“You have a sports bra under that tank top, take it off, Clark,” he taunts. His arms and chest are glistening with sweat and he shakes his hair before throwing his baseball hat back on and I shake my head in laughter.
“Fuck, I feel out of shape. If Coach Aarons saw me just now, he’d have my ass.” Nate’s head is now resting on the grass and I’m leaning up on my elbows, facing away from the sun to look at him.
“How are you feeling about the game tomorrow?”
“It’s almost a double edged sword. I feel okay, but I also feel like my chest might explode. If that even makes sense.”
“Well, the fact that you can acknowledge both feelings I think is actually a good thing.”
He’s silent as we lie there in the grass.
“Honestly, Mi… I can’t explain what’s going on. I just know something’s off. My mind isn’t right and I’m fucking scared to get on the field and have that be a factor.”
My hand reaches out and grabs his, linking our fingers together. His thumb gently glides back and forth on my hand and I can’t help but secretly kind of love that.
“How can I help?” It’s more of a plea than a question.
“I don’t know.” He lowers his gaze as he answers.
He pulls himself up to a sitting position, resting both elbows on his knees as he faces me. His blue eyes come up to mine and I can tell he’s thinking about saying more, but he doesn’t.
“One more lap?” he asks, in an attempt to change the subject by jumping back into a run.
“You go ahead.”
“I thought you were doing all of these runs with me.”
“Ehh… I thought about it, but I’m not the one who needs to be able to run a forty-yard dash. That's you, pal.” I tap his arm before beginning to walk away.
“¡Ay Dios Mio!” he shouts as he begins running again.
It makes me laugh and brings me back to an old memory. Nate needed to finish one elective but was struggling with Spanish. I happened to take it all through high school and felt pretty confident in my abilities so I offered to help. He barely scraped by, but for him it was enough. Every now and then he still drops a random phrase here or there in Spanish—he’s right maybe half the time.
“Your party is all set. I just need to order the churros, but all of the grown-up food is taken care of.” Abby asked me to meet her for brunch this morning after my run with Nate. She’s working on a Christmas event for the Rec Center and has decided to start prepping now… in September.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll grab those. Plus, if Ford ever hears you referring to his favorite food as childish he’d be offended and I don’t have time to convince him that he’s still a grown-up even though he likes a ton of children’s snacks.” My hand reaches for my mouth, covering laughter.
“Did Nate help you with any of it?”
I shake my head. “No, he has so much on his plate, I didn’t want to add any more to it. Especially when I’m available to do it myself, you know?” I think it’s safe to say that nobody knows what Nate’s been dealing with, so I don’t elaborate on my reason.
She raises her dark eyebrows as she nods.
“Oh, I meant to tell you, though. I saw a building for rent down here,finally.I want to call and get more information on it to see if it would work for me.”
“That’s incredible. Where?”
The waitress brings us our food mid conversation. She sets down both of our plates and I swear my mouth waters at the sight of the eggs, bacon and rye bread in front of me. I get this same meal every single time we come here. I’m nothing, if not consistent.
“Main and Marshall. It’s not big, but it’d be great. We can walk by it on our way out.”
“Perfect!”
Walking downtown on the weekends isn’t for the faint of heart. There are people constantly all over the place and it’s becoming less and less appealing to be down here.
“Oh, I noticed you and Connor chatting the other night, how’d that happen?” Abby asks while we wait at the crosswalk. I glance down at the two of us standing here in completely opposite outfits. I very clearly look like I just left the gym and she looks like she just left a PTA meeting after being at the Rec Center with the kids.
“Well, first he said hi… then I said hi, and—” She rolls her eyes and we both laugh. “No, he honestly just started talking to me while I was sitting at the bar. He’s really nice.” I shrug.
