Page 20 of Your Pace or Mine
Jamie smiled, the light returning to his eyes. “Well, if it ever gets too loud, you could try, you know, playingactualgames like—would you rather… dance on stage, or sing on stage?”
Darius laughed softly, grateful for the levity Jamie brought back into the moment. “Dear Lord, neither.”
Jamie grinned. “I could always teach you to dance, you know, if that would make you more comfortable, but you may have to slow down before I collapse, or that will never happen.”
Darius rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hide his smile. Jamie was disarming in so many ways. It was easy to forget they weren’t alone, but Darius was snapped back to reality by the complaintsof one of the other runners in his group as they approached the sixth mile.
“How are you two arseholes talking so damn much?” gasped Mark, a doctor who had told Darius he was running his third marathon and aiming for a 3:15 finish. Which, if true, meant he should definitely have been able to keep up.
Darius checked his pace on his watch and noticed he was going a bit faster than was probably fair. He actively slowed down, making Jamie’s laughter echo through the quiet park as they ran on.
As they approached the final couple of miles, Jamie started to look like he was genuinely struggling. Darius noticed he hadn’t been refuelling at all, and offered him a gel, birthday cake flavour, because it was by far the best one. No matter how much Jackson had taken the piss out of him for the ‘childish’ choice, as if there was a more grown-up type of carbohydrate slime to choke down while running.
Jamie didn’t seem to understand the gesture, eyeing the gel with a mix of disgust, confusion, and the tiniest bit of desperation for anything that would help him carry on.
“It’ll help, I promise.” Darius urged Jamie to take the gel. “We all use them.”
“Is it drugs?” Jamie asked, eyeing the small packet with distrust.
“No,” Darius grinned, “just carbs and sugar. It’ll keep you going, and you should start figuring out your marathon nutrition now. You don’t want to bonk on race day.”
Jamie arched his perfectly groomed, pierced brow at Darius. “Oh no, that sounds very much like something I’d like.”
Darius rolled his eyes despite the surge of desire that shot through him. “It means to run out of glycogen stores,” he mumbled.
He ripped the packet open and shoved it at Jamie, sticky gel squishing out a bit over both their hands in the process. Finishing the packet, Jamie licked his fingers seductively, maintaining intense eye contact with Darius that almost caused him to stumble. Darius couldn’t help but laugh. “Like it then?”
“Mmm, so much.” Jamie grinned back.
Darius pulled a wet wipe out of the pocket of his shorts. “As much as I enjoyed the show, that stuff is vile if it dries on your hand.”
Jamie took it gratefully. “Thank God, it was already giving me such an ick.”
Darius checked his pace and realised they’d slowed a bit.
“Okay, Group A, time to pick it up a bit, final mile,” he shouted to the surrounding runners. Jamie let out a disappointed groan.
“C’mon, Jamie, you’ve got this,” Darius encouraged.
“I definitely don’t,” Jamie replied.
“Yes, you do. Now come on, let’s see what you can do when you’re actually trying.”
“Actually trying,” Jamie gasped, matching Darius’s pace.
“Oh, so he can keep up,” Darius teased. “C’mon, no more chatter. Let’s dig in.”
“I appreciate you pretending you need to dig in as well,” Jamie said, his speech slow and separated by breaths.
They ran the final mile back to the base in silence, nothing but the sounds of their own group’s footsteps and distant noises of the city around them.
“Hewitt, you’re back too early. What part of zone 2 is so difficult for you to understand?” They hadn’t even started stretching before Anders was barking at Darius.
Jamie mumbled something under his breath. “Probably the bit about zones, nobody knows what the fuck you’re talking about, arsehole.”
The woman he was stretching next to muffled a giggle, and Darius shot them both a pleading look. It was nice to have the group on his side somewhat, but that kind of talk was not going to endear him further to Anders. Although that seemed like a bit of a lost cause with the way he was looking at Darius as though he were dirt on the bottom of his shoe.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if you knew what his family really thinks of people like us,” Anders stated.
