"Learned from the best."
"You learned from Dad. I'm the smart one." He let go and stepped back, and when I turned around, he was almost smiling. "Go on. Get out of here. I've got him."
I dried my hands on the dish towel and didn't look at him. "Practice first, then drinks with the guys."
"Be careful," he said. He didn't say have fun or don't do anything I wouldn't do. Just be careful, like he knew exactly where I was going and what I was looking for, and all he could do was hope I came home in one piece.
"Always am."
"Bullshit." He pulled me into another hug, a real one this time, with both arms. I let him. "Love you, little bro."
"Love you too." I grabbed my gear bag from the hook by the door and slung it over my shoulder. "Don't wait up."
The screen door banged shut behind me, and I stood on the porch for a second, breathing in the evening air. It was cooling off fast, the way it did in the desert, the heat of the day bleeding out into the sky. Derek's Toyota gleamed in the driveway next to my truck, which had a layer of dust on it so thick you could write your name in it.
I got in and sat there with my hands on the wheel, not starting the engine.
I had eight hours of something that looked like freedom, and I was going to spend at least three of them at practice getting yelled at by Coach.
The other five were mine.
I turned the key and pulled out of the driveway.
My lungs burned, and I leaned into the incline anyway, pushing harder up the switchback. The trail was loose rock and exposed roots, the kind of terrain that punished every misstep, and I'd chosen it on purpose. The Sandias rose above me, indifferent to the small figure grinding itself against their slopes.
The latte was still sitting in my stomach, thick and sweet and wrong, all that sugar and fat I'd allowed myself because some hockey player had made me miss my edges. A moment of weakness. This was what weakness cost.
Faster.
My ankle throbbed with every footfall. I'd taped it before I left the apartment, but tape only did so much when the joint was already inflamed. The pain sharpened on the uneven ground, a bright flare each time my foot landed wrong. I let it burn. I'd earned this.
The voice in my head sounded like my father, or maybe it sounded like me. I couldn't tell the difference anymore. It had been years since I'd been able to separate his standards from myown.You're slowing down. You think this is good enough? You think this is what champions do?
I wasn't slowing down. My heart rate monitor would confirm it when I checked later, the data logged and analyzed alongside every other metric I tracked. But it didn't matter what the numbers said. It never mattered. There was always more I could give, and if I wasn't giving it, I was failing.
The trail curved and steepened. My quads screamed. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I blinked it away without breaking stride. A hiker coming down the trail stepped off the path to let me pass, and I didn't acknowledge him. I didn't have the breath for it, and I wouldn't have anyway.
My vision started to narrow at the edges, that gray creep that meant I was pushing into oxygen debt. I knew I should ease back. I knew what happened when I didn't. But the voice kept pushing, and I kept listening, because the alternative was silence, and silence meant thinking, and thinking meant feeling, and I couldn't afford any of that right now.
I made it another quarter mile before my stomach revolted.
I barely got off the trail before I was doubled over, hands on my knees, heaving. Nothing came up except bile and spit, thin and sour on my tongue. The latte had been six hours ago. There was nothing left to purge. My body kept trying anyway.
When it finally stopped, I straightened up and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My legs were shaking. My ankle was a continuous low throb beneath the tape. The sun was dropping toward the peaks, turning the rocks orange and gold, and I stood there for a moment just trying to breathe.
It wasn't enough. It was never enough.
I started running again.
My ankle gave out at the two-mile marker.
One second I was moving, the next my foot landed on a loose rock and the joint rolled and I was down, palms scraping againstgravel, knees hitting dirt. The pain was sharp and immediate, cutting through the fog of exhaustion. I stayed there for a moment, breathing hard, staring at my hands. Blood welled up in the scrapes, mixing with the dust.
Get up.
I got up. I tried to put weight on the ankle, and the joint buckled, sending me stumbling into a juniper. The bark scraped my arm through my shirt. I grabbed the trunk and held on, waiting for the world to stop tilting.
The sun was lower now, the light going gold and long across the trail. I was at least a mile from the parking lot. My phone was in my car because I hadn't wanted the distraction, hadn't wanted to see my father's name on the screen while I was trying to outrun it.
