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Big mistake, dude.
No, it’s fine.
We should be friendlier than we are.
Eff that, keep the distance.
Does she still stay up talking halfway through the night? With who?
She looks the same.
She’s not the same.
That laugh. Dude, don’t get caught up in that laugh.
All reasonable enough.
And it would be one thing if my brain was the only one chiming in, but guess who finally lifted his head after six months of apathy and slumber?
Big Ben is awake, and ill-mannered fucker that he is, having a stretch in Lara’s direction. Trying to elbow past me because “they’re old friends.”
As if I could forget.
Shit, if only I could forget.
So I’m trying to drain this tank of restless energy by knocking out a run on the Lakefront Trail. Usually the motion and exertion do the trick, letting my jumbled thoughts drop into place. But even with my feet hitting the path in a steady rhythm I feel through the whole of me, I can’t chill.
I cut down around Burnham Harbor, checking out the boats and the people.
Lara looked pretty when she came home last night.
Bad, brain. No!
She’d been out with her new marketing team, I think. Her suit was pale blue, and her hair had come down over the course of the day. There were even a few rebel spirals around her face reminding me of the way she used to look on those humid summer nights when it was just the two of us and?—
Okay, I’m not going there. Obviously.
I keep running, coming up on the Firefighter’s Memorial and then the bird sanctuary where I loop back.
I wonder what she’s doing today? If anyone at work has offered to show her around the city. Probably a dozen dudes, a dozen times over. And even if they haven’t, she sure as hell doesn’t need me to do it.
I don’t even want to.
I don’t.
So fucking stop thinking about her.
Running. Running. Running?—
“Hey, Boomer,” comes a feminine voice from the path ahead.
There are a couple twenty-something girls jogging my way. Both have banging bodies and a photoshopped kind of beauty that’s generally worked for me in the past. I wait for my dick to jump, for my attention to stick, but… nothing.
“Missed you during playoffs,” the redhead sings out.
Her friend giggles and adds, “She really did. You’re her favorite Slayer.”
I fire up the smile and thank them as I pass. Fans are great. Especially hot ones that I really ought to be thinking about getting with. Even if I’m not.
