It’s possible the friends thing is easier conceptually than in reality.
Before I have a chance to open the car door, Jeremy is right there doing it for me. He holds out his hand to help me out of the car, and I squash down my instinct to avoid eyecontact. Forgiving myself and him means losing my habitual awkwardness when we’re around each other. Also easier conceptually than in reality, but we can do hard things, right?
When I take his hand, tingles race up my arm from that small point of contact, startling me so much that I drop his hand and glance up at him to see if he felt what I felt. One look at the flash in his gold rimmed brown eyes tells me he absolutely did. But he recovers quickly, the flash replaced by a friendly smile that, strangely, puts me right at ease.
“Thanks for coming, Ems.” He reaches around me and closes the door, plucking my key from my hand and hitting the button to lock the car before handing the key back to me. I shove it in the pocket of my running shorts with my phone.
“Thanks for asking.”
“Do you usually run alone?” He asks, as we make our way over to the trail entrance just inside the park.
“Almost always. Occasionally one of my friends comes with me, but I’ve always liked to run alone. I didn’t mind running with you though,” I add.
He smiles and bumps my shoulder with his as we approach the trail. “I didn’t mind running with you either. It was…” He trails off, looking unsure.
“Easy.” I give him the word that swims in my head every time I think about that run, and the night that came after. “It was easy.”
“Yeah,” he says, giving me a soft look that has my stomach swooping again. “That’s exactly what it was. I liked being easy with you, Ems. You ready?” He waves a hand at the trail.
“Definitely.” I need to move my body to banish the butterflies that keep wanting to swarm my stomach at his proximity.
We set off at an easy jog. It’s beautiful out, the first hints of fall giving the air a crisp feeling. We’re the only ones out right now, the rustling of the trees and our steady footfalls on the trailthe only sounds. I slide my eyes to the right, sneaking a glance at Jeremy, and I find him already looking at me. He tosses me a wink, and I always thoughtweak in the kneeswas just an expression, but it turns out there’s some truth to it after all.
Whipping my head around, I stare almost aggressively forward, and I hear Jeremy’s soft chuckle next to me, like he saw exactly how that wink affected me and is amused by it.
“So how was your day?”
I risk another look at him. “You want to know about my day?”
“Of course I want to know about your day. I want to know everything about you.” His face turns slightly red, and he looks a little embarrassed, as if he didn’t mean to say that last thing. And god, someone take a picture please because the big, bad, former athlete blushing is the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
“We tried on our dresses for Hallie and Ben’s wedding today.”
It seems like the easiest place to start since,I had an existential crisis over the note you left me on my coffee table and then spilled my guts to my friends about how I had sex with you eight years agois a little much for a trail run between friends.
“Julie had them delivered to the office so we could try them on. We were supposed to put them on and go downstairs together so Hallie could get the full impact, but we ended up taking too long, so she got impatient and came upstairs before we were all the way dressed. It was very us. A little chaotic. A few happy tears. A lot of fun.”
I smile at the memory. Even though the reason we took so long was because of my angst over the man currently running next to me, it’s laughing with my friends and the look on Hallie’s face when she saw us all in our dresses that sticks in my mind.
“It’s special, the way you four are together.”
I glance over at him, surprised by the longing I hear in his voice. “It is. But you have it too with Ben and Jordan, but especially Ben. I see it all the time. They’re your brothers just as much as Hallie, Julie, and Molly are my sisters.”
“I guess.” He huffs out a breath, discomfort rolling off him. I don’t say anything, hoping he’ll keep talking.
“Sometimes it’s…hard for me to think like that. To believe that’s true.”
I consider his words. I don’t know a lot about Jeremy’s past beyond the fact that he grew up without parents, and he didn’t exactly have the strong support system I did to help me heal from that loss. I get the sense he doesn’t like talking about it, and even the small bit of himself he just revealed is monumental. I choose my next words carefully.
“Tell me something true, Jeremy.”
He glances over at me then back at the trail ahead.
“You asked me to tell you something true the night of the storm too. Why?”
He doesn’t seem put off, just curious, so I decide to give him a piece of me too.
“It’s something my grandma used to ask me after my parents died. Eight is a weird age. It’s old enough to understand what’s happening, but too young to be able to grasp the fact that sometimes bad things just happen, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.”
