I’m also fighting for my life to drag in a breath on this run. Turns out, having a muscular build and practical strength does not translate to good cardiovascular health.
I’m on my final half-mile stretch, dead center of the town square, when I see Will jogging in the opposite direction. He does a double take when he spots me, then crosses the street and falls into pace beside me.
“I didn’t know you were a morning runner too,” he says, not the slightest bit out of breath.
I glance at him, sweat pooling against my shirt, face red, chest heaving. “I’m not.”
He laughs. “I’m gathering that now. Want a running buddy?”
I eye his shirtless, barely sweaty frame. “Are you getting started?”
“No. I just finished four miles. But I don’t mind tacking on a few more. Why?”
I bark a laugh, gladly using the conversation as an excuse to stop and catch my breath. “You don’t look even a damn bit winded.”
Makes sense though. Before going back to school for early education, he was a bodyguard. Before that, the military.
“And it’s really not fair that you look like that,” he says, gesturing toward me, “while having the cardio capacity of a ninety-year-old grandpa rocking on his porch. I’m going to fix it.”
“I don’t think I want you to?” I say it like a question but mean it as a statement.
He claps me on the shoulder. It feels like a threat. “Too bad. It’s happening.”
Damn. Is this how Noah’s felt about my friendship all these years? He’s always grunting and growling, and now I understand why. Nosy people are annoying.
But also . . . hell if I don’t like it.
Even though Noah’s like a brother to me in every way, he hasn’t really been able to be a friend lately. I’m not mad about it, don’t even need to change it. I know from our long friendship that these seasons come and go. Real friends don’t have to hold tight or force anything to be solid.
We’re just in one of those seasons.
Which is why it might be nice to have a daily kind of friend again. (One I’mnotdeliriously attracted to.)
We really shouldn’t have paused, though, because now we’re trapped in the town vortex with shops opening for the day.
Will realizes it too. “Shit. Let’s get moving,” he says as the sign at Gemma’s bakery flips toOPEN.
Too late.
Phil, of Phil’s Hardware, steps into our path—his favorite hobby. “You boys are out early today! Starting a running club?”
“Oh, not rea—”
“Todd! These boys are starting a running club!” he shouts over the shoulder of his salmon-colored polo into the store.
Todd, Phil’s husband, is squatting at an endcap, arranging boxes. He doesn’t say a word (as usual), probably because Phil rarely gives him the chance. These guys are the most typical middle-aged white guys you can imagine. They’re slightly balding. Share a wardrobe. And wore New Balance sneakers before they were cool.
“He needs to join it!” Phil pats the side of his khaki cargo shorts. “The man never exercises, I swear.”
No one points out that we’ve never seenPhilexercise either. But I don’t get involved in married people’s shit. They seem happy, so who am I to judge?
Except I know if Madison were here, she’d be subtly poking me in the side, alerting me we are definitely going to judge them together later.
And now I’m smiling like an idiot. Enough that Phil notices.
“See, Todd! Look how happy James is. Running gives you endorphips. I read about those once. They’re important.”
“So right, Phil,” says Will, solemn as a priest. “And we’ve got to keep the endorphips flowing or they shut down.”
