Page 6 of Past Tents

“If only that were a reason to fire a guy.”

“So tell me...” I had to catch my breath before continuing. “What’s the rumor this time?”

“I just went on a date with a woman, Sadie, who worked at the firm when he did.”

“And?”

Jefferson didn’t answer, his huffing breath taking the place of words. “Her hot take was that Pindich tried to date a wealthy client. Someone geriatric.”

My ensuing bark of laugher made it hard to catch my breath, but the image of Pindich romancing the elderly was worth it.

“Thought maybe it was your grandmother,” Jefferson added, chuckling beside me.

My laughter abruptly halted. I wanted nothing to do withthatimage. “You just had to go there,” I muttered, picking up my pace until Jefferson was panting louder than me, trying to keep up.

“I mean, she did have a house on Bandit Lake, after all. Maybe he thought he could woo it out of her.” The guy didn’t know when to give up. My grandmother did have a house there. And she left it to me, not to Curt Pindich. End of discussion.

“Heard something else,” Jefferson panted.

“Wow, you read theNational Enquirerwhile you were getting your hair done or something?” It cost me some oxygen to get the words out, but someone had to let Jefferson know he sounded like his own personal hen party.

He didn’t say anything, so I picked up my pace. If he was going to torture me, I’d torture him back. In seconds, I heard the pounding of his feet on the track as he gained on me.

“Blithe...Tanner.” His words came out like a curse as he chased after me. I did this kind of ridiculous running every day of the week and therefore had an unfair advantage. Plus, the hurdling, back in the day.

“Yeah?” I couldn’t slow down now. There was only fast or faster. I gave it a little more gas. We’d already done almost a mile, and I was determined to get to two in the next six minutes.

“Her friend...has a niece. Wants to...” His voice trailed off as he inhaled a mammoth breath. Then another. We were going too fast for a conversation, running around the track at top speed, each of us pouring on the gas for his own reasons.

He gasped and started to finish his explanation, but I waved a hand to cut him off. I already knew what he was going to say. If Blithe Tanner wanted to get me to date her friend’s niece, the conversation could wait until we’d finished running. This felt too good.

My lungs craved the air that I was delivering in large, satisfying breaths. I needed the endorphins, plain and simple, always had.

Running had started as a sport. I’d done decently well, and it allowed me to be a competitive athlete all through high school. I played soccer in the winter, but fall and spring were when I exceled at racing sports. In the summer, I entered local five- and ten-kilometer runs, and most of the time, I outran nearly everyone.

Part of it was good racing habits—like I tell my team, train the way you race, race the way you train—but most of it was that I could get lost in my head on a run, which meant I’d put in far more miles than were required to train for a 5K. That meant that race days were easy by comparison.

My body craved the endorphins, that runner’s high that left me feeling blissful and centered. So I kept doing it. I had no idea why my body needed those endorphins so badly. I didn’t know I was different from anyone else.

That came later—the bouts of depression, the clinical explanation for my moods. Back in my early twenties, I’d really struggled when it settled over me like a cloud I couldn’t shake.

Right when I should have been dealing with it, I’d pushed away the signs that my mental health was deteriorating because I’d finally met a woman I thought I could love. Okay, maybe it wasn’t love. But I’d convinced myself that being with herwould make me happy enough that it would send my depressed feelings into hiding. Of course, mental health doesn’t work like that. And our breakup sent me over the edge and into an abyss.

I was so down, felt so worthless. On some days, I didn’t get out of bed, didn’t eat. I didn’t care about anything, felt like my family and friends would be better off without me dragging them down.

I couldn’t separate rational from irrational thoughts, and my parents couldn’t help me through it. They didn’t understand why I couldn’t just “man up and get over it.” Not that they were callous; they just couldn’t relate.

Back then, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t see myself with any sort of objectivity. I only felt what I felt, an unshakeable mood of despair. I withdrew from my group of friends, went to work like a robot, and didn’t expect to feel any differently. I didn’t think I deserved anything else because I thought somehow it was my fault that I felt the way I did—worthless.

Jefferson Dalbotten was the one person who’d leaned in, rather than getting scared off. He followed me down to the bottom of the mental pit and insisted I seek help. He resisted my excuses and found me a psychiatrist who came up with a treatment plan. The antidepressant I now took every morning kept me on more level ground. I still had highs and lows, but they existed on an elevated plane compared to where I’d been.

But even Jefferson didn’t know the reason I stayed away from relationships after that—out of fear of falling into the same abyss again. Safer to go out once or twice with the women who were pushed my way and call it a day. And never consider someone like Ally Dalbotten who’d make me want the kind of relationship that would put my heart in jeopardy.

After two more driving laps around the track, I slowed to a jog for the final four hundred meters that would get me to two miles. As our breathing came back toward conversational, I elbowed Jefferson in the ribs. “Jeff, did you come for the workout? Or are you here to meddle in my dating life?”

He threw up his arms in protest. “Not meddling at all. I’m not telling you to date Blithe’s friend’s niece. Just letting you know a missile is headed your way in case you want to duck. Or...maybe put on a baseball glove and catch the damn thing for once.”

I laughed at that. Ducking was more like it. That’s how dating felt these days. When I’d turned thirty-four, everyone and their sister had somehow emerged from the countryside, all convinced they needed to find me a wife.

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