Leesa
‘Babcia says you’ve been working too much – in the evenings too!’
There wasn’t a lot else to do in the evening in my grandma’s hometown. It was a pretty place with cobbled streets and baroque architecture, a leafy pedestrianised square, the rynek, in the centre and a historic manor house with extensive grounds. But Babcia usually dozed on the sofa from about 8 o’clock and the number of people I knew in this town corresponded to the number of vowels in its name: Pszczyna.
On the few occasions I’d taken some time out to go walking or take Babcia to the supermarket for kohlrabi, I’d been assailed by the intense desire to get on a bike and explore the hills and lakes I glimpsed from the car.
I blamed Colin Gallagher for that. I also blamed him for my tossing and turning most nights, vacillating between obsessive questions about his feelings for me and what they meant (my conclusion? Absolutely nothing) and visions of him crashing and mangling his body during some cruel stage of the Tour.
Sometimes I wished I’d never seen past his big talk.
‘Overtime shouldn’t be an expectation,’ Mom continued on the video call, speaking in English – her professional language. ‘If they get the idea they can walk all over you, they will.’
Keeping true feelings from parents had probably been easier before the advent of FaceTime. It took a lot of effort to resist rolling my eyes. Mom wanted me to work hard, but not too hard. She wanted me to make a success of my career, but assumed I could do it on my own terms, without sacrificing anything, just because I was her daughter.
‘They’re not walking all over me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m enjoying it – my work.’ I was especially enjoying combing through all my footage of Colin and reliving the past three weeks with my skin prickling and my heart beating a strange rhythm.
‘Well, that’s something, at least. Are they going to make your contract permanent?’
Mom hadn’t got the memo that nothing was really permanent for my generation. ‘I don’t know, but the client has been really happy with what I’m producing and my supervisor has been letting me do a lot more myself.’
I hated to admit that Colin had been right, but being back in the world of cycling had unlocked something inside me. I knew what I was doing – for the first time since my time on the team had come to an ignoble end in September.
It was strange how my brain had switched the emphasis of my memories. I seemed to remembermoreabout Colin, now I knew him better. Except, I didn’t reallyknowhim. I’d only seen hints, put together a few pieces of the puzzle.
‘And what are you going to do if they don’t hire you? You have résumés out, I’m assuming? What about the professors at your school? You need to cultivate your network, especially in this creative sector.’
The way she said ‘creative sector’ sounded as though she meant ‘trash pile’. I couldn’t admit that I had been too busy staring at images of Colin to actually send out any Plan B job applications. I couldn’t see past the Tour.
‘I’ll get on it.’ I swiped my hair off my sticky back. I wasn’t sure how I would have coped with an LA summer when these Polish hills were bad enough. My hair was in a permanent state of frizz.
‘I took a look at this account you’re working on.’
Ohhh, no. ‘You’re not really the target market, Mom.’
‘I can see that,’ she said emphatically. ‘I must admit I didn’t realise you had to be so entertaining.’
She meant ‘vacuous’ or ‘frivolous’, I could feel it. I struggled against a blush, thinking of the reel featuring Colin licking PowerFuel gel off his finger with a silly, suggestive gaze.
I stilled, struggling to keep the doubt off my face. ‘The memes and funny stuff tend to get more traction.’
‘I can see how that would work. Your own Instagram account had some interesting moments too. It’s certainly not… what I expected,zabka.’
It might seem strange, as the word meant ‘frog’, but when Mom called me ‘zabka’ in that soft tone, it was a rare glimpse into her true self. She even sounded a little impressed.
‘Did you just discover Instagram, Mamusia?’ I teased her with the endearment that usually made her smile and give me a hug.
‘We made an account for the practice a year ago,’ she replied indignantly. ‘And we didn’t even need help from our millennial daughter.’
I gave her a withering smile and resisted the retort that I was onlyjusta millennial. Usually I found the rueful disappointment with life from my generation intensely relatable, but just then I was too sensitive to the fact that Colin was most definitely Gen Z and still managed to have some stars in his eyes and some weird vocabulary. Sometimes he felt a lot younger than me, and other times…
Other times he shot me cocky smiles and made me blush and then it didn’t matter so much that he was nearly five years younger.
‘I don’t know where you got your sense of humour from, but you got it. I can see you in your work and…’
Unexpected tears pricked behind my eyes. ‘I can only have got it from you and Tatus.’
‘Or maybe you’re inspired,’ Mom said softly.
