"No-just bored," I admitted. I hesitated. "You know your Thursday night bike rides?" Matt nodded to confirm he hadn't been suddenly and inexplicably struck with amnesia. "Well, I was wondering if you'd mind if I tagged along?"
"Yeah-no problem. That'd be great." Matt looked genuinely pleased at the prospect, and I found myself smiling back at him.
"So how does it work?" I asked, leaning against the worktop.
Matt finished with the tyre and straightened, wiping his hands on his jeans. "We all meet up where we're going that night-usually around half seven, quarter to eight. Then we go for a ride-that's about it, really. If you give me your email, I'll copy you in on stuff. I mean, we usually decide where we're going to go the week before, then confirm it by email."
"Great! I'll give you my address now." I looked around for a bit of paper and ended up ripping a bit off the back page of the repairs book. "Here you go."
Matt looked at it, then grinned. "magicbeancountergmail?"
"Yes, well. nicebutdimgmail was already taken." I cleared my throat. "Now, is there anything I need to bring along?"
Matt pursed his lips. "Well, some of the lads bring along a hip flask of something lethal, but apart from that … Wait, have you got any lights? We're usually out past dark."
"What, even at this time of year?" I was a bit concerned this might be a bit too much for me to handle.
"Well, it often takes a while to get going, and then sometimes we stop at a pub … "
I had a vision of a crowd of lycra-clad mountain bikers crashing through the forest trails getting progressively drunker until the word "crashing" became literally true. "Is that safe?"
"Oh-most of the lads ride out from home, so there's no worry about drunk driving. And it's the New Forest, not the Pennines. If you take a tumble, the landing's usually pretty soft."
That was … not quite as much of a relief as I'd hoped for. I made a snap decision to take the car for at least the first couple of times, so I'd have an excuse not to get wasted. "Okay, so these lights-do I need anything special?" Standard bike lights were more about being seen by cars than casting any actual useful light. I had a feeling cycling down a rough track in the total dark of the forest would require something a little more souped-up.
"Come out the front, and I'll show you." We trooped out to a thankfully customer-free shop-I'd been chatting out the back a little longer than I'd meant to-and went over to Jay's bike light display. "You'll need at least 250 lumens, but best to go a bit higher if you can afford it. The Exposure Toro is good and the 6 Pack is awesome. They'll both do the job, and you won't have to faff about with extra batteries and cables."
Whilst a six-pack had long been on my list of desirable possessions, I'd always envisaged it as a set of really cut abs, not a type of bike light. I chose the Toro, in the end, trying not to wince at the price. Granted, it was bright enough-when I checked it out I saw coloured blobs in my vision for ages afterwards-but when did going for a bike ride get so expensive?
Looking at Matt's enthusiastic smile, though, I couldn't help feeling it was worth it.
***
I could have done with somewhere to go, Monday evening. Or at least something worth watching on telly. Like Jay, I had way too much time to think-and a vintage episode of Midsomer Murders just wasn't enough to distract me.
And like Jay, what I was thinking about was Matt. Although I seriously hoped Jay wasn't thinking the same things I was thinking … No. Jay was straight. He'd said that, and I believed him, because Jay wasn't the sort to lie about it. If he'd been gay, he'd have just come out and said so and assumed everyone would be okay with it. And him being Jay, they probably would have been.
Whereas if it was me … I frowned, scratching Wolverine idly on the top of his head. He showed me those pointy fangs in a tuna-scented yawn, and settled down even more heavily on my lap. At least we hadn't had any repeats of the cat-sick incident, so I'd been able to have a proper meal tonight-if you could call it that when it came in a plastic tub covered in clear film, wrapped in a cardboard sleeve proudly proclaiming it contained one of my five a day. The pasta salad Matt had brought in for our lunch had been orders of magnitude tastier and, I suspected, healthier.
Would it really be different if it was me? Coming out as gay, that was. Was I just misjudging everyone? If I could imagine them accepting a gay Jay, which from the rhyming point of view alone had to be a situation nobody wanted, why couldn't I imagine them accepting a gay Tim?
But what would be the point? My leg was getting pins and needles, and I tried to stretch it out while still weighed down with cat. Wolverine opened one eye and dug his claws lazily into my thigh in warning. I sighed and surrendered to the encroaching numbness as the lesser of two evils.