Yes, it’s Sunday, which means it’s time for our weekly Brooklyn Craigslist Missed Connection selection. Today, we have our first Missed Connection story story. It’s an epic concerning a bike ride up a hill in Park Slope, which is either a true missed connection or just a creative writing exercise (better odds). Either way, it’s a little bit of a different twist. Here we go:

As I bicycled by, she turned, and our eyes locked – m4w – 27 (Fifth Avenue, Park Slope)

As I bicycled by, she turned, and our eyes locked, one, two, three…At the end of the street, I wondered whether I should stop. Should I go back for her, tell her our eyes had locked, that we might be meant for each other?

Follow my gut at least one time this week, right?

At the next block, the light turned red against the night. I knew this corner. The park ahead to my right, the bar across the street on my left…I stopped. I turned onto the sidewalk, a slow semi-circle.
Would she catch up? Yes. There she was, walking this way, her skirt catching the evening breeze, her brown hair like streamer ribbons.

Okay. I’ll wait.

The light stayed red, thank God. And here she almost was.

I called out, “Our eyes locked. That was intense!”

And she was here before me.

She wanted something. We were dancing, somehow, with our eyes, my bike, her skirt and hair.

“Give me a ride?” she said. The words were new to me, I’d never heard them before, ever.

“What?”

“Give me a ride? On your bike?” She was on my left side now, about to clutch and leap on.

“Sure.” I moved forward somewhere. She positioned herself to sit in front of me, yet sensed something.

“You ever done this before?”

“Given a girl a ride on my bike? No. Never.”

“You think you can?”

Of course I could give her a ride on my bike. If she could get on.

“Sure.” How hard could it be?

“Okay.”

I opened my left arm, she climbed over the bar in front of me. She squeezed her butt back, almost on to the seat.

“I’ll sit on the bar.”

“You sure? I can move back.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a hill,” she asked me, looking several blocks ahead at the rising pavement.

“If we can get to the hill, we can get up the hill.”

She smiled.

She sat on the bar, lifted her legs off the ground…It was so easy! Is that all? A girl sits in front of you on the bike, and lifts up her legs off the ground, and you can give her a ride?

She was light, a steady weight. Not super-light, but a real presence, a real girl.

I pushed off the ground, my feet on the pedals. Quickly I realized her body was inside my thighs, so I opened my knees wider, and pedaling, we were off.

Her shoulders brushed inside my arms, her hair and head was in front of my mouth.

I will skip the dialogue, since the thrill was all body. Her name was Marta, she was coming from tango, she was going home to 17th Street. My name was Alex, I was coming from the Tea Lounge where I was writing a little book, I was going home to 45th Street. I’d never given a girl a ride on a bike before. She’d gotten many rides, of course, how else do you get home?