Hi folks, summer is ending, so we thought we’d end it with a light and fluffy, summer romance. Just the thing to take your mind off of hurricanes, flooding and rising ocean levels. No plastic straws were sipped on during the writing of this entire story. But don’t worry, the next one is already written and I swear it’s dark, crazy and depressing. SS06

Life is ... strange. Somehow, we’re never really prepared for all the changes and hurdles that life has in store for us. So that day in early summer, I thought that I knew myself. I thought I knew how my life would play out.

I didn’t think I was gonna be discovered and become a movie star. I also didn’t think I’d win the Powerball and become rich, but I was sure that I knew my place and I was content.

I’d checked off all the boxes that a woman was supposed to check off in the early twenty-first century. I had a husband, a college degree, a great job and was working my way through the mortgage payments on a nice little house in the near suburbs.

There were things I liked about my life, and some that I didn’t ... just like everybody else.

So that afternoon, with an hour left to work and all my work done, I was surfing the net. I was looking for running groups in my area.

I had recently started running again and truthfully, it was becoming a chore. It was my God damned sister in law’s fault that I’d started in the first place.

She’d recently started on another diet program and wanted to start “jogging,” to help get rid of a few pounds.

“Pearl, you jogged in college, didn’t you?” she asked me, sweetly. “Do you think you could go out with me a few times?”

“Heather, I ran track,” I said sharply. “There’s a big difference between jogging and running!”

I’d been insulted and my near anger showed it, but being obtuse, Heather never picked up on it.

“What’s the difference?” she asked.

“When you’re running, it’s all about either speed or endurance,” I began. You’re training to get the maximum out of your body for a particular race distance, or event. Jogging is just waddling your fat ass around the block to burn off a few calories so you can eat more cake.

It’s a different mindset and a different goal. Not everyone runs well. Not everyone CAN run. But damned near anybody can jog. Shit, I’ve seen people with full knee replacements who walk faster than some joggers. Shit ... some of those joggers are so slow that they look like they’re running backwards.”

“Okay ... alright!” she said in a tone of voice that made me believe I was off the hook. “I’ll start running with you. We can start next week. I have to get on the home shopping network and buy myself some tennis shoes and a cute outfit, before we start.”

“Huh?” I gushed. “Buh ... wait?”

“Bobby said you’d be like this,” she laughed. “He said you’d be all excited and geeked to get started. Give me your credit card number so I can order my stuff.”

I should have seen that part coming. Heather’s brother Bobby was my husband and lifelong true love. We fell in love in our sophomore year of high school and had never been apart.

We married a week after I graduated from college and have been doing the young married couple thing ever since.

I love Bobby, madly, but my husband has no idea about the value of money. Bobby dropped out of college in our second year.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s not some lazy couch-sitting slob ... in theory. In fact, you could say that he’s the owner of a successful small business.

The problem is that the business is VERY small. As in, my husband runs an interior and exterior residential cosmetic surface alteration firm.

It sounds impressive. His business cards say that. They leave people scratching their heads and thinking that it’s some new high-tech business. But the reality is that my husband and his best friend, aided by an array of extremely technical equipment, including a thirty-year-old, moderately dented pick-up truck, two secondhand ladders and a big jug of my world-famous lemonade, paint houses for a living.

In a good month, they can bring in six figures ... if you include the numbers both before and after the decimal point. Of course, sometimes you have to add a zero or two, but it’s still six figures.

The problem is that what it means is that I’m the one bringing home the bacon and watching every God damned penny to make sure our bills are paid on time.

But every time I turn around, Bobby is signing me up to pay for every needless expense and whim that anybody in our immediate or extended circle comes up with.

In this case, I really, really want to say, not only, “NO!” but an emphatic, “FUCK NO!” This is just a waste of money. Heather is the salt of the earth and she loves her brother, and he loves her. But there are three things that Heather isn’t. The first is svelte. Pushing a dainty 300 lbs., Heather just does not seem to possess the type of body that lends itself to success in running.

The second thing that Heather isn’t is determined. Running is not like Lipo. You don’t get to just go into an office, lie down on a table and have them suck the fat out of you. It is not a passive activity. In order to be successful on any level, you have to get out there and run, consistently.

You have to do it though good runs and bad ones, when you feel good and when you feel like shit, and that is NOT Heather.

And lastly it takes a certain degree of mental stability, which Heather probably ... let’s make that more than likely does not have. I could already see her getting bored, deciding to quit and blaming the whole episode on me.

Unfortunately, it turned out far worse than I ever expected. Heather went fucking crazy, as she often does. She got an entirely new hairstyle ... for running. She bought several lycra outfits in extremely loud colors and two pairs of the cutest, least suited for running, shoes I have ever seen.

“I gotta have those,” she whined. “They match the outfit.”

I think I did mention that Heather’s mental stability was questionable, didn’t I?

So anyway, there were a few expected results, and a few unexpected ones too.

Under expected results, let’s mark down the fact that Heather was unable to run for more than a few steps without collapsing in sheer exhaustion. In total, we wogged ... that’s a combo of walking and jogging maybe ... a hundred yards before we gave up for the day.

“Why didn’t you tell me that running was so hard?” she whined. I rolled my eyes skywards and silently prayed for the whole thing to be over.

Another expected result was that in her exhaustion, Heather would need to eat. Heather ate five triple Whoppers from our neighborhood Burger King. An unexpected consequence of the expected result was that Heather actually gained weight from running.

She got on the internet and swore that her weight gain was not only expected, but proof that running worked for her. Somewhere she got the idea that since muscle weighs more than fat, she was building more muscle.

I was very sure that wogging a mere hundred yards, had not produced the increase in her mass. I’d have sworn it was eating enough burgers to be declared a mass murderer of cows that was the problem.

Among the unexpected results, were the sarcastic cheers of random groups of men in the park. And judging from the way she smiled when random men whistled and yelled, “Good Lord ... look at that ASS!” I was sure that both sarcasm and the concept of subtlety were lost on Heather.

But the three biggest unexpected results were that A: Heather would badly break her ankle, on the second step of our second run. B: that everyone in the family would hold me responsible. And C: that I would like to run so much that I couldn’t stop.

I loved it. The biggest problem was that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I also needed to figure out what kind of runner I was.

There are lots of different types. There are the solitary types of runners who always look like they’re in pain while grinding out the miles. There are the groups of men, women or both who look like they’re all just out for a friendly jog, who seem to be having a party while they run.

I was pretty sure I was the party type ... or at least I wanted to be. God knows I needed some fucking fun in my life.

So, on that fateful Tuesday, I found myself looking for a running group to join.

And fortunately, or unfortunately ... depending on how you look at it, I didn’t find one.

What I didn’t expect was that my life was about to change.

In college, as I’ve mentioned I was on the track team. I never had the chance to find out if I was good or not, because I was never picked to be in a meet.

We did a lot of group runs and the coaches chose the quicker runners to concentrate all the individual coaching on, while the rest of us were just cannon fodder.

And truthfully, I never asserted myself or tried very hard. I just liked the sweater you got for being on the team.

So that afternoon, as I headed for the park, I had no idea what was in store for me.

Bobby and his best friend “Herb,” whose name isn’t Herbert, tagged along. Herb’s given name is Thomas, but people call him Herb, because of the incredible amount of marijuana he smoked, even before it was legal.

Bobby and Herb were there for moral support. Which really means they were there to sit in the truck and play with their Pokémon cards while I ran. Apparently, there was no need to paint anybody’s house that day.

We got out of the truck and they quickly found a bench to sit on while I stretched.

I saw lots of runners. Henderson park is a beautiful, moderate sized park in Detroit’s near suburbs. One loop around the perimeter is four miles.

I saw groups of power walkers. Groups of joggers and a few actual runners. I was faster than a lot of them and slower than some others, so I guess I was on my own.

While I was warming up, I heard the loudest most warm sounding noise, ever. It was a car exhaust. A very dark, but not quite Navy-blue car pulled up.

A guy got out of the car. He put ear buds in his ears, clipped a tiny music player to the waist of his shorts and took off running.

Something clicked when I saw him. He was a black guy. He was about my age, with a chocolate complexion. He didn’t spend a bunch of time stretching or talking to anyone.

He did nod his head at a few of the runners. His warmup consisted of a few seconds of swinging his arms, then he did a few quick bounces to warm up his legs and he was gone.

He ran like a fucking deer. He was slim, yet muscular, with long legs that just ate up the ground beneath him. I was shocked. But I realized that I had just seen the type of runner I wanted to be.

Never having been accused of being shy, I took off after him. I wanted to study the way he ran and the things he did. The only problem was that ... I couldn’t.

I literally could not keep up with him. As effortlessly as he seemed to be running ... he was moving away from me like he had a rocket up his ass. And after about a mile, he kicked in the afterburners on the rocket and literally disappeared.

My normal run was just to go around the park at a comfortable clip and maybe ... if I remembered ... check my time when I got done. I had no idea whether any run was faster or slower than the previous one because I never wrote them down or remembered them. It just seemed like something to do.

Watching him run, suddenly changed the way I looked at everything. When I got back to the bench where my husband and his friend waited, I was exhausted. The effort of running hard during the first mile, trying to keep up with, “the guy,” as I called him, had tired me out.

For some reason, his car was still there, though. I got an evil thought. Maybe he’d been showing off and I had passed him somewhere in the park while he vomited his guts out and ended up walking back. I saw that a lot while I was on the team. People went out too fast and suffered all the way back.

I imagined him bending over, yakking his guts into the bushes along the side of the paved running trail and then slowly walking back.

The detail of the vision was so great that I could even see a small line of vomit that drooled from one side of his mouth, down his chin and onto his shirt.

The backs of my legs were tight. I didn’t want to pull a muscle or anything, so I leaned against the truck and did some stretches. I heard a couple of wolf whistles and my face turned really red.

I turned and faced the opposite direction, as I realized that not only could I watch the people going by, but they could watch me as well.

Everyone sees things differently. I just see myself as the same old girl I always was. I guess, I’m on the smaller side. At five foot two, I’m not going to be anyone’s choice for volleyball, basketball or anything else with ball in the title.

I’m also too short to be any type of model unless it’s for kids’ clothes. My legs are probably my best feature and that came from all the running I’d done in college.

As I thought about it, I suddenly realized that my running shorts, the type that competitive runners wear, were basically a pair of brightly colored panties. I also realized that they’d ridden up while I ran.

So, the guys who’d whistled at me were only reacting naturally to me bending over and flashing my nearly naked ass at them, in broad fucking daylight.

I finished stretching and reached up to open the door to the truck. Bobbie and Herb were so busy arguing about whose turn it was that they’d never realized I was back.

I glanced over and looked at the car beside us. It sat low and looked powerful. There were four pipes in the back with three bar shaped, vertical taillights on each side. The letters GT were centered between the clusters of taillights.

And that was where my fantasy ended. I heard a very light clip clopping sound and turned to see, him, the guy come running back down the trail and drop to a light jog as he entered the parking area.

There was a sheen a sweat all over him. He passed in front of me and the trunk of his car flipped open.

He looked at the expensive looking watch on his wrist and shook his head. The expression on his face was neither good nor bad.

He grabbed a towel from the open trunk and wiped all the sweat from his body. I noticed that the trunk of that car was nearly empty. It was also so clean you could eat out of it.

He pulled on a warmup suit then, which made no sense to me. He opened a small cooler and pulled out a can of soda. I almost laughed. This guy obviously knew nothing about running. He should have been drinking Gatorade or something like that.

And he didn’t stretch at all. Clearly an amateur. He also hadn’t looked at me once. Okay, I’m not a super model, but I am a young attractive woman with awesome legs and an above average body ... unless your definition of above average requires big boobs. In that case, I drop down a couple of clicks, but he really should have stared at or at least looked at me.

He got into his car, carefully backed out and drove away. As he got safely clear of the parking area, he gave it some gas and suddenly the car took off, leaving only a throaty growl, in its wake.

I stood there, dripping with sweat and dying of thirst, with my mind working overtime.

All kinds of questions and thoughts flashed through my brain. I felt invigorated, pissed, curious, jealous, embarrassed and angry all at once and for a variety of different reasons.

The invigoration came from the run. Running always made me feel good. The pissed feeling was because I had to get back into a filthy truck that smelled like weed, while I was already sweaty and becoming sore.

I blew the truck’s horn twice and Bobby stopped yelling at Herb long enough to look up. They both looked like angry, frustrated teenagers as they gathered their cards and stomped toward the truck.

They sulked the entire drive home, with neither of them saying a word. I didn’t mind, because I was too locked inside of my own thoughts to worry about theirs.

After the run I’d just done, I realized that Heather had lit, or at least rekindled something in me. I wondered then, why I’d ever given up running in the first place.

The answer was simple. I’d grown up and grown out of it. After graduating from college, I’d gotten a job to start Bobby and I down the road to adulthood. Those first few years had been very busy ones, while I adjusted to the new normal.

But there were other reasons as well. There were doubts. I mean I’d always thought that I could have been a good runner, but out of a sea of potential athletes, the coaches concentrated most of their efforts on the standouts.

That left the rest of us to simply plod along at whatever pace we chose, to serve as the crowd the standouts stood out from. My running career never flowered or bloomed because it was never fed or watered. I could have been a contender or at least a competitor.

Instead of blaming the past, I resolved to work on the future.

I ended up having to park the truck on the street in front of our tiny house. Heather’s rusty, nearly forty-year-old Cadillac was wedged in behind my car.

As I got to the porch, I noticed that she had her feet, one of which was still in a cast, up on the bannister and was either knowingly or unknowingly flashing her giant panties and cellulite riddled thighs at everyone who passed by.

She was eating a quart sized container of Chunky Monkey Ice Cream and humming along with a very old Britney Spears song, as I walked up.

“Heather, they can see your panties from orbit,” I said.

“Shit ... I should’a wore clean ones,” she said, making no attempt to put her legs down or cover herself. “Why are you all sweaty?”

“I went out for a run,” I told her.

“Again... ?” she gasped. “Why would you do that to yourself? Running is hard ... and it’s not fun at all!”

“Heather, I started running again for you remember?” I asked.

“Yeah and look at me now!” she spat. “I ran too much and now I’m a fat girl with a broken leg! Running is not good for you!”

“You ran twice!” I laughed. “The first time, you made it less than a hundred yards and ate a herd of cows afterwards. The second time, you made it one step before your ankle snapped and now, you’re eating a bucket full of ice cream.”

“So, what’s your point?” she asked. “Oh, forget about it. You’re some kind of running addict. I don’t know why I let you talk me into trying it. Anyway ... I need to borrow some money. I’m trying a new diet.”

“Adkins or Keto?” I asked.

“Those diets suck!” she said. “Tried ‘em both. They say that you can lose weight if you just eat one thing and nothing else so...”

“You are not on a God damned Ice cream diet!” I yelled.

“Yep,” she said proudly. “In a few weeks, I’ll be as skinny as you are!”

“So, what do you need the money for?” I asked.

“I need to buy some clothes in smaller sizes,” she said. “I won’t be able to fit these for much longer. I’m gonna want to show off my skinny new bod.”

I shook my head and walked past her into the house.

“Where are you going?” she bellowed.

I showered and made dinner for Bobby and a salad for myself. Bobby looked at me pensively while we ate.

“Pearl, Honey can we loan Heather some money for a couple of outfits?” he asked.

I felt like throwing my fucking fork through his forehead. By we ... he meant me. I was sure that he hadn’t suddenly got the deposits or fees from several houses he was scheduled to paint.

But I held my temper, because I loved him. And I plastered a smile on my face for the conversation I knew was coming. “Sure, Honey,” I said. “But remember that Heather hasn’t paid us back for the running outfit and the tennis shoes we bought her a couple of weeks ago.

And we do have several of our own bills that need to be paid.”

“As long as she owes us, we’ll never be broke,” he said, flashing me that big teddy bear smile that made me fall in love with him in the first place.

“No, Baby,” I said. “As long as she owes us, we’ll never be rich. Bobby do you have any idea how much money Heather owes us?”

“Honey, you know she’s good for it,” he said. “He wrapped one of his huge arms around me and gave me a squeeze. I immediately felt like that teenaged girl that I was when we met, all over again.

Then he trailed his fingers down my arm and started rubbing me. Before I realized it, our clothes were on the floor and I was writhing in that odd mix of pleasure and pain that sex with my husband involved, while trying to remain as still as possible so he didn’t accidentally hurt me.

Afterwards, I clung to him, holding him tight against me and dreamed of a day when I didn’t have to sacrifice the things we needed, for the whims of his crazy relatives. Heather was the worst and the nuttiest, but there were others who were almost as bad.

As soon as Bobby thought I was asleep, he uncurled himself from me and rolled to the opposite side of the bed. It was almost as if, once he’d fucked me, he had no further use for me. I knew that wasn’t true. It was just Bobby’s way, but sometimes, I wished...

The next morning, I put on my makeup and kissed my sleeping husband, before slipping out the door to head for work. I slipped into my spotless new, Ford EcoSport and noticed a stiffness in my legs.

I hadn’t felt that sore since college, and a thought came to me as I drove to work. The thought was about the guy.

Maybe trying to follow him, hadn’t been a bad thing. If I was sore as a result of it, then trying to follow him had made me work harder. Working harder is the way we improve. Perhaps trying to catch that guy would be good for me.

The problem with that was that I’d been going to that park once or twice a week since I’d started running with Heather. The previous day had been the first time I’d seen the guy, but I was sure that it wasn’t his first time running there.

So, I had to assume that the time I’d run yesterday was his typical time to run. That created a problem for me because I’d been thinking about doing some OT to help with the bills.

I decided that I could probably do both. And if it turned out I couldn’t, maybe it was time that Bobby got a real full-time job. I mean he couldn’t paint houses forever. Or could he?

Painting houses was never supposed to become his career. It had been a quick, easy way to make some money while we were in college. Bobby’s grades had never been the best, but he really struggled after high school.

And now at twenty-six, eight years after high school, this seemed to be his niche.

I’d begun to wonder if this was all there was. Would we become just another young couple who struggled to pay their bills and their mortgages every month, until they finally paid it off and lived in the same tiny house until they died.

Would we maybe someday have a child or two and continue to do the same things over and over with very little change until we died?

It seemed more like existing than living. I know that Bobby was happy. He didn’t have a worry in the world. That was one of the things I loved most about him. And I would do it.

I would gladly just exist ... for the rest of my life if it made him happy. And maybe this was all we were ever supposed to be. Maybe in life, my function, like back in college was just to be a part of the crowd that the good runners stood out from.

And then it happened. I thought about the guy, again. I wondered what he did for a living. I wondered about his house, and his family. I imagined him as some sort of spartan runner.

I’d read about athletes who were training for the Olympics or the World championships or a major Marathon, who lived for running. All they did was run, eat and sleep.

I imagined him running twice a day and living in a tiny shoebox apartment, where all he did was eat tuna, stretch, sleep and run. I imagined that he had no friends or anyone else in his life except for a grizzled old coach with a chip on his shoulder, who looked, sounded and acted like Burgess Meredith.

I saw them, making it to the race and losing to some world famous, gigantic runner from Russia, with a multimillion dollar shoe contract, and then dropping into obscurity because this was after all America, and except for the Olympics every four years, we don’t give a FUCK about track.

And I saw myself, running into him ten years from now. He’d be working as a bag boy in a supermarket on the rundown side of town. And I’d ask him, “was it worth it?”

“Huh?” he’d ask, while putting my tomatoes into a bag separate from Heather’s Ice cream, because I was sure she’d be living with us by then.

“Running!” I’d clarify. “Was it worth all of the sacrifices you had to make?”

“And he’d look off into the distance, with a slight smile on his face and a gleam in his eye. “Yeah!” he’d finally say, with a tone in his voice that implied that the jury was still out. “But I didn’t have much of a choice. It was all I had.”

And I realized two things at that moment. One was that at least he had his running. All I had was Bobby, I had literally nothing for myself. The second thing I realized was that an entire line of cars were all blowing their fucking horns at me, because the light had turned green and I was blocking traffic. I revved my engine and waited a few more seconds for the light to turn yellow. “Fuck all of you,” I smirked as I rocketed through the light just as it turned red and left them all stranded there for another cycle.

Later at my desk, I laughed at myself. The fantasy I’d had was probably based on one of those Rocky movies, with “the guy,” filling in for Sylvester Stallone. I really knew nothing about “the guy,” so my mind was filling in the details for me.

Another part of my mind reminded me that thinking about any man other than my husband was not good. I’d never given any thought to any man since I was fifteen and met Bobby.

My Boss came over to praise the way I’d handled several finicky customers a few days ago when their account rep had been out. “The next account rep opening is yours, girl,” he told me.

I felt awesome. But deep down I knew that I’d have to downplay it, if it happened. I didn’t want to emasculate my husband. Besides, it probably wouldn’t happen. Every time there was an opening, one of the managers with a son, daughter, niece, nephew or some relative, claimed it.

I’d put in applications time and time again, and my degree was in sales and marketing, but somehow, I never seemed to get them.

It made me think about it again. My home life, although filled with love, was not the way I’d envisioned it. My work life was also both stressful and unfulfilling. Maybe running was all I had too.

I called Bobby.

“Hey,” he answered.

“Are you painting?” I asked.

“Nothing to paint,” he answered. “My next job starts next week.”

“Good,” I said. “I wanna go to the park to run again.”

“Aren’t you still tired from yesterday?” he asked. “Aren’t you sore?”

“I’m sore from somebody jamming a telephone pole into my pussy,” I whispered. “But if he wanted to do it again, I’d let him.”

“Uhm, the park sounds really good,” he said. “But you need to be careful with all of this running. Heather broke her ankle ... remember?”

It was all I could do not to laugh.

“And Herb isn’t coming,” he said. “He’s always cheating or making up ridiculous rules when we play.”

On the drive home, I was excited. And surprisingly, so was Bobby. I found out later that he’d downloaded a new game onto his phone and had bought a car charger. That meant that he could play for as long as he wanted.

I wasn’t sure if I was more excited about the prospect of running again, or about a chance of seeing the guy.

It made no sense, why the hell was I so ramped up over a guy who hadn’t given me a second look?

An argument with Bobby over which vehicle we’d take, delayed us more than I expected and as a result, we got to the park later than I wanted.

My heart both leapt and sank as I noticed that his fancy Mustang was already parked in its spot.

I was happy that he was there but saddened that I’d missed the chance to try to catch him again. And then I had a thought. The previous time that I’d been there, he’d done more than one lap. I got an evil glint in my eye, as I started stretching and got ready to chase him down as soon as he passed.

I also realized something else. Last time we’d started out at about the same time. This time I’d be fresh, and with a lap under his belt, he’d be a bit more tired than I was. My chance of catching him, or at least maintaining the distance between us was greatly improved.

“Are you gonna run or is this just yoga?” spat Bobby. I went over and kissed him. I walked as slowly as I could, hoping my unwitting running partner would appear.

“Remember what you promised me,” Bobby smirked. I have no idea why, but suddenly the sight of the smirk on my husband’s face pissed me off.

“Who needs a promise?” I spat not realizing or caring that I was loud enough for the people around us to hear. “And promise or not, don’t you get to stick your giant dick in me any time you want anyway?”