Page 113 of The Clinch
“Okay,” he says, like it’s nothing. His certainty should comfort me. Instead it makes the future feel too close.
Because the people around us aren’t treating this like a temporary arrangement anymore.
They’re planning around it.
Then I look toward the stroller again. Aidan’s fist is still wrapped around the stuffed animal.
I’ve thought about it before. The math of it. Just never standing next to a man who makes the future feel less like punishment and more like possibility.
I tighten my grip on the can and file it under things to survive later, when he isn’t standing right there being exactly what I want.
28
GUARD DOWN (LIZ)
The Brooklyn waterfront at five a.m. in August is annoyingly busy. Hazy dawn filters through the humid air. Young professionals burn off cortisol before their nine-to-fives. New moms reclaim their lungs and legs. A few familiar faces treat this path as their church.
A man in a Mets cap, someone we see every morning, lifts two fingers at us as we pass. One of the stroller moms gives me a quick smile—routine recognition, nothing personal. Then a scrawny guy does a double take at Leo and quickly looks away, suddenly engrossed in his own pace.
And then there’s me.
Former Olympic hopeful, now chasing the one thing that still hits clean—the burst. Breath. Speed. Air splitting open.
Leo runs at my shoulder, a wall of a man in motion. He’s been my bodyguard, my boyfriend, my fiancé.
The ring has settled on my finger, steady and stubborn. He gave it to me as a prop, back when we were still pretending. Now it carries a weight it didn’t have before.
We still haven’t named what we are. Every label feels wrong. Lover. Friend. Roommate. Fiancé. None of them fit right. All of them get close enough to make me nervous.
Jessica, naturally, doesn’t care about nervous. She summoned us to her office on my day off to discuss ‘the way forward,’ and gave us a time that feels less like a meeting and more like a verdict: two fifteen. Fifteen minutes.
His camp starts in a week. My last full stretch of ER shifts ends in a few days. The days I’d carved out for Ulm are still sitting on my calendar, untouched. I already told my parents I’m not coming.
We jog at an easy pace, just enough to warm the joints and settle my head. The skyline is still half lit. The river smells sharp. My muscles start to wake.
I widen my stance and drop into a few squats, spring-loading my legs for the first interval.
“Here we go.” His voice is amused. “See you in a minute, Flash.”
I glance at him and let my lips curve before I launch. “Try to keep up, Brooklyn.”
Feet strike clean. Arms tight. There’s nothing but the line in front of me, the burn turning bright.
For a moment, it’s only me and the air parting, my hair a curtain behind me.
Then I hear him push off behind me. His breathing turns rough. He doesn’t catch me on the sprint, but he holds the gap anyway, constant as a metronome, and eats it back on the recovery.
When he draws even, I give him a quick look. “Getting faster.”
He exhales, almost a laugh. “Don’t get bratty, Flash.”
We find the rhythm: burst, recover, burst again.
He runs it the way he does everything—deliberate, stubborn, present—just there, close enough that I’m not alone.
We hit another empty stretch, and my body makes the decision it always makes when the feelings get too big.
I sprint.
