Page 60 of My First Time Fling

What I saw behind them froze me in place.

20

Mark

“Mark, bro, you gotta get up!”

I rolled over onto my side and rubbed my eyes. What time was it? What was happening? And why was Gabe standing in my doorway, car keys in hand, looking at me like I was late for—

“Oh, Christ.” I rubbed my eyes again, pushing up onto an elbow. “Gabe, no. I’m not doing the marathon. I decided that last night.”

“Like hell you’re not doing the marathon.” Gabe glared at me. “I did not set my alarm for this inhuman hour so I could drag your sorry ass to the starting line of a race only for you to tell me you decided not to run said race and didn’t bother to inform me. You’re running this fucking marathon.”

He walked into the room and scanned it. Seeing the graveyard of old, half-drunk water bottles that lived on my floor, he grabbed one and came closer to the bed. I watched him warily.

“Look, I’m sorry. I thought I told you I’d changed my mind. I could have sworn I did, but either way, I’m sorry. I just can’t—” I cut off, spluttering, as Gabe splashed days-old water on my face. It smelled like plastic and depression. “What the fuck, man? What was that for?”

“To make your bed too uncomfortable for you to stay in it,” he responded, emptying the rest of the water bottle’s contents on my mattress with clinical precision. “Now get up.”

Fuck.

I didn’t want to get up, but I also didn’t want to lie in a soaking wet bed, covered in water that had been sitting in that bottle for…I truly didn’t want to think about how many weeks it had been there. Cursing, I stumbled out of bed, and Gabe pushed me toward the bathroom.

“Go. Get ready. You have five minutes. We’re already late.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I’m not running it.”

“Just shut up and go brush your teeth.” He gave me another shove. Too tired to think straight, I followed directions. Protesting would have taken mental energy that I didn’t have yet.

Gabe was right about one thing: it was way later than I should have gotten up if Ihadplanned on running the race. I’d turned off my alarm the night before—without telling him, apparently, which I didn’t remember but also wasn’t surprised by—and now it was 6:45. That was just fifteen minutes before the race started—and the starting line was at least that far a drive from my house.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, Gabe shoved a bundle of running shorts and sneakers at my chest. My arms wrapped around it reflexively before I even realized what was happening.

“You can change in the car,” he said, pushing me towards the front door.

I tried to protest, but he refused to listen and just kept prodding me towards his car. Finally, I got in. I still didn’t plan to run the race, but I could see I wasn’t going to get anywhere by arguing. He obviously wasn’t going to let me go back to bed.

By the time we pulled up to the starting area, I’d formulated a plan. If I was lucky, we’d be too late, and the race organizers wouldn’t let any new runners onto the course. And if I wasn’t lucky, I’d just run the first mile, or however long it took to get out of Gabe’s sight, and then loop back around to my house.

“What are you waiting for?” Gabe asked as he put the car in park. “Go on! Get out of here!”

I felt a little like I was some kind of stray dog he was trying to get rid of, but mutely, I got out of the car and slammed the door shut. I bent down to finish tying my shoes, hoping that maybe he’d leave before I was finished. But he didn’t. He just sat there and watched until I sighed and stood up and loped over to the registration tent.

Theywerestill handing out race numbers, though the volunteer who handed mine to me looked panicked on my behalf when she realized how late I was starting. She seemed so upset that I started to pin my bib on in a frenzy, forgetting that I didn’t actually care.

Still looking down and stabbing at my shirt with safety pins, I whirled around and smacked into someone.

“Shit, sorry.” I looked up. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, but I should have—” the words died on my lips.

The person I’d run into was Brooklyn. I stared at him, open-mouthed, unable to finish my sentence. Unable to eventhinkof a sentence, or anything, in the face of the look he gave me.

“You.” He said it with the same tone you would use for a piece of gum you’d found stuck to your shoe, if that piece of gum had murdered your family and committed war crimes to boot. “I don’t even know what to say to you. I can’t believe you’d even show up here after everything you’ve done this past week.”

“I—I’m sorry,” I said again, stumbling over my words. “Really. I never meant to—”

“Yeah, I’m sure you didn’t,” Brooklyn said. The disdain in his voice was clear. “I don’t know what your damage is, but what you did to Jesse was really fucking shitty.”

“I know, but I—”

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