I wish I could go back. I’d like to take it back. I planned for that night for months. Ever since we got Ronin out of jail, I was planning my getaway. Because I knew the moment she said she wanted to save him that it was over for me. She belongs to him.
And I miss her. I miss our friendship. I miss our runs. I miss it all so, so much.
Those morning runs with Rook made life bearable for me. And I let myself be deluded up in Fort Collins. I wanted to believe so badly that Rook and I could just be friends, that I’d be OK with it.
But I’m not OK with it. I’m… crushed. Devastated. Hurt. Sad. Maybe even depressed. And I realize looking back that my window of opportunity with Rook was very narrow. Those first few days of the Shrike Bikes pilot, back when Ronin was busy with Clare and Rook was still deciding on what she wanted. That was the only chance I ever had and I blew it. I was a dick to her. She had no reason to trust me, let alone like me.
Why am I always surprised when the same f**king actions give me the same f**king results?
I want to change. I want to allow people to get close. But it’s difficult to just accept things. I’m not Zen. I have trouble simply existing and yet that’s the only way I know to survive. To assign motivations and insight to every possible movement, conversation, and change is to invite madness. But to ignore all those parts of me is to invite delusion. I am in a constant state of dynamic dichotomy. So I cope with the stress of who and what I am with physical activity.
The way I used to deal with things was through skiing, but I don’t ski anymore. Now it’s just running. I like solitary sports even though I’m pretty good at the team sports too. I only ever played baseball after I figured all this shit out. Because baseball is about as solitary a team sport as you can get.
But running. Running is the ultimate solitary sport. And for most people it’s them against their mind when they run marathons and stuff. Can they talk themselves out of the pain? Can they fool their tired muscles? Can they turn around their negative thoughts that tell them they will fail? Will they suffer to achieve the reward of completion? That’s the runner’s battle.
But for me, I am my mind. So I don’t compete with anyone. There’s no voice in my head saying I can’t do it. It’s the opposite in fact. If there is a voice in my head, then it’s my dad, and he only ever gave me encouragement. He only ever told me, You can.
So I just run, because I can.
I’m not sure how far I could run if I never stopped. That run down to Frisco and back is pretty intense. Twenty-four miles and half of it is uphill. But the thought that I’d have to stop before I got home—that has never entered my mind. Because my mind has no room for silly things such as failure when I run.
My mind is free when I run. Free to think about things I normally partition off to the deep recesses of my subconscious.
So that’s what I do now. I run. I pull out an old running outfit from my dad’s closet so I don’t wake Ash and the baby, and I run the f**k out of Vail. The bike trail is out, it’s covered in like six feet of snow. But the streets are clear and it’s the middle of the night so they are empty.
So I run.
And I love every f**king second of it. Because the only sound I hear is myself. Breathing into the frigid night air, a stream of steam coming from my mouth in a controlled regular rhythm. I let my mind wander out of the cage I keep it in, I forget about Rook, and I think about shapes, and equations, and the sound of my feet as they pound the wet pavement.
The freak goes away and the real me emerges.
That’s what running gives me. And when Rook ran with me, she filled a gaping hole in my life. She was my partner. She was mine. I love my team. I can’t picture my life without Ronin and Spencer. We had a falling out a while back and we spent years apart. And even though life went on and I was fine, the minute we were all back together for the Shrike Bikes pilot, our bonds realigned. Like it was meant to be. Like we were charged molecules, pulled together by a force of nature.
But I’d like to be more than one third of a team—one fourth if I include Rook. I’d like to be half of something. I’d like that emptiness to go away. And that’s what it felt like to have Rook. She filled me up.
But now that hole is back and it’s deeper than ever. I am just one man, alone.
I get back to the house around five AM and sneak quietly into the shower. I pull on the sweats I’ve been sleeping in so I don’t disturb anyone, and then I go downstairs and crash on the couch, my muscles aching with fatigue, my mind at bay for another day.
The crying baby is what wakes me. And even though she’s upstairs, she is loud. I take the steps two at a time and find the screaming infant in her carrier in the middle of the living room. “Ashleigh?” I walk down to my bedroom and peek in, but it’s empty. Bathroom is empty. Parents’ bedroom also empty. “Ashleigh?”
The baby is wailing so hard she’s shaking and it’s starting to freak me out. I walk through the kitchen and open the door to the garage. Ashleigh is sorting through the van looking for something. “What’re you doing?”
Her head pops up in surprise. “What?”
“Can’t you hear that f**king screaming?”
“Sorry, did she wake you?” Ashleigh doesn’t look sorry. She barely notices me in fact. Just keeps searching for something on the floor of the backseat.
“Yes, she did wake me, but I’m more concerned about why she’s f**king screaming her head off and you’re out here doing… what the f**k are you doing?”