Running from Love: A Story for Runners and Lovers (25 page)

“I think you realized you couldn’t offer me a total package. And you needed one. So you moved on to find one for yourself.”

He stared at her a second before answering. Then as if the air had been let out of his tires, his face changed from sly to repentant. “It was something like that.”

“Thanks for not bullshitting me.” Will had always hated coarse language. “You know what?” What a relief not to have to modify her language around him anymore.

“Whatever it is, I know I deserve it.” He looked ready for whatever blow she might deliver.

Now was her moment. She reached out to slap him, but he caught her hand just as it touched his face then kissed it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Staring at him, she didn’t know what to do or say. Sorry wasn’t going to cover it. Not by a long shot.

“I’d like to make it up to you.” He pulled her toward him.

T
EN

O
n marathon day, Farrah handed out Halloween candy to tired runners between the twenty to twenty-one mile stretch of the New York City Marathon that passed through the Bronx. Each year the Van Cortlandt Track Club set up a comfort station there to offer support to weary marathoners before they crossed the Madison Avenue Bridge back to Manhattan where adrenalin and enormous cheering crowds would aid their final five-mile push to the finish line in Central Park.

Farrah had run the New York City Marathon twice. The first time she’d been a contender, crossing the finish line a mere eight seconds faster than her goal time. The following year, she’d blown it. Too busy with her new job and constant travel to train properly, she’d limped to the finish line one hour and ten minutes slower than the year before.

Watching the runners at the nadir of their 26.2-mile journey, she was with them in their psychic weariness, their struggle to keep going. Despite the pain, it was a magical experience, for both the runners and the crowds. She vowed she’d run it again one day, when she finally found the time to train properly. With another business trip coming up the following day, she couldn’t see how that would happen in the short-term. She told herself a plan would come to her with the new year looming ahead.

“Hey, guess what? Linda knows your friend Jules from Greenwich.” Ana Morales broke into her reverie. She walked toward her with a female runner Farrah had never seen before.

Farrah’s eyebrows knit together. “It’s Jude. And he’s not my friend. He’s just someone I know.”

“Yeah, okay. Well she knows him, anyhow.” Ana turned to the woman. “Hey, do you know if he has a girlfriend?”

Farrah cringed, even as her ears sharpened to hear the woman’s response.

“No. I mean—I don’t really know him personally. He interviewed my girlfriend for a book he was writing.”

Blanca had come up behind Ana and stood listening.

“So what’s it called?” she asked.

“Well, he told my friend it was called “Stories of Successful People” or something, but she found out the real title from her girlfriend who set up the interview.” The woman named Linda giggled.

“Yeah? What is it?” Blanca asked.

“How to Marry Money.”
Linda lifted one brow.

“Whoa. And your friend agreed to be interviewed for it?” Ana asked.

“Anonymously, yes. She got a one-hour personal training session in exchange for the interview.”

“Did she say how it went?” Blanca asked, rolling her eyes.

“She mentioned he was pretty good looking. And built.” The woman smiled slyly.

“He was, wasn’t he?” Ana mused, digging into Blanca’s side. Both women glanced at Farrah.

She walked away, telling herself she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to be goaded by Ana and Blanca. Jude was history, and what she’d just heard confirmed her decision. He was a player. An operator. Thank God she’d pulled the plug before she’d gotten hurt. Will had married money and where had it gotten him? Unhappy and circling back to her.

Before either woman could interrogate her further, she turned back to the marathoners running by, urging them on. As she placed bite-sized candy bars on her upturned palm so runners could easily grab them, she wondered why Jude had even bothered to ask her out in the first place. If he was interested in how to marry money, she wasn’t his target. The women surrounding him at the photo shoot at Leatherman’s Loop were: Gold Coasters from the land of blue and blonde.

“Allez France”
she shouted as a man with the French flag on his shirt strode by. The tired runner rewarded her with a wan smile.

She told herself he’d just wanted some diversion—a little action with a girl from the Bronx to season the white flour colorlessness of those Candice Bergen-types up on the Gold Coast. Then she remembered the Eva Longoria lookalike. Who was she kidding? That one had been anything but colorless. She probably held a gold medal in the marrying money sweepstakes. Had Jude been interested in her? Or had he just been interested in interviewing her? And why had she called him Big Boy? Something to do with those personal training sessions?

“Arriba, Mexico,”
she yelled to two short, muscular male runners wearing yellow and red. They beamed in acknowledgment. At the twenty-one-mile mark, each of the runners waged a mental battle now, as well as a physical one. They would be making up their minds at this point if they were still in the race to achieve their goal time or just going through the motions before stumbling over the finish line.

Who cared what Jude’s motives were? Anyone writing a book on how to marry money wasn’t her type anyways. She was the teacher type.

Oops. She’d forgotten for a moment she was no longer a teacher, but a pharmaceutical rep—the career-switch she’d made in order to make more money. She hadn’t pursued marrying money. She’d just pursued money itself.
Don’t judge lest you be judged, girl,
her father’s voice sounded in her head.

Slamming down the basket of Halloween candy, she ran alongside the tired runners plodding by, the better to get away from Ana and Blanca. She could imagine them whispering behind her, their heads together with conspiratorial looks darting in her direction. She loved them, she hated them. They exasperated her almost as much as did her love life.

I
T WAS ALMOST
three weeks since Farrah had hung up on him, and Jude was climbing the walls. He’d tried calling, texting, e-mailing. No response. He’d screwed up. No confusion there. The holiday season loomed ahead—a time when budding relationships either took root or blew up.

Adding to his worries, Jude needed to find somewhere else to stay by Thanksgiving. The Griswolds had left it that he could return after Christmas, but plans were always subject to change with them, and he had no bargaining power to argue. Jude’s father was now head caretaker for a large estate in Bermuda, so staying with him was out.

Although he’d inherited some handiness from his old man, Jude’s favorite tool was his pen. He’d been driven to write ever since age twelve when he’d written an essay called “On the Other Side” that had won first place in his school’s junior writers’ competition.

It had been the first time he’d put down on paper his sense of being on the other side of the railroad tracks in his hometown of Oyster Bay. He’d written about being in, but not of, his surroundings; of knowing how to hit a tennis ball, but only being asked to practice with his playmates, not join them for matches at their club. His father didn’t belong to one. Instead, Jude had sometimes worked at one or the other of them, helping out at a function bartending or parking cars.

Then, there had been golf. He knew how to swing a golf club from practicing with his father’s employers’ clubs when they were away, but he’d never been asked to play with his school friends. Instead, he’d caddied for a few summers until he’d gotten into a dispute with the guest of one of the board of directors of the club, who’d cheated on scoring. Jude had pointed it out within earshot of the group with whom the man was playing, including the board chair. It hadn’t gone over well and the following summer, he hadn’t been invited back to caddy.

He’d largely taken up running because it had been a sport that hadn’t made him feel inferior. He was good at it, and it had helped him leave his problems behind. With his mother no longer alive, his older sister had been his rock. But she’d just started a new job, she was a mother herself, and he couldn’t take up her time with his personal problems. Especially ones he had created himself.

Slamming the front door behind him, he went out to his car. In another ten minutes he was on the Cross Westchester Expressway heading toward Riverdale. He had no plan other than to drive over to Farrah’s building and see if she was there. Face to face, maybe she’d give him a chance to explain himself, although he hardly knew what he’d say. How could he get it across to her that women like Missy did nothing for him?

His feelings stirred, thinking of Missy’s miniature racehorse figure. Okay, so she did a little something for him, but it was nothing more than the obvious. Perhaps it was best not to mention Missy at all and instead focus on Farrah, if she’d let him.

Thirty minutes later, he pulled into the semicircular driveway of Farrah’s apartment building. The brilliance of the clear, late-fall sky met the deeper blue of the Hudson River peeking through at the side of the building.

The doorman came out to greet him.

“Could you let Farrah Foley know her ride is here?” he improvised, hoping she’d come down out of curiosity.

“Miss Foley?” The doorman peered at him.

“Yes, Farrah Foley in 12J.” He’d made a note of her apartment number when she’d accidentally e-mailed him her contact information the day they’d met. Since then, he’d found himself going over every one of her details, again and again.

The doorman ambled inside. Jude watched as he nudged his colleague behind the desk.

The second man looked out the window, his eyes sweeping over Jude’s Ford Taurus. His gaze telegraphed “unimpressed.”

In a minute the first man came out again.

“Miss Foley isn’t expecting anyone,” he said, his Irish accent thick. “She wants to know who you are.”

Now what? Names ran through his head, his own not among them.

“Could you tell her a tall, dark reliable stranger is here to see her?”

The doorman looked at him flatly, as Jude held his gaze. Finally, the hint of a smile broke out around the corners of the doorman’s mouth. About Jude’s age, he didn’t look unsympathetic.

“Listen, could you help me out? I’m in the doghouse,” Jude confessed. Who among his sex hadn’t been there?

The doorman blinked, almost imperceptibly. “The lady wants to know who’s here to see her,” he replied.

“Tell her it’s someone she can rely on.”

“You might want to do better, mate. The chap who came along last week brought flowers.”

He was stunned. It hadn’t occurred to him her silence might mean more than anger over whatever Missy had said on the phone. Now he knew he had competition.

“Any idea where I can get some around here?”

“There’s some shops at the bottom of the hill. Just follow the curve around, and you’ll see a deli on the right. Turn there, and there’ll be a greengrocer a few doors down. They sell flowers.”

“You’re okay, man. Tell Miss Foley I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t let her go anywhere in the meantime.”

“I’d be hard put to keep her from doing so, if she chose to.”

“Just keep talking to her if she comes downstairs.”

“And why should I?” The doorman’s Irish brogue became slightly more pronounced.

Was he asking for a tip? Judging by his hint of a smile, Jude thought not.

“Because you’ve been there yourself, buddy. And I’m better for her than that other jerk.”

“So you say,” the doorman said, his face a mask as he stepped back from Jude’s door to allow him to drive off.

Fifteen minutes later, Jude was back, two bouquets in hand—one pink, one yellow. Farrah was nowhere in sight.

“Which color would your better half prefer?’ Jude asked the doorman, who’d come out again and given him a wink, seeing the flowers.

“Well—she’s partial to pink.”

“Then here’s something to take home to her.” He thrust the pink bouquet toward the doorman, who took it.

“Obliged, mate.”

“Could you call up to Miss Foley again and tell her flowers are here?”

“Sure.”

The doorman went back inside, and Jude watched while he called up to Farrah’s apartment again. This time, he stayed on the phone a minute longer, saying something to her.

Jude shut his eyes. The vague outlines of his mother’s face came to mind. He couldn’t see her clearly, but the smile she gave him squeezed his heart.

In a minute, he opened his eyes. There stood Farrah, on the inside of the glass entryway, looking as stern as she looked lovely.

His heart flipped over. Jumping out of the car, he ran into the building before she could disappear.

“Farrah.”

“What do you want?”

“I want—I wanted to explain myself to you.”

“No need.”

“Yes need.” She was wearing her running clothes.

“I’m not interested.”

“Would you give me a minute?”

“I’m getting ready for my business trip.”

“You look like you’re getting ready for a run.”

“That, too.”

“Farrah, could we take a drive around here somewhere?”

“I’m busy. I’ve got to pack.” She turned her back and glided toward the elevator. Graciously, both doormen had slipped outside, giving them some privacy.

“Farrah. You’ve got to live. Not pack.” The words came out of his mouth without thinking.

She halted before pressing the elevator bank button. The back of her dark blue running shorts flared out to either side like a Catholic schoolgirl’s skirt.

Slowly, she turned around, her face softer.

“Take a drive with me. Please. I want you to show me your neighborhood,” Jude pleaded.

“Why do you want to see my neighborhood?”

Because you live in it.
“Because it’s lovely.”
Like you.

She smiled for the first time. Something had caught her.

“Okay. But I’ve got to get my run in.”