Chapter 18 - Get to the Bike.
Safe to say the rest of the evening I was on cloud nine. Gone was my bad mood and hunger, and most surprisingly, I could sit in the same room as my so-called father for the duration of the meal without a fight or storming off.
I’m calling it the “Pearl effect.” No other woman has ever had this impact on me. Fact.
Yes, she lied about her name, but I get why. I was and still am a stranger, but there’s no way she can deny the connection between us. This is different, I know it. The moment I had sunk into her was like a fucking lightning bolt zapped me. This is it. I couldn’t stop looking at her for the rest of the night. The word ‘Mine’ chanted over and over in my head. I can’t explain how or why this isn’t like any other girl I’ve been with. I just know she’s not like any other girl I’ve been with. There’s no way she’s a one-bang thing … but here comes the part of trying to convince her of that, and I think, judging by how quickly she got dressed and ran out of the storage room, she isn’t going to make this easy for me.
If there’s one thing I can do and do well, it’s convincing people, and if all else fails, I always have another trick up my sleeve.
“Where did you sulk off to for twenty minutes, Colt?” Hallie whispers while everyone mingles and talks in the dining room, and she gives me a knowing smile.
“None of your beeswax.” I wink.
“Mm-hm, my pianist disappeared too. Strange, don’t you think?” Here we go…
“Maybe.”
“She’s pretty, isn’t she.”
I roll my eyes and laugh.
“You’re about as subtle as a brick going through a window, you know that, right?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she says, acting shocked with a hand on her heart before she rises slowly from her chair.
“I think you should talk to her,” she adds before walking over to Logan. Oh, I will, Hals, I will.
******
It’s a new dawn and a new day, tomorrow is the wedding. Between now and then, I need to work my Colton Shaw magic on one British lady. I spot Pearl, known as Margo, but I prefer Pearl, heading toward the beach. When I say spot, I mean I might have stalked her room door for a bit. I also might have paid the receptionist a few bucks to give me her room name. Never mind that, though, it’s for the greater good, and that greater good is Pearl and me.
I stroll toward the recliners lined up on the sand and take one right next to her. I say nothing, wanting to see if she will strike up a conversation with me.
She flips through a dream dictionary and doesn’t acknowledge I am here. Maybe she had a dream about last night and now she’s looking it up before we can talk. I shuffle around in my chair, annoyed I didn’t bring my phone to play on while I wait, but after twenty minutes of complete silence, I snap.
“You want to talk about last night?” My tone comes out darker than I meant it to. She ignores me and turns another page.
“Pearl?”
Slamming her book shut, she says, “Have you written your speech yet?”
I frown. “No, well a little.”
“Right, as I thought. Well, instead of pestering me, why don’t you go do that instead?” she snaps before picking her book back up. I want to respond that I’d rather have her company, but I stop myself to keep from seeming like a desperate puppy.
I bite my lip and stare out toward the rippling waves. She’s got a point; I need to get it done and practice.
We sit in comfortable silence for a while.
“What’s your favorite memory of Logan and you?” Her gentle tone gives me whiplash.
Looking down at my lap, I shake my head. “I have so many, ones from when we were kids, ones from high school, college years, loads, why do you ask?”
“Curiosity, I guess, and I just wondered if that would help you when it comes to writing your speech.”
My favorite memory? I let out a shaky breath.
“We used to live two doors down from each other. Sometimes, I’d slip past my parents, sneak across my neighbor’s back garden, and go to Logan’s, and sometimes he would do the same. One day, I’m not sure how we missed it before, but we noticed the neighbor between our houses had this huge greenhouse, full of homegrown, fresh vegetables and fruit. From that day on, we’d be in that greenhouse. The neighbor would catch us munching our way through it most times, and each time, he’d be more pissed than the last. We’d run so fast to get away from him. Logan and I begged our parents for a bike to ride around the neighborhood on, but really it was for a quick escape from the old guy. On Logan’s ninth birthday, he got a brand-new bicycle. A red racing stripe down the side, six gears.” I paused and looked over at her smiling. “It was a beautiful bike, okay?” I let out a chuckle the same time she does.
“Anyway, this bike was gorgeous. So, one day we go to the greenhouse and there’s strawberries growing in a large pot, loads ready to eat. We inhaled them, not all but a majority. I’ve never jumped so high, the old man came out of nowhere, I swear, shouting at us, threatening to tell our parents, and call the cops. You name it. Logan screamed to run for it, so we did. I slid on the ground between this guy’s legs while Logan sprinted past him shouting to ‘Get to the bike’ in an Arnie Schwarzenegger voice.” I stop to laugh at the memory.
“So, we get to the bike, I jump on the back, and Logan’s peddling like a mad man away from the old guy. He’s catching up on us, for a pensioner, he could run. I’m standing on these tiny pegs coming out of the back wheel, looking over my shoulder at the neighbor, who’s now on his bike. Not until we were picking up speed, did I notice Logan had taken a wrong turn and we were traveling at the speed of light down the biggest hill in New York. He’s screaming that the brakes are jammed, and I’m screaming that the old guys nearly got us. The old man’s also screaming, what? I don’t know. At the bottom of the hill is a house with a for-sale board out front. We didn’t just bump into it, we went straight through it, our faces were imprinted on that board, I’m certain my two front teeth are still stuck in it.”
Margo’s crying tears of laughter, and I smile at the stupidity of Logan and me.
“We were both knocked out for a while from the impact.”
Between bouts of laughter, she asks, “So the bike was ruined, I guess?”
“The bike was heartbreakingly ruined, along with our faces for about two months. The for-sale board was ruined, plus some of the garden that the bike dug up on the way through, we were in so much trouble.”
“Oh my God, Colton, you could have been hurt so bad,” she says as the reality of it hits her.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “We are still here to tell the tale, though.”
“What happened to your eye?” she asks. I smile and tell her my epic tale of the groom’s bachelor weekend. She tries to hide her smile as she tells me off for ignoring the bride’s request of staying in the city and how I deserve the black eye.
We go back to sitting in content silence, then I drift off to sleep.