I am, I guess.
Slamming the button, I increase my speed until mylungs burn, and there’s no time to worry about the woman beside me with her wrinkled nose.
My muscles begin to scream in protest as I push myself to breaking point, letting the ache light a fire in my veins. I may have spent so many years hiding from pain that it knocked me sideways to find that pushing myself to the brink is one of the few ways I could feel anything at all.
A reminder that I’m still alive.
That my body belongs tome. Now.
The treadmills look out the floor-to-ceiling windows across the university shopping square.
Students mill from the coffee shop to the subsidised art shop, and from the campus grocery store to the pizza place. Worn benches cover the space in between, with somewhat withered ferns sprouting from a series of oversized buckets.
The whole place has that worn-in look. Once new, shiny, and full of promise, now a little tired around the edges.
I spot my sister, Ellie, exiting the coffee shop, chatting to someone still inside.
Slowing the treadmill to a stop, I wipe my wet forehead with a towel and watch as she laughs.
My final foster home was a good one.
If only I’d found it when I was younger, maybe I’d have ended up a little less fucked in the head. I might have been trying for a degree instead of risking my life toeat. Other than occasionally meeting with Ellie to grab some gym passes, I never really saw her on campus.
The university is big enough that I can usually get to the gym and back without being accosted.
She moves from the door…
…and my arse all but falls out of my joggers.
Behind her, in a tumble of the palest blonde, is a woman I swear I know.
My brain refuses to make the jump at first. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d tripped over myself only to find it’s someone else.
For a split second, my brain shows me the version of her I once knew.
Pink cheeks, tangled hair, dirt on her dress.
The girl who looked at a half-starved kid in the woods and saw an instant best friend.
Then the image snaps back to the woman standing beside Ellie.
Kat.
Just like that, she’s there in the flesh. My chest aches, like fate has punched straight through my ribs.
Despite the fourteen years since the last time I saw her, scraped and muddy, I have no doubts it’s her.
While she’s taller now, she still has that elfin quality that made me mistake her for a forest sprite. Delicatefeatures and light movements. As if she might vanish between blinks. As hard to hold onto as a will o’ the wisp.
Even from here, I recognise the tilt of her upper lip as she grins. She always had the most wicked smile.
My fingers dig into the roughened plastic arms of the treadmill as I struggle to breathe.
It’s like she’s ignited all the oxygen within me in a blaze of agony.
Fuck.
The years between us collapse in a moment, stacking up on top of me.Her giggles rippled among the trees. The kindness of a child who had no reason to give it.
