The boys’ tires rotate in sync, a graceful choreography performed in morning sunlight that bathes the road in my Silicon Valley town. One boy’s extended his right arm, the other his left, and their hands are clasped. Riding side by side, they fill the bike lane like a banner at the finish line.
When I first see the boys, each no more than 12 or 13, with wavy brown and blonde hair flowing from beneath their helmets, I wonder if I’m witnessing a gesture borne of necessity, whether they’ve reached for one another only to steady themselves. But they keep holding hands through one traffic light after another. They keep holding hands even after the lights turn red.
I see the boys the next day, again riding side by side with hands clasped. Their outstretched arms form a rainbow. Fear of discovery, a feature of my youth, is absent from the frame.
My 11-year-old daughter, the first of two children for my husband and me, sits in the car’s back seat as we drive to school. She looks up from her phone and notices the boys.
“Aww,” she says.
In the rearview mirror, our smiles meet and the car fills with hope.
Brad Snyder is a writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Sweet Lit, Under the Gum Tree, The Maine Review, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Bay Path University. Brad lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his husband, daughter, son, and sometimes-warring cat and dogs.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/wwwuppertal
