Page 4 of Meet Me in a Mile

Four

Luke

L uke had always been a morning person, not by choice but by circumstance. When he was eight his father had passed away from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. It had been quick, and though Luke hardly retained any memories from the event, the one thing he did remember was how his family had coped in the aftermath. He remembered being carted out of the house with his siblings before the sun had even crested the horizon. He remembered shivering in the dawn chill as they hurried to before-school programs at the youth center so his mother could pull double-shifts in the hospital kitchen. Mostly he remembered how everything smelled when he first walked through those doors each morning: pinewood polish, rubber basketballs and old books. Even now as a volunteer at the center all these years later, he appreciated that these little things hadn’t changed. Not the smell of the center first thing in the morning. And not the cadence of the streets before six on a weekend.

If Luke stretched his hand out, flattening his palm in line with the street, it was like he could physically feel the stirrings of the city about to awake. As a kid, he’d thought it was his superpower.

A cab driver honked as he darted across the almost-empty road. He lifted his hand in apology, then ducked down a set of narrow stairs and into the damp subway tunnel to catch his train. He was scheduled to meet Lydia this morning for their first of many weekend long runs. Technically, it was only six miles, but considering they were building Lydia’s training program from the ground up, she would likely find this run difficult. He imagined her wrinkling her nose in that way that made all the freckles on her cheeks converge. The thought made him smile as the subway doors opened and closed, people moving around him like river water around a rock.

It only took about twenty minutes for Luke to get from Hell’s Kitchen to the Flatiron District. Throwing open the door to the gym, he was greeted by a cool blast of air-conditioning. The lights were dimmed everywhere but over the equipment floor. Luke wasn’t the first one to arrive, but it was far too early for classes, which meant it was mostly his colleagues or very early risers that were using the facility. Luke walked past the front desk—quiet without Dara, who would be in later—and down the darkened hall of offices. The lights flickered to life, triggered by his presence, and the bright fluorescents painted him like a sunbeam. Luke popped his head into his office, finding it covered in drywall dust. He sighed grumpily—this was going to take forever to clean. He backpedaled to Jules’s office to update Lydia’s training plan. He’d just finished inputting her three-mile numbers from the other day when Jules herself appeared in the doorway, a pair of headphones strung around her neck, a sheen of sweat across her brow.

“You’ve got a client waiting. You want me to have her take a seat?”

Luke glanced at the time on the computer screen. Lydia was a few minutes early, which could only be a good sign. “That’s okay, I’m heading out there now.”

“Kinda early for training on a weekend,” Jules commented.

“Marathon prep,” Luke explained. “We’re making the most of the time we have.”

“First-time marathoner?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Jules winced. “You’re going to have so much fun on those long runs.”

“Hey, we’re only at six miles, we’ve got a ways to go.”

“Well, glad it’s you and not me,” she said, fitting the headphones back over her ears. “I can’t handle anything over ten.”

Luke could understand. Not everyone liked running. But personally, once he’d settled into a long run, he’d always found it relaxing. And he’d much rather get lost in the sound of his stride than be stuck in a room on a spin bike. To each their own, he supposed. Though he hoped he could get Lydia to fall in love with running. He was usually good at getting people excited about fitness—both kids at the youth center and new adult clients. It would make this process that much easier if Lydia found some kind of enjoyment in the act, whether that be competitive, as she slowly built her miles, or meditative. He printed out a couple of her workout plans for the next week and hurried out to meet her for their run, pleased to find that she was already stretching.

“What’s this?” she asked when he handed her the papers.

“Your individualized workouts for the days you’re solo training.”

“Burpees?” Lydia almost choked on the word as she scanned the paper.

“Yeah, you know, big jump, down to the ground for a push-up, then right back up on your feet and repeat.”

“I know what it is,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Remember when you promised to be nice? To ease me into the training?”

“They’re actually a great exercise for runners. They work multiple muscle groups at once and they’re very similar to the short bursts of speed that we’d see in an intense interval workout on a track.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” Lydia said, walking away to put the workout plans in her locker. “I’m not cut out for rigorous jumping.”

Luke waited for her by the door, and they headed outside to finish stretching. “Burpees are good for your muscles and your lungs, and they build aerobic capacity and endurance all at once.”

“I’m invoking my trainee powers to pass on this one particular exercise,” Lydia said, finishing up her leg swings and knee hugs.

“You don’t get to pass.”

“I do,” she said as she started to run away from him. “It’s in the trainee handbook.”

“There is no trainee handbook.”

“Clearly you’ve just never read it. I know my rights.”

Luke lengthened his stride to catch up with her as they took a right and turned down 7th Avenue. “You sound like a lawyer. Sure you didn’t take a wrong turn at the career fair?”

“That’s what happens when your sister and her fiancé both went to law school,” Lydia said.

“Must be hard to win an argument in that house.”

“You have no idea.”

Luke smiled. “Look, if I let you pass on this then it’s just downhill from here.”

“I like downhill,” Lydia said.

“No, you don’t. You’ll start passing on everything that feels a little challenging. If I let you do that, you’ll only be cheating yourself. And then what kind of trainer would I be?”

“The kind whose clients actually like him?” Lydia proposed. “Come on, this can be my freebie for good behavior. I’ve barely complained today.”

“We’ve only been running for thirty seconds!”

“You’re already making me run six miles today, which is a nauseating thought. Weekends are supposed to be for relaxing. Isn’t this enough torture?”

Luke shook his head. “You’re doing the burpees.”

Lydia scowled. They hadn’t been working together long, but Luke was already starting to pick up on some of the little tells Lydia had when she was nervous or anxious: that nose wrinkle, the self-deprecating hum in the back of her throat. This wasn’t really about burpees. This was about starting something new. He could tell she hated the idea of people watching her trying and failing at something. Of making a fool of herself. Of not being good enough. “You know there’s no right way to go about this? You just learn and grow and get better with every training session.”

“Try telling me that on the weekend we’re running ten miles,” Lydia said.

“Don’t think about that now. Just focus on this run. On the next step you have to take. And don’t hold your breath,” he reminded her, knowing she’d end up with a cramp before they even finished the first mile.

“Who invented burpees anyway?” she muttered.

“I don’t know.”

“Because they clearly didn’t have a pair of these,” she said, gesturing to her chest. “If I give these things too much velocity we’re both gonna be in trouble.”

“Let’s just focus on the path ahead, okay? Focus on your breathing.”

She smirked. “Why? What’s wrong with our conversation?”

“Besides the fact we’re emphatically talking about your breasts?” He knew she flirted when she needed a distraction, and yet his cheeks still burned as he attempted to look anywhere else.

Her delicate brow arched to a perfect point. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Luke snorted. She was being a little minx, but he wasn’t going to fall for her trap. Things were different from last week when she’d crashed into him with her coffee. Now she was his client. That small concession that he’d found her attractive in their first session together was out of character for him. There was a certain amount of professional decorum he had to maintain. He didn’t need to be thinking about the way her pouty lips puckered when she was annoyed with him, or how the red strands in her strawberry blond hair were more vibrant in the sunlight, or the way her activewear hugged her curves.

Lydia was a gorgeous woman. He’d be telling a bold-faced lie to deny that. A gorgeous woman who’s off-limits , he reminded himself. Of course, he’d trained attractive people before. The gym was filled with attractive people. But there was just something about Lydia—her bold sense of humor, her constant teasing, her personality—that was drawing him in. And that was a problem. He was going to have to get that off-limits thing through his head before he let any more overt attraction slip free. “We’re making a U-turn with this conversation and getting back to the workout plan.”

Lydia sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s no fun.”

Luke slowed the pace a bit. “Inhale and exhale using your nose and mouth at the same time. Like we talked about.”

“How am I supposed to tease you then?”

“You’re not,” he said pointedly. “You’re supposed to focus more on your breathing and less on trying to annoy me.”

“You were blushing. I saw you.”

Rolling his eyes, Luke picked up the pace.

“Okay! Wait, wait!” Lydia called. “I’ll stop. Just don’t speed up!”

“And you’ll do the burpees?” Luke asked.

“Well, now you’re just pushing it.” Luke started to speed up again, but Lydia caught him by the elbow. “Fine. I will do the burpees!”

“You can do this,” Luke said. “It’s new and hard and uncomfortable but you can do it.”

“I hate you. You know that, right?”

“Oh, definitely.” Luke didn’t stop grinning until they reached the end of the run. They’d finished off the last two miles with a mix of jogging and walking, but overall Luke was pleased with Lydia’s attempt. He held his hand out for a high five. Lydia let her hand skim his palm then doubled over, clutching her knees as she leaned against the exterior of the gym. Luke placed a hand on her shoulder. “How’re you feeling?”

“A little like Jell-O.”

“As long as you can still feel all your limbs.” He opened the door. “C’mon, get some water.”

Lydia went straight to the fountain. While she did that, Luke stood at the front desk, reviewing her training plan. At the top of the page was a space that said Client Goal. Luke had written: charity run for the NYC Marathon . “Hey, what charity are you running for? I don’t think you ever said.”

Lydia wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. “Uh, not sure exactly which one yet. But I know they’re associated with the Manhattan Youth Center.”

“Oh, no way,” Luke said, intrigued.

“You know it?”

“Yeah, actually. I volunteer there a couple times a week. Why the center though? Of all the charities you could have picked.”

Lydia shrugged, coming to stand by the desk. “I guess it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. My company is preparing to enter a city-run competition to redesign the building that the center operates out of. We were chatting about it right before we started talking about our outreach project. I think the two things came together organically.”

“I heard about that competition,” Luke said. He’d been informed that a massive construction project was coming down the pipeline. The full-time staff had already begun planning to funnel funding and activities to other parts of the city in order to support the kids while the building was being renovated. “I didn’t realize that change was happening so soon.”

“It’s just the competition, which doesn’t finish until the beginning of November. The city probably wouldn’t be ready to break ground on any work until next year,” Lydia said. “Some of my colleagues and I actually stopped by the center the other day to have a look around. You know, get our bearings before we actually started drawing.”

“It’s such a great space,” Luke said. “Did you get a chance to talk to any of the kids?”

Lydia lifted her shoulder. “They were still in school. We stopped by before lunch.”

“Wait, what? How can you possibly redesign a building like the youth center without talking to the people who actually use the space?”

Lydia’s brows rose. “That’s a good point. Usually, if we’re working with a client, we get a basic brief about who they are and their vision. But with this... We kind of just had the volunteer coordinator show us around. She was great though. Very passionate.”

That wasn’t good enough. Walking through the center while it was empty was a completely different experience than seeing it in action. “You should meet me at the center sometime.”

Lydia perked up, some of her postrun exhaustion falling away. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” It might only be for a competition, but the center was important to him. If architects from all over the city were going to be vying to create the winning design, he wanted at least one person to truly have a sense of what the center represented. “I’ll give you a tour. A proper one this time. And I’ll introduce you to some of the kids who actually use the center on a regular basis.”

Lydia smiled. “I’d love that.”

“Great,” Luke said, touched by her enthusiasm but not at all surprised. From the moment he’d found her staring at the ceiling, Lydia had always struck him as the type of person willing to gain a little bit of perspective, and he was eager to show her his world. “We’ll set up a time between our work schedules and training.”

“Totally fine if you want to book it during training,” Lydia said. “Perhaps one of my solo workout days.”

“Nice try,” Luke said, catching on to her plan. “You’re doing the burpees.”