“Okay,” I said, curious what she had to say.
Her pile of hair, put up and tucked under her helmet while riding, came down. Then: “Nathan, I can be blunt, sometimes offensively blunt as you found out at the party.”
“So I noticed.”
“Okay, so let me ask you this. Are you and Amanda serious? By serious, I mean exclusive. In other words, would either of you consider it cheating if you saw other people?”
She asked this wearing a smile, one best described as a cross between devilish and shy. When I asked why, she said, “Because, Nathan Traber, I’ve been interested in getting to know you better. I once thought that you might ask me out, though I kind of gave up on that idea when you showed up at the party with Amanda.”
This was interesting to say the least. Phyllis Denu appeared as if she was coming onto me weeks after I had put her in her place in front of our mutual cycling buddies and my girlfriend. Before meeting Amanda, I had considered doing something with her outside of cycling. Or, perhaps arranging our own ride, just the two of us. Then Amanda came along, scotching that idea. Of course, it didn’t keep me from looking at other women, including Phyllis. She had the nicest derriere, firm and adorable, and I couldn’t help but ogle it riding behind her on group rides.
She was facing me now, so I confined my ogling to her deliciously firm and shapely female quads, flexing with her every movement on the asphalt in her SDI cycling shoes. She knew it, too, as I surmised from that gratified smile creasing her sensuous lips. I should have said bye and drove off. Instead, I delved further. “Phyllis, you know that I’m still involved with Amanda. So why would you even bring this up now?”
“Because, Nathan, I’ve always liked you, your charm and wit, your intellectual depth and yes, I think you’re hot. Sure, I was angry after you scolded me. But, realizing I deserved it, it didn’t last long. And not to be presumptuous, but I think you find me, if not hot, then at least attractive enough to want to get to know me better. Yes?”
“Um, no. I mean, yes, I think you’re…okay, hot. But I’m involved with someone else who you weren’t very nice to. You’ve apologized and I appreciate that, though it would have meant more had you done it at the party. But, better late than never, I guess. You’re forgiven.”
She lowered her eyes, pointed her toe on the ground and drew a half-circle with her foot. Then she faced me. “You forgive me? I’m not sure you do. Otherwise, we might be making plans right now instead of rehashing what happened at the party. In fact, we might be doing something else that men and women do when the chemistry’s right.”
Being that the other riders had already driven off the lot, we now had the privacy to do at least some of what I assumed she was referring to. This temptress in Spandex was oh so tempting. Her baby-face cuteness, so incongruous with the way she came off at the party, those sexy quads and her skin, smooth and glistening from sweat and her natural tannish color, were drawing me in.
She stepped closer, close enough to where I could smell the seductive, intoxicating scent of her glistening skin, close enough to where, had she been looking, she could have seen the bulge in my own Spandex shorts. But we were looking into each other’s eyes, and I knew then that I had reached the point of no return.
“Kiss me,” she said, and I did, without a moment’s hesitation. This woman who had acted like a cold, judgmental bitch at the party, now appeared anything but. She was warm and affectionate and playful. She felt good and smelled good, and my anatomical machinery was primed and ready for service, something she gathered when she pressed her body tightly against mine and said, “I’m feelin’ the love, baby. Is that for me?”
“Well, it ain’t for your bike.”
She giggled and swept a hand over my crotch. “Oh, man, that’s some nice top tube you’ve got in there, guy.” She then stepped back and returned to her original question. “So, Nathan, would you consider it cheating if you began dating someone else?”
“I might not but I think Amanda probably would,” I said. “Give me time to think things over.”
I felt sure she was going to say something nasty or sarcastic. Instead, she told me to “take all the time you need.”
Driving home, I pondered Phyllis’s question about cheating. Would it be cheating on Amanda to give things a go with Phyllis? I mean, we weren’t married or engaged, nor did we have, as far as I knew, an unspoken clause of exclusivity. But maybe Amanda felt we did. At the very least, I figured she wanted one. And if I did begin to see Phyllis, did I owe it to Amanda to tell her? I laughed to myself thinking how complicated things could get in such a short time. The potential drama ahead did not look pretty. Did love triangles ever end well? I had seen enough true crime TV shows to answer that one.
Even so, I decided to give things a go with Phyllis–without telling Amanda. Yes, I felt somewhat like a cad, feelings that no rationalization could totally erase. But I was curious. Plus, Phyllis seemed to possess a magnetic hold on me, one I found difficult to resist. Of course, I didn’t put up much resistance. Instead, I went with this flow, this swift current of desire that was drawing me toward Phyllis.
Days later, I called her. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to call THIS soon,” she said. “Should I assume you’re calling me for a date?”
“A cycling date. Just the two of us.” I wanted to start out “slow.” Then, if things went well, we could shift into higher gear later on.
We met on a Saturday morning at another park&ride location for a forty-mile ride to Rocky Woods State Park. It was cloudy and in the low 70s but no rain was forecast, and the westerly wind was under 10mph.
I still had my steel Bridgestone from the late eighties, while Phyllis had just purchased a lightweight aluminum purple Klein. She wasn’t a fast rider, but she could do the hills okay with her triple crankset, equipped with a so-called granny gear. She could also ride fifty miles with little trouble, looking as strong at the end of the ride as she did at the start. A cycling newbie she wasn’t.
We traded the lead every few miles or so, pacing in the low-13mph range, slow for me. But then this wasn’t a race or even your standard social ride. This was a foray into something I still felt tentative about. Just relax and enjoy the ride, I told myself, and the ride to Rocky Woods was one of my faves, a rolling, not too hilly route that took us through suburbia as well as patches of farmland.
We stopped in the park, set between rocky hills and woodland. A couple foot bridges arched over a wide stream. There were rest rooms and picnic tables near the parking lot, but no food outlets.
We took off our sunglasses and helmets, set our bikes against a wood fence by the asphalt entrance road, and then sat at one of the tables to snack on energy bars, washed down with sports drink. Phyllis talked about how much she liked her Klein, and I talked about one day getting a new bike, perhaps one of those super-lightweight carbon machines that were starting to come out. Typical bike talk on a typical weekend bike ride. Except it wasn’t so typical, at least below the surface, where feelings couldn’t stay hidden for long.