“Meet me at your hotel at 3pm,” he writes back.
She grins the whole walk back to her office.
As soon as she’s staring at her laptop screen, though, she wonders if she should have declined.
Married woman, she thinks, he doesn’t even know you have a son…
Just friends? says another voice in her head, but she can’t indulge that voice of denial anymore, not with the jolts of excitement in her stomach.
She opens her phone several times and looks at their messages, wondering if it’s too late to cancel, but in the end, the cursor only blinks at her, giving her no moral answers.
When she finally leaves work after having gotten very little done a couple hours later, she’s entered that surreal feeling again.
Am I really doing this? she asks herself. It could just be a nice ride on the motorcycle…you don’t even know if he has feelings for you. He could just think you’re friends.
She quickly changes clothes up in her hotel room, putting on jeans, stylish leather boots she’s had since college, and a dark green shirt, cut to look a little fancy but not as fancy as the blouses she wears to work. She evaluates the cleavage visible from the top of her shirt, just enough to show her size, but not too much to appear immature. She tops it off with a grey cardigan, knowing it may get chilly in the wind from the motorcycle.
When she sees Erik pull up on his grey and black motorcycle a few minutes later, her heart skips a beat. She hasn’t seen him since that first night they met, over a week ago now, but already it feels like months of emotional intimacy — all the messages exchanged, the moments it felt like he was actually there with her, supporting her through the moments of anguish with the bank, asking her questions about her life and feelings.
“You look…rather dashing,” he says, pulling his helmet off. His hair, once flattened by the helmet, seems to bounce back up perfectly.
Well that’s just movie stupid, Sara thinks to herself, looking him up and down, from the jeans that still seemed a bit too tight for a straight man to be wearing to the worn leather coat he must have been wearing since his 20s.
“Dashing huh?” Sara responds. “A handsome adjective for a lady.”
“I can appreciate dashing in any gender,” Erik responds smoothly. He pats the motorcycle seat behind him. “Hop on.”
She takes a step forward and pauses. “You don’t by chance have a…”
“Helmet?” he suggests, opening a compartment in front of his seat and pulling out a silver helmet.
“Well, thank you,” she says, taking it from him. She’s never put on a motorcycle helmet before, and she struggles a bit to get it to squish over her ears before it slips into a comfortable and cushiony place around her head.
“I’m…a little nervous,” she admits, speaking louder as if her voice got supremely muffled from the helmet.
Erik gives her a soft grin and offers up his hand. “It’ll be okay, Sara. Trust me.”
His eyes gleam, almost reminding her of the glitter of them when he tells a joke, but now they gleam with something that feels more…intimate. In the emerald circles of his iris, she sees a deep care he must feel for her.
He barely knows me at all, she thinks, counting off the number of things she’s omitted telling him, but somehow, he already feels this care for me. Sometimes, you must just know the people you are meant to care about…
A part of her wanted to believe that, but the other part kept fixating on the things she hadn’t told him, the parts of herself that made her unworthy of a look from such a man. She pushed the thoughts away though and placed her hand in his.
Erik’s smile widens, and he leads her onto the back of the motorcycle, lifting his hand and bracing to help her with the wide straddle over. Sara gets on easily enough and then hovers towards the back of the seat, keeping some distance between her and Erik’s back. He tugs on his own helmet, pushes the key into the engine, and kicks the motorcycle into roaring life.
Sara stifles a gasp as she feels the machine vibrate underneath her.
“A bit more exciting than a car,” she yells over the roar.
“Just wait and see,” Erik calls back, and revs the engine before taking off.
It takes only a split second of driving for Sara to fall onto Erik’s back, hanging onto his sides for dear life as he plunges down the road.
“Are you sure you’re only going 40??” Sara asks over the wind.
“You’re perfectly safe, just hang on a little closer,” Erik responds, gently pulling one of her hands to rest over his stomach.
She clasps her hands together, arms snug around his whole body and feels a warm smile rise from deep within her.
“Lean!” Erik shouts.
“What?” Sara responds, then gasps a moment later as Erik rounds a corner and the whole bike leans down to the ground.
Sara shifts uncomfortably, almost losing her balance, but then Erik straightens out.
“Lean into the turns,” Erik clarifies.
Sara feels her heartrate going up with Erik’s engine switching gears, climbing into 4th and 5th gear. They exit Phoenix, heading further and further north.
“First time on a motorcycle?” Erik calls over the roar.
“Yes,” Sara responds.
Erik takes another turn and she finds herself leaning into Erik, not minding the excuse to be close to him. Eventually, though, as they turn in and out of town, past desert cactus and dirt roads, she finds herself getting calmer. Her heartrate goes down and her mind begins to go blank.
It’s meditative, really, she thinks, after noticing she hadn’t had any thoughts for some time.
When they finally come to stop, pulling into a parking lot for a saloon that looks almost like it could be the gay bar, Sara doesn’t know how much time has passed. Erik turns the bike off and Sara finds her body still vibrating with the memory of the rumble.
“Want a quick drink and snacks?” Erik asks, still raising his voice to be heard over the helmet.
“Sure,” Sara responds, climbing off his motorcycle and pulling off her helmet.
“I would have offered you a hand off, but it’s easier if you get off first,” Erik explains, pulling his helmet off too.
Sara fluffs her hair, trying to give it more volume again before following Erik into the saloon. Unlike the one in Phoenix though, it is Western-themed on the inside, and several scruffy-looking men are sitting at the bar.
Wouldn’t expect much else of a crowd on a Wednesday afternoon, Sara thinks.
Erik pulls back a bar stool, swipes the crumbs off with his hands and gestures for Sara to sit down.
“Such a gentleman,” she says.
Erik nods with a slight grin back at her before taking a seat.
“What will you have?” Erik asks. “Vodka tonic?”
“Oh, it’s a little early in the day for that,” Sara responds.
“With your work schedule?” Erik responds. “You probably woke up at 4am! Meaning for you, it’s technically well after 5pm.”
Sara grins easily back at him. “I’ll go with beer today…something not too dark.”
Erik nods and gestures for the bartender to come over before putting in their order. A few moments later, two amber ales sit in front of them.
Sara takes a sip. “This is delicious!”
Erik shrugs in response. “Brewed right here in Arizona by one of my friends. Best amber ale I’ve ever had, I dare say.”
She takes another sip.
“So, how are you?” Erik asks.
She mumbles “Doing alright” between sips, but then Erik says, “No, how are you really?”
This makes her put her drink down. Erik is looking at her with that earnest gleam in his eyes, a deeper care than she experienced when they first met.
Have we really only known each other a week? she wonders. She looks back at his emerald eyes, the concentric rings around them, and finds herself just as calm as the end of their motorcycle ride, not flinching from the vulner
ability of it.
“Honestly, not great, Erik,” she responds.
“I thought that might be the answer.”
He gives her a sad smile, but it is not one of pity. Taking a sip, he doesn’t say anything or ask anything, merely gives the space in the conversation for her to say more.
“It’s work, of course,” she responds, “But honestly it’s home life too. Being in Flagstaff this weekend…any weekend really, it’s not ideal. I feel so alone most of the time, have very few people to talk to…”
Erik leans in, resting his chin on his hand, not out of boredom, but genuine interest.
“I think most of the time I ignore that fact of my life,” she says, “But this weekend it seemed starker, more apparent that I’m unhappy. Probably because I met you…Once I left Phoenix though, meeting you felt like some surreal dream, and I was walking around from my kitchen to bathroom to car like a ghost in my own life.”
He lets her response sit in the air before responding. “People need people,” he says, “We don’t like to admit it, but we need social support around us, people who see us, people who get us. Or else, well, we’d be very unhappy indeed.”
Sara nods in agreement. “I think meeting you made realize that need in me was not being met.”
“Like I said when I gave you my number, I felt like we could both use a friend,” Erik says. His palm is open again, and his index fingers ventures out, brushing the side of her hand.
Sara looks at it, her eyes still sad, almost like she is observing someone else in this scene.
“Friend…” she echoes.
“Or more than that,” he says, “If that’s what you want.”
Sara looks up calmly. She was a little surprised that he’d said something as blunt and straightforward as that, but she concealed her surprise, simultaneously concealing a little spur of excitement wiggling through her.
“There is a lot you don’t know about me, Erik.”
“And there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Erik responds. His hand still reaches towards hers on the outside of her beer glass, and they both seem frozen in that position, with the slight movement of the fingers.
“I guess we’ll have to see how things move forward,” she says simply.
“I suppose so,” he responds, and takes a drink of beer.
There is silence between them now. It feels more mysterious than comfortable, after they both revealed a certain level of hiding from one another. Sara wonders what it is Erik would be concealing, or rather, what she doesn’t know.
You’ve only known him a week, of course there are things you don’t know about him, she thinks, but she still wonders if he harbors some secret as big as a marriage and a son. A different part of her doesn’t care. A different, more immediate and physical part, feels a sense of purpose in this moment, purpose in being with one another without defining such things, being together and feeling all the fluttering and excitement of infatuation without all the complicated details of each other’s past and present, being together in the simple pleasure of feeling his finger on her hand without having to make some plan about what it means or could mean.
“So how are you, really?” she asks, returning the question with a sip of beer.
“Honestly, Sara, not very great, but also very grateful,” he says.
She takes another drink of beer, allowing him the same space he allowed her, wondering what may come forth in the silence.
“Work is not stressful for me, but you could say I may experience a degree of loneliness too,” he says. “It’s different from yours, because I’m me and you are you, and our situations are different too. I find myself around so many people all the time. Clients, acquaintances, and they complement me and speak so highly of me, but I don’t feel like any of them really know who I am. And most of them — they aren’t even interested in knowing who I am. They just want me to do something for them. They don’t even risk their own vulnerability in being real with me and instead present some false image of themselves.”
Does he think that’s what I’m doing…is that what I’m doing? In not telling him about Raymond and Rocco? Sara wonders, but in her heart, she knows she’s been more vulnerable with Erik than she has with anyone in a long time. She said the word “lonely” in front of him, and she hadn’t even been able to speak that out loud to herself.
“Do you know what it’s like, Sara, to feel lonely even while you’re around people?” Erik asks, meeting her eyes directly.
She thinks back to her weekend, how she spent almost all of Saturday with Raymond and Rocco and felt lonely the entire time.
“Yes,” she responds.
“It’s a despairing sort of loneliness, for me, at least,” he says. His index finger laces around hers and squeezes a little. “Because it doesn’t feel like there is any solution to it. At least when you’re alone and lonely, there’s some hope that maybe in being with another person, you could get rid of the feeling, but if you’re already around other people…well, what else are you supposed to do?”
Sara pauses, not sure how to respond, but as Erik takes a sip of beer, she realizes that he isn’t looking for an answer.
“And I’m grateful,” he says, looking at her again. His eyes are less sad now and they have this glimmer in them again, a glimmer that makes Sara think anything in the world is possible. “Grateful because I do have a few people in my life that don’t make me feel lonely — like Jasper and Louis. But also, grateful because I met someone last week who I don’t feel lonely around. It was rather immediate too, actually…which is surprising. Normally I have to know someone a long time before I can feel at ease with them, but this woman — she was authentic with me right from the start.”
“Oh?” Sara says, hoping to God he’s talking about her, but not wanting to assume.
“You, Sara!” he says, taking her full hand in his and squeezing. His eyes look so joyous, almost as if he’s about to cry.
“But how did you find me authentic?” Sara asks.
“Well it’s not many straight women I see coming through those bar doors,” he says with a small laugh. “And you wearing your work clothes…like you weren’t posturing.”
“I was wondering if I should have changed…”
“But it was also this feeling about you, as soon as you sat down. It felt like I was sitting down with a real, three-dimensional person, with all her complexities. It felt like someone had just put the most interesting book in the world on my table, with tiny, tiny handwriting, and many, many pages. And if I was allowed, I could read the pages over and over again and still find more poetry in them.”
“Poet boy, huh?” Sara says, trying to make a joke off such a high compliment, but finding herself staring softly at him instead. Her heart was warm hearing this.
He stares back, matching her softness and warmth.
“I don’t get that feeling with people often,” he says, “That whole-world-of-richness-in-front-of-you sort of feeling…”
His face is so close she can see the hair follicles on his cheeks, mostly black with a couple grey ones. She notices his lips, how full and smooth they are, nothing like Raymond’s perpetually chapped lips. For a moment, she feels like they are the only two people in the whole saloon, a bubble protecting them from any onlookers. For a moment, she wants so badly to kiss him.
A small plastic tray with a receipt is tossed on the counter and both of them flinch away. Erik recovers first though, and instantly puts down his credit card.
“Let me take half of it, at least,” Sara protests.
He shakes his head, smoothly grabbing the receipt and passing it to the bartender. Within moments, the card is back, with a line for Erik’s signature. His handwriting is slow and methodical, each letter of the name “Erik Bondar” scripted perfectly, nothing like the normal scribble most people give as signatures.
“Shall we get on the road?” he says.
She nods, feeling some of the magic of their earlier moment dissipating.
Once on the motorcycle, Sara wonders if she had really almost kissed him. She feels again the edge of the word “affair,” creeping into her consciousness, but there is an ache in her heart that echoes the word, “lonely,” and that ache is so much deeper than she would even allow herself to feel. She leans in closer to Erik, feeling the ache subside for a moment, and feeling a yearning in her that escapes the logic and history of her life so far.
After a couple more turns, she realizes they had entered a smaller mountain town.
“This is Crown King,” he shouts back to her at a stop sign.
The road had changed from paved to gravel and a few hundred feet up, Erik pulls to the side of the road and pulls out his phone.
“Everything okay?” she asks over the roar of the engine.
“My client cancelled,” he says. “Which means we have the whole afternoon free…want to go to Horsethief Basin Reservoir?”
“Wherever you think is best,” she responds, the excitement in her belly growing, though maybe that was just the rumble from the engine.
“Hang on,” Erik says, and revs the engine back on the road.
After a few more turns, they enter a road that surely isn’t meant for a car, driving up the mountain as the motorcycle tires cling to the gravel, making a plume of dirt behind them. After another turn, heading downward, Erik shifts the cycle into neutral, and Sara finds herself clinging harder to his sides, feeling them lurch downward. Erik leans back a bit and Sara feels the warmth of him squishing against her.
He’s leaning back to avoid tumbling down this road, she thinks to herself, but the pitter-patter of her heart can’t erase the memory of his hand brushing hers back at the saloon. It felt like I was sitting down with a real, three-dimensional person, Sara hears his voice in her head, and holds her hands tighter around him, feeling the realness of him, and the feeling in her stomach grows like a real, three-dimensional, physical presence, starting as warmth and leaping upward with every bump in the road, leaping like tiny sparks spreading across her rib cage.
Erik takes a turn past a tree and she almost gasps, the reservoir spreading out before them. The sun, getting lower in the sky, glimmers off the water like shards of silver, and Sara finds herself still gaping when Erik turns off the motorcycle.
Sara's Dilemma Page 4