Tandem

Getting down on one knee at a fancy restaurant is a bit cliché, anyway.

 

            We were riding tandem on the two-seated bicycle we rode everywhere when he asked me the question I’d been waiting for since, practically, the day I’d met him.

            “Hey Rose!” he called back, his words almost snatched away by the wind.

            “Yeah?” his hair was just long enough so that, when I replied, opening my mouth to speak, strands of it got in my mouth. I spit it out, perhaps in a bit of an overdramatic gesture—I’ve always had a flair for the dramatics.

            “Will you marry me?”

            I didn’t reply right away, mostly because I wasn’t sure that I’d heard him right. I would have stopped pedaling, were I not so used to the simple motion by now that it was completely automatic.

            “What?”

            This was not how I’d imagined things. I mean, I guess it wasn’t all that horrible. We had met on a bike, after all—well, two bikes, technically. We’d crashed into each other; I’d been trying to get to work on time, and had been going too fast to stop, and Alex? Alex simply hadn’t been paying attention. The collision was enormous, but both of us escaped from it with little more than a few scrapes and bruises—and bikes that looked like they had seen better days.

            He’d felt awful—it was as much my fault as it was his—and gave me his number, saying that he’d pay for any damage that he may have done by his daydreaming.

            I had laughed, said it was not a big deal, but I’d pocketed the number anyway. That night, after work, when I got home, I’d dialed it—not to demand he fix my bike, but to ask him out to dinner. I didn’t know (don’t know) where the courage came from—I’ve always been scared of rejection (who isn’t?)—but it was just ten little numbers, and the phone was ringing. Five minutes after he picked up, I had a date.

            Which, in retrospect, was not the safest or wisest thing to do, but it never occurred to me that something could go wrong.

            “Will you marry me?”

            The words came again, affirming that I had not, in fact, misheard him. I kept pedaling—we were moving fast now, faster than we usually did—and looked away from his back to the passing scenery. We were riding on a lake trail, and the sun was in the perfect position in the sky to reflect off the water, so that the lake looked to be made out of crystal rather than liquid. It was early June—a time of year where everything is green and alive and bright with color, every beautiful thing clamoring for your individual attention, but so much more beautiful when the whole was viewed, rather than each part.

            I guess I had always supposed that Alex would propose to me on a night like this. I’d gone over it in my head over and over again since that first date, where he’d been a perfect gentleman, all charm and smiles as we went out to dinner, and then rented a canoe to explore this very lake. The canoe had been his idea; I’d picked the restaurant. It had been June—that same time of day when the lake is all a-twinkle with the sun’s light. I couldn’t remember what we’d talked about that day, and doubted that it mattered.

            After that first day, our hanging out had been something of a regular thing. It wasn’t every weekend, or anything like that, but at least once or twice a month, we would meet. We’d go biking, or hiking, or canoeing, or something of that sort, for as long as the weather was warm enough and there was daylight left. Alex was very much the outdoorsy type, and I didn’t much care either way, so he chose most of our activities. To his credit, they were all pretty romantic—I think he spent a lot of time planning out those dates, which struck me as odd, because in spite of their romantic nature, none of the dates in question ever ended in anything real or important, or anything like that. They were, more or less, just friendly outings between two people who really liked each other.

            And somehow, it went from seeing each other once or twice a month to dating, and seeing each other whenever we possibly could. And from there, the natural progression was Alex moving in with me—my apartment was way bigger. And now here we were, riding our bike by the lake, and he had just proposed to me, and it wasn’t in any way how I’d imagined it.

            I think in any other situation, I would have clapped my hands and jumped up and down in excitement, saying yes without really needing to say anything, but it’s hard to jump around and clap while riding a bike. I’ve never been good at riding no-handed. As it was, it was almost like nothing had happened—we just kept on pedaling—I could even sense any nervousness or tension from Alex.

            I stood up on the pedals, leaning close to his ear. “Of course I will,” I answered, feeling butterflies rise in my stomach.

            Who wants everything to happen as planned, anyway?

Author's Note

This is a bit of a silly little story, which I wrote half because of a contest I'd read about on this site, and half because I really like tandem bikes. They're just cool. XD

I'm not sure I conveyed the characters as well as I could have; I've been practicing trying to introduce readers to characters in a very short space of time, but I somehow doubt that Alex has a voice, and Rose is just beginning to get one. Still, I'm rather pleased with this piece. It was a fun story to write.

Reviews

[laurence timms]

Hannah, I enjoyed this story. It's a little whimsical without being mushy or slushy otherwise girly-girly. Listen, I'm a bloke with a stubbly chin and I still liked it.

It doesn't really matter to me how much of a voice the two characters have. They have enough voice for the story as it goes and neither lack anything for me. I suppose I'm a little interested to know more about Alex - I find myself wondering what he looks like and whether it's his appearance that attracts Rose or something else that she sees in him.

Alex seems to have tried really hard to woo Rose what with all his planning for their little outdoor events and how that progressed to dating and living together. My darker side wonders what his agenda is. Does he even have an agenda? Can things be as simple as they appear on the surface?