Oh, he could pedal fine, all right. The first few minutes, just down a gravel service road, were easy and gave Jeremy a false sense of confidence. Look at me, being outdoorsy and shit. He couldn’t wait to rub it in Emmy’s face.
And then, following Davis, who made this seem like it was second nature, he went around a curve and began to pedal up. He was even doing that thing where he could stand up and pedal, which, to Jeremy, seemed like it was in defiance of gravity.
“You good back there?” Davis called from what seemed like four miles up the trail.
“Yeah, I’m great,” Jeremy lied, tipping to the side again. How did you manage to get momentum to move the bike at all? He was a designer and art historian, he was not the type of man who could comprehend basic physics on a mountain.
“This hill can be a bit tough, especially with the altitude,” Davis was saying. “Feel free to hop off and push your bike.”
Thank fuck, Jeremy thought to himself as he sprung off the bike. He had at least hiked before. It wasn’t something he necessarily sought out, but you couldn’t live in Colorado for longer than three months without accidentally being roped into climbing a 14’er. He spent at least a few days each summer hiking in the mountains with Emmy and Foster, and he liked to go for long, rambling walks with Phoebe and Declan through the city as they chatted about art. He was almost entirely sure that he would not make a total ass out of himself if he could get away with hiking up this hill. As if realizing what he had suggested, Davis hopped off and began to push his own bike up the hill. It gave Jeremy a distracting view of how the thick muscles in Davis’s back rippled as he held on to the handlebars.
Unfortunately for Jeremy— and even more unfortunately for his Achilles tendon— none of the myriad hikes he had gone on in Colorado involved a bicycle. He held it out from himself to the left, mimicking what he saw Davis do, grateful for his long arms and the way he ensured he wasn’t impaled by the handles, but he kept forgetting about the pedals. Every four steps, it seemed, the back of his left leg would be smacked with the pedal, which somehow felt like he was taking a dagger to his calf. He would bet that there was either a bruise or a trail of blood that would stain his socks.
And these were his nice sweat-wicking socks.
“Almost there!” Jeremy called to Davis. Or maybe it was more of a bit of motivation for himself, because it finally looked like there was a bit of light at the top of the trail that meant the trail would flatten out. He could handle that. It’d be a bit rocky, but it was something he could control. Jeremy pushed his bike up and over, pulling in deep breaths of air in a way he hoped told Davis that he was invigorated, not on the edge of dying.
“Uh, we’ll head over that way.” Davis pointed his arm over to the left, and Jeremy caught a whiff of pine and earth and a bit of something sharp and spicy. He almost forgot the pain in his lungs and the throbbing in the back of his heel with that breath, with the way that Davis, when he was surrounded by trees with a light breeze rustling a wayward piece of hair that had escaped from his helmet, smiled a bit broader. His eyes shone out here. Davis in the trees is how Jeremy felt when he was in a figure drawing class, completely in his element.
“Great,” Jeremy said, not investigating if his breathlessness was from the elevation, pushing a bike up a mountain, or the way Davis looked right now. He hopped on his bike and tentatively followed Davis, enjoying the fact that he was going slowly (Jeremy hoped it wasn’t for his own benefit. He did have a little bit of pride, after all). He was finally getting the hang of the fact that he had to let the terrain move the handlebars for him— less trying to control the bike and more that he was along for the ride, though pedaling forward.
He could do this. Maybe he could impress Davis after all.
“Okay, here we go!” Davis called, and Jeremy looked up just to see him disappear over the edge of the trail.
Oh, so now they were going down.
You can do this, you can do this. Jeremy repeated the phrase on a loop. He’d learned that it was about letting the bike lead. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of his brain, he remembered advice from the first time his father had taken him out to Long Island to learn how to drive a car.
The minute you try to control everything, you stiffen up, and you’ll overcorrect everywhere.
The thing about Jeremy Rinci was, however, that the more he told himself not to do something, the more his body instinctively did the thing. And while he had learned to manage it in certain situations (sex, looking at Davis during their work sessions, looking unfazed when he showed up late to a meeting), it turned out that he was not able to manage it now.
The front wheel of his bike went over the edge, and Jeremy, smartly, didn’t look at the trail in front of him. He figured he would just go and see how it went.
And that did not go well, because he forgot that gravity would be on the side of his bike.
Art kid.
His breath was forced out of his lungs multiple times as he careened down the trail, miraculously able to keep his bike up because the trail was straight. Shit, shit, shit, shit. He could get to the bottom of the hill, and then he would be able to just tell Davis that he would hike the bike back, tail between his legs. He’d probably have to cancel his contract with the national forest, because this was embarrassing and— oh fuck, there was a turn in the trail.
“Way to go!” Davis, who had apparently pulled to the side of the trail on the curve, called.
Jeremy let out a screech that reminded him of what he thought a pterodactyl would probably have made in response. Then his front tire caught a rock that was in the middle of the trail, and he was falling, tumbling, crashing.
He wished that something more eloquent had gone through his head in what he thought would be his final moment of consciousness, but fucking shit was what repeated.
“Fucking shit,” he said out loud when his body came to a stop. He had done his best to tuck into a tiny ball and roll down the hill, tiny branches and little rocks flying in every direction. Once he established that he still had all his limbs attached, he made to get up, assuming that he had probably ruined Davis’s friend’s bike.
“Stay there!” Davis yelled, scrambling down the hill toward him, and Jeremy agreed this was the right thing to do. Mercifully, he sat down and noticed the blood dripping from his knee, the way his shoulder burned.
Fucking shitindeed.