“Do I look like I run often?” I glare at him.
“So what do you do to keep in such fantastic shape?” He asks distractedly. I’ve just risen from a downward dog/ upward facing dog movement.
“Yoga,” I answer, looking at him like he’s suffering from a head trauma. “Obviously.”
“Hmm?” He asks. Watching me move through sun salutations.
“Yoga,” I say again. “I do yoga.”
“So that’s why you’re so bendy,” he says as he swoops in and lifts me off my feet. I land on my back on the couch with Cody on top of me. I squeal as he tickles my sides but my laughter is cut short when his mouth finds mine and he kisses me soundly.
“We should go run,” I tell him, breathlessly.
“We don’t need to run tonight,” Cody tells me with all seriousness. Steve growls from the corner.
“If you want to live to see tomorrow, I suggest we take Steve for his run,” I tell them both. Steve chuffs his approval, Cody scowls. “You’re a big boy, you’ll survive an hour,” I tell Cody as I pat his cheek. He scowls again, I just laugh.
As it turns out, Steve really loves to run. We jogged about two miles at my slow pace. I urged Cody to do his real run which was a ten mile killer. I’d be dead before dinner if we did that. It was mutually agreed upon by both Steve and Cody that Steve would stay with me for safety reasons. And also he knew his way home in the dark. Something, I did not.
Steve was happy to go at my slower pace. He ran the whole time with his tail and nose high in the air, the former wagging the whole time. I kind of wanted to wag my tail too. Steve was great company. Maybe I needed a pet.
Even though Steve and I had a much shorter run than Cody’s death march, at my much slower pace, we still beat him home. Out of shape and gasping for air as we made the final feet of our run. Up the steps where I dropped to the porch and collapsed on my back, arms open wide, legs spread eagle. I think Steve feels for me as I lay there looking like road kill, my face red and sweat pouring off my body, because he groaned his doggie groan as he too, flopped to the porch and rolled over onto his back with his legs in the air and his tongue lolling out to the side of his mouth. My hand stretched out absent mindedly rubbing his belly. And this is how Cody found us when he returned from his run.
I could hear his footfalls bringing him closer, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I was fairly sure I died somewhere on that run and my body just didn’t figure it out until we got back to the house.
“You need to stretch again,” he tells me with his foot on the railing, stretching his own body.
“Ungh,” is all I can get out. See? Dead. Cody just laughs.
I feel his strong fingers wrap around my ankle and lift my leg, straight up in the air, pushing my knee as far towards my face as it can go. I’ve been practicing yoga since I was a teen so there is no push back from my muscles and joint. Add to that the fact that all my muscles have quit on me and I have the consistency of over cooked spaghetti, I am very flexible right now. I grab that ankle from him and pull it all the way over my head. I hear him make a strangled sound in the back of his throat but disregard it.
I let that leg fall back to the ground and Cody wraps his strong hands around my other ankle, lifting it straight up. Once I can reach it myself, I grab that ankle and pull it over my head. I’m so tired, my eyes remain closed the whole time. Once I lower that leg back to the ground, I continue to relax in corpse pose, I could probably fall asleep right here.
“Get in the house, Angel,” Cody growls. My eyes instantly snap open.
“What?” I whisper.
“I said, Get. In. The fucking. House,” he ground out between his teeth. “Now.”
“Cody…” I start. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Unless you want me to fuck you on the front porch in front of both my parents and my grandparents. Get. In. The fucking. House. Angel.”
“Oh,” I say, because well, he really paints a picture.
“Yeah, oh,” he snaps back. And now that I look at him, I see his control crumbling away. So I hold out my hand for him to help my broken body up off the floor of the porch.
“Okay,” I say softly. Rolling his eyes skyward, Cody mumbles something that resembles curses and counting. But before I can say anything, he grabs my hand to help me up, but once I’m vertical again, he just keeps lifting and lifting until he tosses me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and into the house we go. Yippee!
