“See, you’re really, really pretty.” He shrugged, twisting his hips a little and making the bicycle spin in a full circle before facing me again. “And my buddy CeeCee says if you’re pretty on the outside, you’re probably ugly on the inside. I just want to see if he’s right.”
I stared unabashed at him.
“I don’t think he’s right,” the boy said, clarifying. “I know a great place to eat, and it would be perfect for you.”
“Perfect for me?” I heard myself echo his words.
“I think you’d like to go someplace where you aren’t expected to wear those kinds of
shoes.”
“What?”
“You don’t like wearing them,” he said, shrugging and swiveling the bike again.
“How do you know that?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise from my voice.
“The way you kept looking at them. I was actually waiting for you to tell them to fuck off or something.” He laughed. “I mean, you look at them like you hate them, like maybe the heels impaled your dog on your birthday or something.”
I heard a chime and looked across at the “Don’t Walk” sign and realized I had just missed my opportunity to get across the street.
“Dammit!” I mumbled. I turned back to him. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m really in a hurry, and I don’t have time for this right now.”
“Why are you in a hurry?”
“I have a job interview, and it starts in ten minutes,” I said, wondering why I was even telling him these things. “And I am willing to admit these shoes aren’t helping me get there on time.”
“You want a ride?”
“What?”
“I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “Then you wouldn’t be late, and your feet wouldn’t hurt.”
“You have a car?” I asked stupidly. I knew he didn’t have a car around here. There wasn’t even a parking garage within six blocks.
He laughed.
“On my bike, goofball.” Half his mouth turned up in the most incredible smile I had ever seen in my life. Granted, lots of people have nice smiles. Lots of guys have those “panty dropping” looks that make girls want to throw their undergarments at them if they were up on a stage in front of a microphone. Most popular actors have one of those looks, too, but I had never seen a smile quite like this one.
Aside from the luscious curling of half of his perfectly formed lips, his smile didn’t just light up his eyes, like any good genuine smile will do; it lit up his whole face. He positively glowed as he tilted his head slightly to one side and looked at me with one eyebrow cocked. I could have sworn the sun even peeked out from behind a cloud at that point and lit up his hair as well.
His tongue popped out of his mouth and fiddled with the rings embedded in his lip, and he glanced down at the sidewalk for a moment before looking back up at me. The combined gestures gave him an odd combination of both cocky and shy all at the same time. Can looks be ambiguous?
“There’s only one seat on the bike,” I said.
“You can have it.” He leaned back and the bike dropped from its perpetual wheelie right next to my feet. He continued to stand on a pair of pedals attached to the rear wheel. “I don’t need the seat.”
I looked at the bike, then back to that incredible half smile, and then back to the bike again.
“Just get on,” he said softly, but the words were still very much a demand. “I’ll make sure you get there on time.”
I had no idea what I was thinking, but suddenly I was sitting sidesaddle on a BMX bicycle, wearing a pencil skirt and spiked heels, flying down the sidewalk in the middle of the city. The boy was alternating between rapidly rotating the functional pedals, standing on the pedals attached to the back wheel, and balancing on the handlebars with his legs stretched out behind us. I couldn’t help but noticed the definition in his arm muscles as they tightened and flexed during that particular move.
He swerved around the pedestrians and hot dog stands as if he did this kind of thing every day, and he probably did. I held tightly to the inside part of the handlebars and just prayed I wasn’t going to fall off. I had to admit, he did get me to the Draganov Financial building with five minutes to spare.
“Thank you,” I said as he stopped the bike and lifted me off the seat with both hands while balancing the bike with the toe of one foot.
“My pleasure,” he responded. “Will you have dinner with me now?”