He jumps to his feet, spinning around. I leap backwards startled, upending the toolbox behind me which goes flying, scattering wrenches and screws and things I don’t know the names of all
across the floor.
‘Sorry,’ I say, looking at the mess, ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘You didn’t startle me,’ he answers through gritted teeth.
I raise an eyebrow, my eyes dropping to the spanner he’s clenching in his hand.
‘People don’t usually wander into rooms marked private,’ he says, jerking his head at the door.
I turn. And notice the sign on the door. PRIVATE. EMPLOYEES ONLY. Huh.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, struggling to be heard over the music. ‘I didn’t notice. I called out and nobody answered.’
He reaches down only then and with his foot yanks the lead from out of the iPod speaker he has set up on the counter. The music cuts out and suddenly my breathing sounds really loud. It also
seems to amplify his whole nakedness.
I stare at him. Actually I try not to stare at him but it’s kind of hard not to. I mean, he’s standing there topless in front of me and his stomach looks like it just walked out of
an Abercrombie catalogue. Sweat has darkened the waistband of his jeans. He’s holding a spanner in one hand, the tyre in the other.
I glance upwards. He’s still glaring at me, but not with irritation. He looks instead like he wants to kill me. His fingers twitch around the spanner. Unconsciously I have edged back
towards the door.
‘I’ll just go then . . .’ I say, my eyes fixed on the spanner now. Weird doesn’t even begin to describe this encounter. But at the same time, in my head, I’m
sorting through the words I’ll use to describe it to Megan in an email later. I’m already framing this scene in my memory so I can recreate it – spanner, muscle, sweat and all. I
bump the wall behind me and then dart backwards through the door.
‘Wait,’ I hear him say.
I turn.
A muscle pulses in his jaw. ‘What do you want? A bike?’
I stare at him. ‘Um, yeah. You’re a bike shop, right? You do hire bikes?’
He wipes his hands on a cloth he pulls from the back pocket of his jeans and comes towards me. I step backwards out of his way, banging into the counter behind me, splaying myself like a really
attractive starfish. He ignores me, reaching for a T-shirt on the counter and pulling it on as I watch, trying to force myself not to stare at. Those. Muscles. I forbid myself to quiver. Or to
reach out and touch them to check that they are real.
I follow him as nonchalantly as possible as he walks to the line of bikes in the centre of the shop. He stops in front of them and turns to me. His expression is blank now, totally indifferent.
His gaze falls the length of my body, but not in an appraising way, more in a
yawn look at this chemistry textbook I have to study
way. He then turns to the row of bikes, puts his hands on
the handlebars of one and pulls it free of the line.
‘This should fit you,’ he says.
‘O-kay,’ I say, walking towards the bike as though it’s a frothing Rottweiler. I’m not sure which I’m more scared of. The bike or the boy.
‘You want to try it?’ he asks, when I’m standing next to the bike, staring at it hesitantly. ‘Then I can adjust it if it needs it.’
I pause. He’s holding the bike steady for me but there’s a trace of impatience in his voice.
I drop my bag to my feet and bravely take hold of the handlebars and swing my leg over the seat. I try to act like the last time I rode a bike wasn’t at least a decade ago. He lets go and
I wobble and wonder if I can abase myself by asking for stabilisers.
I wish I had worn jeans and not these shorts because I’m aware that my bare thigh is brushing against his jeans. He notices too and edges away from me and I feel my cheeks start to burn. I
test the brakes. At least, I think they’re the brakes. I so do not want to have to ride this bike with him watching so I just admire the handles, mutter something about it feeling fine and
swing my leg back over. I feel better on flat ground with no saddle between my legs.
He kicks the stand down and then drops to one knee and starts fiddling with the seat. He raises it slightly, screws it tight and then turns to me without a smile.
‘That should do it,’ he says.
He heads to the counter and reaches across it for a notepad. After scribbling something on it he tosses it to me.
‘Fill in the blanks,’ he says.
I take the pencil he rolls my way, eyeing him as I do. There are guys with attitude, and then there’s this guy. He needs his own special category in Urban Dictionary. I thought America did
customer service like no other country on earth but he’s currently blowing that theory out of the water. I’m tempted as I write my name down in block capitals to toss the pad back and
tell him that I’ve changed my mind. There must be a dozen other bike rental places on the island. I know I passed one when we got off the ferry.
But then I notice the price he’s scrawled at the bottom – it’s cheap. I’m not sure I’d get such a good deal anywhere else. And I’m here now. And he’s
raised the seat. I glance up at him. He’s staring at me with his arms crossed over his chest. His foot isn’t actually tapping but his whole body feels like a ticking bomb.
I hurriedly finish writing my name and address.
‘Bring it back when you’re done. All we need is a deposit upfront,’ he says, reading the details I’ve written down.
I reach into my bag for my wallet and count out the fifty dollar deposit. He takes the cash and tears off the receipt, handing it to me without a word.
Behind me the door pings.
‘Ren!’
I turn at the sound of my name.
‘Hey,’ I say, blinking as I recognise Sophie – the blonde girl from the night before who I last saw staggering drunkenly off with Matt to find somewhere to puke. She looks much
more sober right now.
She comes speeding over to me, grabs me by the arm and starts tugging me towards the door.
‘Parker called and said he’d seen you coming in here,’ she whispers into my ear. ‘Like
what
are you doing?’
‘
Like
, I’m renting a bike,’ I answer. I’m still vaguely amused by the overuse of the word
like
. I thought it was something that Hollywood scriptwriters
used to emphasise vacuity in female characters. Turns out that’s actually the way Sophie speaks.
She lowers her voice to a stage whisper. ‘We don’t rent bikes from here. Nobody does.’ Emphasis on the
nobody
.
I glance up to see if moody bike guy is watching. He is. His eyes are narrowed at Sophie, half in amusement, half in threat. He looks like he’d like to leap over the counter and twist her
head off with his spanner.
‘Um, well I kind of paid my deposit already. And I got myself a two-wheeled means of transport.’ I point at the bike standing there waiting for me to make friends with it.
Sophie starts dragging me to the door. ‘Forget the bike,’ she hisses. ‘Come on, let’s just get out of here.’
‘Wait,’ I say, frustrated now. ‘I’m taking my bike.’
She stops to stare at me, her baby blue eyes popping like a cartoon character’s. Glancing nervously over her shoulder at the boy behind the counter, she huffs. ‘OK, just hurry, OK?
Before it’s all around town.’
I roll my eyes and start wheeling the bike towards the door, forgetting at first about the kickstand and wondering why the bike is fighting me to escape this place. The guy walks around the
counter towards us and Sophie skitters for the door as though he’s a serial killer. I see the trace of a smile on his lips as though he finds her behaviour amusing. I’m finding it
embarrassing. Despite how rude he’s just been to me I have been conditioned by my mother to be polite at all times and so I smile at him in apology. He notices but doesn’t smile back at
me, rather his eyebrows raise a fraction as though he’s taking my apology and wringing it by its neck before handing me back its broken corpse.
I realise my hands are shaking on the handlebars. He opens the door for me – Sophie having slammed it in my face – and I pass under his arm.
‘Thanks,’ I murmur.
He lets the door bang shut behind me in reply.
I mutter angrily at myself for having bothered to say ‘thanks’. Sometimes politeness conditioning sucks. I never actually say what I mean in case I offend someone.
That guy did not deserve a thank you. He deserved a kick in the shins. I vow next time to make a point of impoliteness.
‘Wow, what’s with him?’ I ask Sophie, jerking my head at the door.
Sophie is rooting around in her handbag like a crazed terrier, looking for something. She pauses to look up at me, her eyes wide. ‘You just met the infamous Jesse Miller,’ she says
and I notice that she’s practically panting with excitement.
‘Infamous?’ I ask, wondering whether I missed something – as in, maybe Jesse’s the last, forgotten, Jonas brother. ‘What’s he infamous for?’ I wonder
out loud. ‘His superlative customer service?’
‘You are SO lucky I came along when I did,’ Sophie says, pulling out her iPhone which is so bedazzled with crystals my eyes start tearing up.
‘Lucky? Why?’ I ask. Now I’m figuring, by the mixture of lurid excitement and squee in her voice, that Jesse Miller is not the last, forgotten, Jonas brother after all, but
rather a porn star, or, as I suspected, a serial killer.
‘He almost killed Tyler Reed,’ Sophie announces.
‘What?’ The pedal scrapes my calf as I squeeze the brakes (they are brakes).
‘You know Tyler?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, remembering the tall, dark-haired guy dancing with Eliza last night.
‘Well,’ Sophie says, ‘last summer Jesse almost killed him. He got arrested for it. I swear it was like, almost murder. Except Tyler didn’t like,
die
. He was just
in hospital for like forever with all these wires and casts and plugged into all these beeping machines. We went to visit him. It was all over the newspapers and everything.’ She pauses for
breath, tipping her head to one side and looking at me quizzically. ‘How could you not know that?’
I think about answering but don’t bother. A boy beating up another boy on a small island off the coast of Massachusetts is not going to make news in London but Sophie seems blissfully
unaware of this fact.
‘Jesse got three months in juvie,’ she continues at hyper-speed, not pausing to suck in another breath, ‘and I guess, now he’s out, they just let him wander around the
island which is like totally insane. I think Tyler’s family have a restraining order out on him. That’s what I heard anyway. I mean, Jesse’s totally psycho. I’m going to see
if I can get a restraining order on him too.’
I turn back to the bike. My heart is beating about a thousand times a minute. I recognise the residual effects of the adrenaline from my run-in with Jesse in the shop and now, though I try to
slow my heart and take a long deep breath to stop it from happening, my throat starts to close up. I kick frantically at the bike’s stand and with numb fingers start digging through my bag
for my inhaler. Sophie’s voice is like static filling my ears. Once I’ve found the familiar plastic tube I pull it free and take a long puff. Almost at once I feel the edge of the fog
retreating from my lungs and easing its fingers from my throat.
A hand on my shoulder makes me turn. I am expecting it to be Sophie checking to see if I’m OK but it’s not. The boy from the shop – Jesse Miller – is standing in front of
me. What’s he doing? Did he hear what Sophie was saying about him? I flinch and immediately drop my gaze to his hands. He isn’t holding a spanner anymore. He’s holding something
else.
‘Here,’ he says, not meeting my eye. ‘You forgot this.’
He hands me a bicycle helmet.
‘Thanks,’ I manage to stutter, snatching it so he doesn’t notice the way my hands are shaking.
He nods and then walks off back into the shop.
I watch him go, clutching my inhaler tighter and letting the helmet dangle from my other hand.
‘Seriously, just wait until I tell the others,’ Sophie says, her iPhone already in her hand. ‘I totally caught that all on camera. You know. To use as evidence.’
Just then though a jeep comes careering down the road and tears into the lot in front of Miller’s Bike and Boat Store. It screeches to a halt by what I assume is Sophie’s red
Mercedes and the driver and passenger doors both swing open.
I recognise Matt and Parker straightaway. They don’t notice us though and start heading straight for the door.
‘Matt!’ Sophie yells.
He turns at the door and when he sees Sophie waving he runs over to her.
‘What the hell’s going on? What are you doing here?’ Matt demands, taking hold of Sophie by the arms. ‘Did he do anything to you?’
‘No, we’re OK. Ren here was just renting a bike.’
Matt turns to me with a look of stunned incomprehension on his face. ‘You were renting a what?’
I point at the bike. ‘A bike.’
‘From here?’ He turns to Sophie, ‘You didn’t warn her?’ – then back to me – ‘I could have lent you a bike.’
I shrug.
‘Take it back,’ Parker suddenly says, appearing beside me. In daylight I notice that he’s got sandy blonde hair and green eyes. ‘Come on, I’ll go with you.’
He takes hold of my bike by the handlebars.
I wrestle with him for control of the bike. ‘No, no. It’s fine. I’ve got it now. I’ll keep it.’
‘Don’t make her go in there again,’ Sophie complains.
Parker shrugs and lets go. ‘Alright,’ he says, but it sounds more like
ite.
Matt puts his arm around Sophie. ‘You coming to the beach?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ Sophie smiles. She turns to me. ‘You coming, Ren?’
‘Um.’ I stare at my bike.
‘You could meet us there,’ she offers.
‘Yeah,’ I say, trying to think.
‘Jeremy will be there,’ Sophie says. I glance at her and her expression is totally innocent. She’s smiling in her wide-eyed way but is there a hidden layer to her words?
I shouldn’t care either way if Jeremy’s going to be there or not but there’s an undeniable jolt in my stomach at the thought of seeing him again.