“On your left!”
A boy streaks by me, running backwards. He settles directly in front of me and goes even faster. Wow, he has such vivid light blue eyes—I nearly lose my footing at the sight of them.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” I gasp.
He grins and slows to a jog. “What?”
I look for his pink bracelet, and finding none, I blurt, “You’re running faster than me and I’m going forward!”
“So speed up then!”
What an ass.
“C’mon.” He tosses his head from side to side, acting like one of those macho guys on a cheesy exercise show. “Let’s go. Faster now. Work it out, girl! Let’s go.”
I flip him the bird. He throws his head back and laughs.
“Stop that!” I say.
“Stop what? Laughing at you?”
“Running backwards. It’s unsafe.”
“No it’s not. Besides, I have to. I’m training for the RC Cola Moon Pie ten-miler. I’m running it backwards this year.”
My mouth falls open. It shocks me that 1) he’s running a race backwards; 2) it’s named after RC Cola and Moon Pies; and 3) he’s running a ten-mile race more than one time.
The guy has messy, light brown hair, seriously muscular arms and legs, and an outline of his abs peeks through his thin white Delta Tau Kappa tee. Is he in a frat?
Even though I usually can’t hear Southern accents, I notice his. One time when I was little, my mom, brother, and I took a road trip to Chicago. Everywhere we stopped to eat, waitresses kept telling me I had the most darling accent. That’s how I know people in Tennessee have an accent even if I can’t hear it; it’s weird I can pick up on the twangy countryness in his voice.
He keeps shuffling backwards. Our eyes meet, then he checks me out. It’s been a while since a boy has straight up stared at me. His gaze trails over my long, strawberry blond hair tied up in a ponytail, to my legs, and then settles on my pink bracelet. He smiles at it.
“See ya.” He increases his cadence, continuing in reverse. I glance down at my watch. I bet he’s running eight-minute miles. And he’s doing it f**king backwards.
Being pissed at Running Backwards Boy carries me for another couple minutes.
But soon I’m alone again. Just me and the sky. Kyle’s grin flashes in my mind.
A quarter mile more.
One foot after the other.
Breathe, Annie, breathe.
•••
For all of last year, Kyle had been training to run the Country Music Marathon in Nashville.
Every Saturday, he would jog anywhere between five to twenty miles as he worked his way up to the full twenty-six. All throughout his training runs, I would drive to different meet-up points along the trail and give him water so he could stay hydrated. Month after month, mile after mile, I was there with an energy bar, a smile, and a kiss.
During one run, I brought him chilled Gatorade at mile ten. “I love that dress, babe,” he said, gulping his drink so fast the orange liquid trickled down his chin and onto his white shirt. “What do you call that color again? Perihinkle?”
“Periwinkle.”
He grinned and took another sip. “Like I said, periwinkle. Can I have a kiss? To get me through the last five miles?”
“You’re all sweaty and gross!”
He pulled me to his chest. “You don’t care.”
And he was right. I kissed him long and slow, running my hand over his buzzed blond hair, then patted his butt to make him start running again. He finished his fifteen-mile run easily that day and kept up his training over the next couple months.
But Kyle only made it to twenty miles before I lost him.
And then he was gone, and snow covered the leaves, and then sun melted the snow, and all my regrets aside, I couldn’t stand that all that training was for nothing.
He never got to run a marathon, which had been his dream since he’d started running track in middle school. He couldn’t get the idea out of his head.
So early one Saturday morning, I tied on my sneakers and went to the school track. Kyle had told me four laps around equaled a mile, and during his training, he ran about a bazillion miles, so I knew I had to start logging some huge distances if I was going to do the race on his behalf.
But during my first run, I only made it around the track twice before the cool February air burned my lungs and throat, and my shins felt like somebody had kicked soccer balls at them for hours. I rested my hands on my knees and spit onto the pavement, tears clouding my eyes. Two f**king laps? That’s all I could do? I quickly did the math—a marathon is the equivalent of 104 laps around the track!