Breathe, Annie, Breathe (11 page)

“Oh good Lord,” I mutter. “Shuffleboard Sunday sounds just fine.”

“Good. I had no idea where I was gonna get sumo wrestling suits.”

I give him a look.

“We can always do Synchronized Swimming Sunday if you want, but I don’t know how we’d declare a winner.”

“Would you just drive, Jeremiah?” I snap, working to hold my laughter inside.

He chuckles, starts the ignition, and turns out onto the highway. The scorching summer sun blazes through the Jeep windows; my thighs stick to the duct tape holding the seat together. We sing along to the radio as we dip up and down the hills near Spring Hill. He takes me to, I kid you not, his grandparents’ old folks’ home.

“Why are we here?” I blurt.

“This is the only place I know with a shuffleboard court.”

I accidentally snort, and once the laughter starts, I can’t stop. And then he’s laughing too. I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. The elderly people loitering in the courtyard give us confused looks.

We laugh until an elderly man with a walker appears. He’s wearing a gray pageboy cap and has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei.

“Jeremiah Brown.”

“Hey, PopPop.”

PopPop reaches up to pat his grandson’s face, gingerly touching the greenish bruise. “You been icing this, young man?”

“Yes, sir.”

Seemingly satisfied with that answer, his grandfather then turns his attention to me. “You haven’t visited in two weeks and now you show up with a date?”

“This isn’t a date. It’s a competition. I’m fixin’ to beat Annie at shuffleboard.”

“You’re using your PopPop for his club membership?” PopPop gives his grandson a shifty look.

“He thinks this is an exclusive club,” Jeremiah whispers to me. “But it’s an old folks’ home.”

PopPop grabs his grandson’s ear and shakes it.

“Ow! Stop it!” Jeremiah says.

“Why do you put up with this clown?” PopPop grabs my elbow. “Come sit with me.”

Jeremiah rescues me from his grandfather’s clutches. “No, no. Don’t grab Annie like that.”

“If you’re not dating her, I will.”

“You better not let Granny hear you say that,” Jeremiah warns. “Where is she anyway?”

“She went to play bingo over at the church.”

“I reckon you couldn’t go, huh? A sinner like you would spontaneously combust the minute he walks inside,” Jeremiah says, and PopPop grabs his ear again.

“I’ll have you thrown out of my resort,” PopPop says.

“It’s an old folks’ home!”

“PopPop, can you keep score for us?” I interrupt, in case they were planning on arguing all afternoon, and the next thing I know, I’m beating Jeremiah at shuffleboard because his grandfather keeps awarding me extra points.

“You get ten points just for being pretty,” he says.

“Yessss,” I say, pumping my fist.

Jeremiah rolls his eyes. “Stop hitting on her, PopPop. She’s not your type.”

“And what’s her type?”

“Somebody under seventy.”

“I’m cutting you out of my will, boy.”

I love their banter. It kind of makes me jealous, to be honest. My mother’s parents live in Mississippi and I don’t see them much. And I never knew my dad’s parents.

I use my broom-paddle thing to push the disk toward the numbered triangle. It stops on the number eight. I hop up and down, smiling.

Jeremiah’s turn. He slides the next disk and it lands outside the triangle. “Daggownnit!”

“Don’t use that foul language of yours around a young lady,” PopPop says. “That’s negative five points.”

“You can’t take away points!”

“I just did.”

With the help of PopPop and his special scoring process, I beat Jeremiah by a landslide.

“That was so unfair,” Jeremiah grumbles during the drive back to the Roadhouse.

“I didn’t take you for a sore loser.”

“Hmph.”

I enjoyed this afternoon. Jeremiah hugged his PopPop long and hard before we left, and PopPop patted his grandson’s back. Jere really is a nice guy; I like how he cares for his family, and he’s down to earth and sort of an old-school gentleman. I wonder if he’d ever let a woman open a door for herself.

“Your PopPop is cool.”

“He’s such a badass,” Jeremiah says. “When my mom wouldn’t let me come home for Easter, he took me on a fly-fishing trip over in Johnson City. It was cool—he called it a
bachelor’s weekend
. And he always tells me I should really live life…you know, because he went to Vietnam and he lost a lot of friends there…He’s the one who gave me a gift certificate for my first skydiving lesson.”

“You’ve been skydiving?” I exclaim.

“Yeah, seven times so far…it’s the best rush I’ve ever had…but I guess I won’t be going anymore.” His quiet smile is happy and sad at the same time. To me, it seems so simple: family would outweigh the need to do something bat-shit crazy like skydive. But it must not be simple for him.

“We’ll have to have a rematch,” I say to get his mind off skydiving. “I want to beat you at something for real…With all of those extra points PopPop gave me, who knows who really won?”

“Tomorrow is Miniature Golf Monday.”

“You probably have your own putter, huh?”

He grins, turning the steering wheel.

“I’ve got work tomorrow,” I say.

“That’s fine…I’ll beat you at putt-putt some other time. Listen, do you want to run a race with me next weekend? It’s on Sunday.” He sounds nervous asking.

“I can’t run as fast as you. Or as far.”

“It’s only a 5K. It’ll be just like one of your daily runs.”

That’s only three miles. Matt has me signed up to run a half-marathon in September—he’s considering it one of my Saturday long runs. Doing a 5K ahead of the half isn’t a bad idea. It would be good to experience what actually happens on race day. I mean, all the information about the Country Music Marathon kind of overwhelms me. I’m supposed to pick up my race number the day before and I have to clip a timer to my shoelace. I have to park my car in a certain place and check my bag at the starting line. Someone will bring it to the finish. I need to memorize charts that show the elevation of every section of the course, along with maps that show the water stops, food tables, and first aid tents. I know where the porta-potties will be by heart.

Matt expects me to remember it all.

“What time is the race?” I ask.

“Seven a.m.”

“Good lord, that’s early. I can’t. I work brunch on Sundays.”

He taps the steering wheel and chews on his lower lip. “That sucks.”

“Did you want me to come so I can see what a real race will be like?” I ask.

He looks over at me. “I thought we’d have fun together. We’re friends, right?”

“I’ll have to see if I can get off work.”

“You will love this race,” he says, smiling.

Nothing wrong with going to a race with him. I need to experience one, after all. And I do like having plans again.

When he drops me off at my car, he taps on my window and I crank it down. “I forgot to mention something about the race. You have to wear a white T-shirt.”

Work starts to slow down late Tuesday night, so I take the opportunity to page through the MTSU course catalog. Standing in the back vestibule, I dog-ear the physical therapy section. This human anatomy and physiology course looks cool. Working with Matt and discovering muscles I didn’t know I had is making me more interested in the human body.

Right then, Stephanie stalks by. Oh good, I need to talk to her.

“Stevens, get out there and clear table twelve already!” she yells, and the offending busboy darts past the vestibule where I’m hiding.

I stow the course catalog in my tote bag, take a deep breath, and approach Stephanie. Sure, she’s Mom’s friend, but she takes her job as manager of the Roadhouse seriously. If we want time off from work, we have to request it in the leather-bound book behind the hostess stand two weeks in advance. And I didn’t do that. The race Jeremiah wants me to run is in five days. Time to face the wrath of Stephanie.

I cross my fingers behind my back. She’s busy reading a printout of tonight’s sales numbers—hopefully great numbers that’ll put her in a good mood.

“Steph? If you haven’t assigned side work for tonight yet, I’d be happy to refill the ketchup bottles.”

Her gaze doesn’t leave the printout. “What do you want?”

I take a deep breath. “Can I take Sunday morning off work?”

“What for?”

“There’s this guy—”

She gapes and sets the sales numbers in a vat of sour cream. That’s gotta be some sort of health hazard.

“You want to take off work to do something with a guy?”

“Yeah—” I’m about to explain about the race, but she cuts me off, grinning and pulling me into a side hug.

“You can do whatever you want, kid.”

Well. That was easy.

What’s not so easy?

My personal training session with Matt on Wednesday.

The gym he works at has an indoor track, and to make my heart stronger, he’s making me do suicide sprints. He set five cones out on the track. The drill goes like this: run to first cone, run back to start, run to second cone, run back to start, and so on. To keep me distracted from his evil exercises, he always keeps a steady flow of conversation going, telling me about the house he and Kate just bought together for when they get married and listing the movies he wants to see, but after seven sets of suicides, salty sweat is pouring down my face and burning my eyes, and I’m hunched over on my knees, panting like a thirsty dog.

Matt hands me a cup of water, and as soon as I’ve sucked it down, he leads me back to the track for more jogging.

“I’m gonna die,” I say after three miles.

“If you don’t push yourself now, you won’t make it through the whole race.”

“I
will
finish it,” I growl.

Matt grins. “That’s what I like to hear.”

After something like a gazillion sit-ups and push-ups and squats, my hip hurts like someone took a drill to it.

“I’m gonna be sick,” I say, clutching my hipbone.

“Let’s go stretch it out.”

On a mat on the floor, Matt starts pushing on my thigh. That gives me an intense stretch, but it’s odd having him kneel between my legs.

“This. Is. Awkward,” I say, grunting.

Matt laughs, putting my legs into a pretzel-ish position, and pushes down on my knees. God, if I saw someone else doing this, I’d totally think it was foreplay. I decide to shut my eyes and pray for this to be over as soon as possible.

“Well, this sure is interesting.”

I open my eyes to find Jeremiah. Without a shirt on. Watching his brother stretch me in a way that probably looks like dry humping.

“What do you need?” Matt asks his brother. “I’m working.”

Jeremiah slips his ear buds out. “I had a question for Annie.”

Matt looks from his younger brother to me. I’m still in the most. Awkward. Position. Ever.

“Are we on for Sunday?” Jeremiah asks.

“What’s Sunday?” Matt says, raising an eyebrow.

“I invited Annie to run a 5K with me.”

“Yeah, I can go,” I say, which makes Matt fit to be tied.

“Why did neither of you ask me?” he grumbles.

“Because you’d get your panties in a wad,” Jeremiah says.

“For the thousandth time, I do not wear panties.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Guys,” I say in a strong tone. Well, as strong as I can manage when my trainer is holding my butt off the ground and my legs are wide open, straight up in the air, while two brothers are arguing about panties. “Matt, is it okay if I run the 5K? I was going to ask you later today—I want to use it as my regular Sunday training run.”

“You can do it as long as you don’t push yourself too hard. Sometimes when people run their first race, they get excited, they hightail it, hurt themselves, and it messes up their whole training schedule.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Jeremiah says seriously.

“You better not. Now, go away, Jere. We have to finish her workout.”

“I’ll pick you up on Sunday morning, Annie. I’ll text you to figure out details.”

“Okay,” I reply breathily, as Matt makes a pretzel out of my legs again.

Jeremiah heads over to the weights, muttering, “His panties are so in a wad.”

Matt tells me to sit up and do the splits, then plops down in front of me, doing the same. He takes my hands in his and pulls me forward so my nose is touching the mat.

“You should become a yoga instructor,” I say, making him laugh.

“The quiet would drive me bonkers.”

He helps me to a standing position and I adjust my tank top and shorts, getting rid of this awful wedgie. Unable to stop myself, I subtly gaze over at the weight room. Jeremiah’s sitting on a bench doing bicep curls. A woman dressed like Workout Barbie is checking him out.

“Annie?” Matt says quietly, looking at his brother. “If you want him to leave you alone, just tell me. I’ll make it happen.”

“He’s fine.”

“But are you fine?” Matt touches my shoulder. “I know we’ve never talked about your boyfriend…but Jordan Woods told me what happened. And I want you to feel better…not worse.”

“We’re just friends…and I feel fine. I really do.”

He grins and for a moment I’m jealous of Kate, that she’s marrying such a nice guy. I start to head for the locker room but turn back to Matt. “Why would I feel worse?”

He scratches his neck. “Jere’s never had anything serious with anybody. He’s an adrenaline junkie.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“It means that he moves from activity to activity, from person to person, always looking for his next challenge.” A long pause. “It means that I don’t want you to get too attached to him…”

Does Jeremiah consider me a challenge? When I went over to his house and sat on the porch with him, he told me how much he liked me. He seemed genuine. Am I just a game? I peer over at him. He’s moved on to bench press, pumping a bar holding two giant weights. Jeremiah’s so high-octane male, I have to catch my breath.

“We’re just friends,” I say. “That’s what I need right now. A friend.” I pause. “But why is he like this?”

“It’s his story to tell.”

And that’s the real question. Do I want to hear the story? I don’t want anything serious with him. I don’t want drama. “Forget I asked, okay?”

Matt lets out a long breath, then gives me the high five I’ve come to expect at the end of our workouts. “I’ll see you Saturday, then. You ready for our thirteen-miler?”

I nod, but I’m not so sure.

Thirteen miles. A whole half-marathon.

During his training, Kyle only went that far four times…

•••

When I get home from the gym, I discover Mom left her apron and wallet on the kitchen counter.

I grab her stuff, climb in the car, and drive over to the Quick Pick. I used to bring her stuff over all the time, but since I was so nasty to her and said that unforgivable thing, my brother has taken on the chore. When I pull into the parking lot, I realize I haven’t been here in months.

It’s after 5:00 p.m., and a lot of people just got off work and stopped to buy groceries, so the lines are packed. I don’t want to get Mom in trouble or hold up customers, so I grab some ibuprofen and Pepto from the medicine aisle and head toward cash register number two, where three people are in line ahead of me.

When Mom looks up from scanning some bananas, she gives me a surprised smile. I find myself smiling back, and when it’s my turn to pay, she scans my items and bags them, then I hand over her apron and wallet.

“Thanks, sweetie.”

“Mom?”

She tucks a brown curl behind her ear and looks up at me sadly. “Yeah?”

“Can you go shopping with me tomorrow, for school supplies? And go with me to do some other errands for college?”

Her eyes light up.

The next day, Mom helps me open my own checking account and takes me for some embarrassing vaccinations at the doctor, aka STD-prevention shots. Regardless of whether or not I’m having sex, my college won’t let me start classes without them.

Then she and I go shopping at Target for school supplies and stuff for my new dorm room, like extra-long twin bed sheets and a shower caddy. It’s hard to believe that in less than a month, my mom won’t be sleeping down the hall from me every night. Nick and I won’t battle-royale over the bathroom anymore. Mom won’t be there to set my coffee to automatically brew. I’ll miss that. I’ll miss
her
.

“I hate this store,” she says, pushing our red buggy with the wobbly wheel that screeches.

“You
love
this store.”

“I hate it. I always want to buy everything. Those one-dollar bins are from the devil.”

I pass her my shopping list. “It’s your lucky day. I have to buy everything that has a purple checkmark beside it. You can pick it all out.”

“What’s this?” she asks, holding up the packet of papers.

“Kelsey made a PowerPoint presentation that lists the supplies each of us agreed to bring.”

She abruptly halts the buggy. “Kelsey Painter?”

“Yeah…she’s living in our suite.”

“Are you okay with that?”

“Not totally…as long as she sticks to her room and I stick to mine, maybe we won’t see each other much.”

“I wish you girls could work through your issues…you used to be such good friends.”

“I know!” I snap, and then feel guilty for lashing out at her again. I bow my head and she pats my back. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Me too.” Her voice is sad and that makes me feel like shit, considering she looked so happy when I invited her on my shopping trip.

“I want to fix things with Kelsey. I’m willing to work it out, but she never wants to talk to me. She wants nothing to do with me. Ever since she moved out of Oakdale, she’s been a totally different person.”

“When you met Kyle—”

“I don’t want to talk about him!”

Mom ignores my outburst. “When you met him, you became a different person too, sweetie. But that doesn’t mean you and Kelsey have to forget about each other.”

I stop to examine hideous sandals adorned with yellow feathers. I’d never buy them—they are the ugliest things I’ve ever seen, but I need to concentrate on something before I explode. I can’t control my breathing I’m so pissed.

“Why do you always have to bring things back to Kyle? Yeah, if I hadn’t started dating him, maybe I would’ve had more girlfriends in high school. Maybe I would’ve joined a club or played a sport. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent all my time doing homework, working at the Roadhouse, and kissing him. But what’s done is done.”

“I know,” she says, her eyes tearing up. “You don’t know how often I think that. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Can we finish shopping now, please?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says in a thick voice, her eyes still watering. “But if you’re really thinking of buying those awful sandals, I’m having you committed.”

That’s when we start giggling, and soon we’re laughing like crazy, and when Mom finds a pair of the sandals with orange feathers, I’m pretty sure the entire store can hear us roaring. As Mom flips through the rest of the PowerPoint, she covers her mouth when she cracks up again.

“These suite rules are interesting. No cooking fish in the microwave?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Cleaning day is every Thursday? And guys can’t sleep over more than twice a week?”

Crap. I forgot that was on there. I can’t believe I just handed the stupid thing over to Mom. My face burns hot with embarrassment.

“That rule is more for Vanessa than the rest of us because she’s in a serious relationship with Rory Whitfield. Don’t worry, guys won’t be spending the night with me.”

She gives me a knowing look. “What’s this about you doing something with a boy on Sunday morning?”

“Stephanie has a big mouth.”

Mom laughs again. “She’s my best friend. Don’t tell her something you don’t want me to find out. So who is he? And why haven’t your brother and I heard about him?”

“You asked Nick?” I exclaim.

“And he was no use. He didn’t know a thing. Spill.”

“My running coach’s brother invited me to run a race with him this Sunday. I thought it would be good experience before the marathon.”

Mom deflates and fans herself with Kelsey’s PowerPoint presentation. “Your brother and Stephanie are gonna be so mad at me. They expected me to get some gossip.”

“But there is none.”

“Are you sure about that?” Her gaze shifts to my fingers. I stop playing with my necklace.

Why do moms have to be so observant?

The first time I slept with Kyle was his sixteenth birthday, after we’d been dating two years. I was three months older than him so I normally did the driving, but that night he drove us down to Normandy Lake—he’d just gotten his license that morning. I couldn’t stop kissing his neck at stop signs and traffic lights.

“You’re killing me,” he moaned, laughing.

We went to his parents’ cabin and made love for the first time in front of the fireplace.

“Happy birthday,” I whispered when we were finished. I ran my hand over his short blond hair. The bristles tickled my palm. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Then we curled up under a patchwork quilt on the couch and watched the Predators’ game. He was a die-hard hockey fan, so he leaped to his feet and cheered when they beat the Blackhawks 2–1 in overtime.