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COMPANION WANTED TransAmerica Trail Will start in Astoria, OR, on June 1 and wrap up in Yorktown, VA, by the end of August Ca as et along with and arand adventure! E-mail [email protected]
Torease off his hand and answered the shop phone “Salem Cycles”
“I found you somebody,” his sister said
“What are you talking about?”
“For tomorrow I found you somebody to ride across the country with”
They’d had this arguo, when he’d first told her about his plan to bike the TransAht they were done with it He should’ve known she was ic retreat
“Taryn—”
“Just hearad He’s taking the same route you want to take, and he needs somebody to ride with him You don’t even have to talk to him if you don’t want to He cooks, and he’ll pay half on the ca fees How bad could it be?”
It could be a nightmare What Tom wanted was to spend a fewto the pave in forty-two hundred hts He didn’t want a buddy He didn’t do buddies
“I don’t need a babysitter”
“Please, Tom You can’t ride your bicycle across the country alone It’s insane You’ll end up being slaughtered by a serial killer”
“Taryn, I’le, tattooed, and antisocial I’m the serial killer”
“Okay, point taken But you could get hit by a car and bleed to death by the side of the road”
“Hoould riding with another person prevent that?”
“It wouldn’t, but he could call me on his cell phone so you could tellbreath”
To around the bike stands and ers of his free hand He recognized Taryn’s tone of voice There was so hi to like it “I’ve toured alone before There was the South America trip Australia Death Valley last winter Why worry about me now?”
“I alorry about you Worrying about you is h notice to do anything about it You just called me from the road to say, ‘Ta-ta, Taryn! I’m off to pedal across the Outback like a crazy person! Try not to lie awake at night i my corpse!’ ”
Tom winced It was true, he’d deliberately left the country before telling Taryn about his plan to ride the Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, but it had been for her own good He’d spared herHe’d have done the sa the TransAed to worm the information out of him
Tom wasn’t about to let his sister’s irrational fears stop hiiven that she was his only nonestranged family member and pretty much his sole friend, he hated to h the trial, and he owed her for that She was probably the only reason he wasn’t living in an unheated cabin in the woods by now, coovern them off to The New York Times
Not that she’d ood reason why the guy ned the bike shop didn’t ask Tom to work the counter unless he absolutely had to Tom would be the first to admit his social skills were rusty, and he tended to inti paid to fix bikes and riding them for free, and that was the way he liked it But Taryn at least made sure he went out to eat now and then, even threw the occasional date his way, and he appreciated her efforts to keep hi—however tenuously