Who receives a love declaration and then just…disappears?
Someone like you? her brain offers.
She stumbles into a cop in front of the barrier who won’t let her go farther as the runners make the left turn to go north.
“If you wanted to run the race, you should’ve entered,” he says. Ari watches the clusters of runners slowly jog away. She wraps her hands around the barrier, hardly feeling the freezing, wet metal against her palms. “You could wait at the finish line. They’ll finish the loop in an hour or so.”
Oh? Just an hour of stomach-churning agony while listening to a DJ blast “Cha Cha Slide” and watching Gabe’s phone light up with Happy New Year texts that aren’t from Josh?
Ari backs away from the barrier, her mind already running a scenario where Josh crosses the finish line and pointedly ignores her there, too. She hadn’t realized how stupidly confident she’d felt until the possibility of failure became apparent.
Delicate little snowflakes float down from the cloudy sky. Ari shivers.
The cop is looking at a slight commotion up ahead on the race route—a ripple in the herd—people moving aside, as if to avoid an obstacle.
Some rogue jogger, slightly taller than almost everyone else, pushing his way through the crowd the wrong way, parting the sea of runners.
Ari allows the tiniest bit of hope to take root.
“Josh!” she yells, nearly colliding with a woman dressed up in a bathrobe and a foam Statue of Liberty crown.
A race official in a Road Runners jacket gestures wildly at Josh, trying to get him to continue north.
“Get out of the fucking way!” one of the runners shouts, knocking hard into Josh’s right side.
Josh pushes past the sea of people in front of him, slowly working his way up to the barrier.
“What do you want me to say?” he shouts over the commotion. There’s a weary look in his eye.
Ari breathes in.
“You could say that”—her vocal chords seem to seize up—“you’re still in love with me.”
She doesn’t breathe out.
“All I’ve been doing over the last year is trying to—to just get over this.”
Shit. This isn’t how declarations of love begin.
“Are y-you over it?” she asks before she can stop herself.
With every second that he stares at her, his face stern and confused, her heart clenches a little tighter.
No. No no no no no.
It’s impossible. Airport runs followed by dramatic speeches have a one hundred percent success rate in fiction.
Her vision is already blurry from the tears and the snowflakes in her lashes, but she sees something immovable in his expression.
“I don’t—”
Oh God.
She looks away from him, the first pangs of a familiar emotion pricking her chest before he can complete the rest of the sentence.
Oh God.
Ari takes a step back from the barrier, toward the sidewalk, backing into a smattering of people watching the fireworks. Don’t let him see this part. Walk away now. Move! Move your legs.
Except she has no sense of which direction will lead her back to a street.
She’s holding her breath. Her lungs won’t accept more air.
It’s just a feeling. Isn’t that what the mindfulness exercises are about? And that feeling is complete and total anguish. You can cry when you’re alone again. Don’t do this here. Hold it the fuck togeth—
A hand grabs her right arm, just below her shoulder, stopping her forward movement. It feels like that one hand could lift her off the ground.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be over this.”
There’s a tug at her arm and she turns to face him, releasing the sob she’d been barely holding in for the last minute. Fresh, hot tears slip down her cheeks. There might be tears in his eyes, too, but it’s impossible to tell because her entire field of vision is blurry.
Josh pulls her into his body, tucking her head into his chest and wrapping his arms around her, temporarily raising her body heat by several degrees. There’s just the freezing metal of the barrier between them. They stay like that until her breathing slows to a regular rhythm.
“Tell me you mean it.” He bows his head down and speaks softly into her ear. “Tell me you’re not going to take it back tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The concept is too much to process.
“I can’t take it back,” she says into his jacket. “It’s on your phone, you have the receipts.”
He runs his mouth along the shell of her right ear and behind it, laying delicate kisses along her neck. Apparently, he hasn’t forgotten her weak spots. She doesn’t bother to dial back her reaction this time—what’s the point?—letting out a little moan as he moves up her jawline until their faces are almost aligned and she can hold his gaze.