Page 14 of Aim for Love

“See you in a bit,” Scott says to Nora, who follows Sophie.

Not letting myself stop to doubt more, I sit on my bike seat and follow.It’s just like riding a bike!So far so good. I hold my breath when I go over the ridge, and then I don’t even notice a drop. It was smaller than it looked.Maybe this is going to be OK.

An hour later, I’m staring at a sheer rock listening to Hunter describe how to ride up it.This is not OK.

They lulled me into complacency until now, with the riding in circles and along pretend switchbacks. All “only use one finger on the brake” and “put the pedal under the ball of your foot.” Easy. We’d practiced body positioning, which I still don’t quite get—“if the bike were to disappear, you should be standing on the ground” did not compute for me—and I managed to fake it well enough.

But I can’t do this. I can’t ride a bike up a rock.

I’ve already watched Nora and Sophie succeed on their first try. They make it look easy, even with the grunting (Nora) and squealing (Sophie) involved.

The words are on the tip of my tongue: “I’m going to walk it.” They won’t come out. I’m the last person in the group to go and no one else walked their bike. Hunter is standing uphill waiting and Scott is watching me from halfway up the slope.

“You good?” one of them calls to me. My throat is too tight to answer, so I answer with a thumbs up.My thumb is such a liar.

Between the sun beating down on me and the pressure of expectation on my back, my shoulders are hunched. My whole body is a knot of tension. I’m going to have to try to do this, no matter how scared I am that I’m going to screw it up. Nora and Sophie think I need to try new things to break out of the rut I’m in. Well, now I’m going to ride right up a rut and show it who’s boss.

I repeat the instructions over and over in my head:Lift the front wheel when you’re about to hit the rock. Pedal through it. When you’re about to leave the rock, shove the bike in front of you.

Wait, how do I know I’m not lifting too early? And was I supposed to lean backward or forward?

It’s too late to ask them to repeat the lesson. I pedal forward. When I’m about to hit the rock, I panic and hit the brakes. I guess I’m a little late on the timing because my front wheel stickswhile my back wheel keeps going, and the bike tips over. I shriek even before I hit the ground and feel pain in my hands and knees. The bike falls on top of me, an afterthought since I wasn’t going very fast.

My first reaction is embarrassment. Nobody else fell trying to do this. When I start to push myself to my feet, Scott stops me. “Lay there for a minute. Let it settle.” He lifts the bike off my body, untangling it gently from my legs.

Hunter arrives next, having run down the hill I guess, and squats down next to me. “What are you feeling?” he asks.

“Dumb, mostly,” I reply, squinting up at him in the sun.

He smiles a little. “I meant in your body. Where are you hurt?”

“Oh.” I lift a hand and see it’s bloody. “My hands. And my knees.”

“Yeah, you’ve got some scrapes. Anywhere else?”

“Um, I don’t think so.” I carefully sit up. Hunter helps me examine my arms and legs for any other scrapes. Nothing seems broken.

Scott gives me a thumbs up and calls up to the rest of the group looking over the top of the hill, “We’ve got first blood!”

“I’ll get you patched up,” Hunter assures me. He’s already pulled out a first aid kit. “You can take the rest of the group to the next feature,” he tells Scott. “We’ll catch up.”

“OK, you got it,” Scott says affably. “Hang in there, Mollie. It’s all part of the action.”

I mumble a curse under my breath and they both laugh at me.

“Mollie, do you want us to stay?” Nora calls down to me. She’s holding onto her bike and looking worriedly back at Sophie.

“No, go ahead!” I call back. “I’m OK!” I throw a thumbs up their way for good measure, even though my eyes are filling withdelayed tears.This sucks. I’m sick of faking it for my friends and everyone else, like I’m somehow enjoying being bad at things.

“OK, we’ll see you in a little bit! Take good care of her, Hunter!” Sophie calls.

Hunter gives them another thumbs up before he goes back to unwrapping an antibacterial wipe. So many lying thumbs-ups.

Like a child waiting for their mother to make it better, I hold my hands out to him.

“I don’t have any gloves,” he tells me, offering me the wipe. “It might be better if you…”

“Oh, right,” I say, taking the wipe and dabbing at my other hand with it.What must he think of me?Probably that only an idiot would get hurt on such a small—what did he call it? A “feature”?I prefer my ride flat and featureless, thank you.

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