Page 30 of Heat It Up (Off the Ice)
“Good. And you’re not cursed. You just need to find the right guy.”
“I guess you’ve never had your heart broken.” If he had, he wouldn’t be so quick to judge.
“That would be where you’re wrong. I was in love with a girl. Like you and your ex-boyfriend, we dated for years. I was getting ready to propose to her, when she up and left me for the lead singer of a rock band. I won’t say that it didn’t hurt at first, but then I realized it was what it was, and I can’t waste my life because one girl hurt me.”
We run down the path that leads to the lake. A man jogs past us in the opposite direction, but other than that, we’re alone.
“And you can’t let your ex-boyfriend and father cause you to waste your life,” Joni adds. “You need to take a chance. You might be surprised.”
He’s got that right. Except the surprises haven’t been happy ones. I shove away the image of the dog tag with Kyle’s wife’s name on it, and race Joni to the fork in the path. With his long legs, it doesn’t take much for him to overtake me.
He stops at the junction. “Which way?”
Fortunately, unlike with life, it doesn’t matter which way we go, it ends up the same place. “This way.” I pick the path on the right, and continue along the packed dirt. With just the two us running, it’s like we’ve disappeared from civilization. All that’s left is the untamed wilderness.
Running at a slower pace, and allowing my breath to catch up with me after sprinting to the fork in the path, I ask, “Do you run every day?”
“You can say that. I play football. And when I’m not playing it, I’m training for it. So, yes, I run every day.”
“Football, huh? You don’t look like a football player.” And then I get it. “Oh, you mean football as in soccer. So how come not hockey?”
He chuckles. “I’m not much of a hockey fan. I prefer running over skating.”
“My best friend would love you. She hates hockey. She plays with our university women’s soccer team. She’s brilliant at it.” Too bad Claire isn’t here. She and Joni would make a cute couple. A voice in the back of my head begins to point out that he and I would make one too. I flick it away before it can finish the thought.
We continue running. Joni does most of the talking, because as fit as I am, he has longer legs and doesn’t have to run as hard to keep up with me.
“What are you studying at university?” he asks. I explain my degree. “Do you know how to…what’s it called when you wrap tape around the ankles so you reduce the risk of hurting your ankle while playing football?”
“Taping.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
“The wife of one of my teammates does that for us, but she’s pregnant and could use some help. Would you be interested? It’s a volunteer position, so we couldn’t pay you.”
“No, that would be great. The more practice I get the better.” Plus, it would look good on my resume.
“Good. I’ll drop off the summer schedule later. We meet two evenings a week.”
And since I’m no longer hanging out with Kyle, this will work for me.
We’re silent for several minutes, focused on running as we finish the loop around the lake, before Joni says, “The day I showed up for our date wasn’t the first I’d seen you.”
I glance at him. “It wasn’t?”
He shakes his head and returns his attention to the path. I do the same so I don’t trip over a rut. “I saw you in The Coffee Bar a few days before that. But I’m not like those guys in the movies who see a beautiful girl and talk to her.”
I snort. Right now beautiful isn’t the adjective I would use to describe me. I’m sweaty, have zero makeup on, and my hair was shoved into a ponytail before I left. A few stray pieces have wiggled their way loose and are sticking to the side of my face.
Joni either doesn’t hear the snort or chooses to ignore it. “I was worried I’d sound…I’d sound cheesy if I said anything. I didn’t realize you were the same person my grandmother was trying to convince me to go out with.”
I laugh. “Convince?”
“Let’s just say you weren’t the only one who was resistant to the idea of being set up. I figured if you were so great, why didn’t you have a boyfriend?”
The same thought I’d had about him.
