That's you

 “Maybe that’s you,” she says.


It’s a pleasant thing to hear, lying side-by-side on an old blanket, watching the branches of the old maple fingerpaint the clear sky. I breathe in mothballs and cut grass and her and give her hand a little squeeze.


“What’s me?”


She doesn’t say anything for a while, and that’s okay. The day is balmy and there’s nowhere to be but here. 


“I’m an intense person.”


“I figured that out fifteen minutes into our first date when you grabbed my hand and pulled me into the line at The Scullery.”


She laughs above the rustling of the tree. “You’re sweet. I used to run marathons, you know?”


“I didn’t.”


“I can’t describe the relief I’d feel afterward. For a day or two afterward, I’d be tired, just tired, and nothing more. I’d lie on the couch and watch TV with a box of pizza.”

“I don’t need to run a marathon to do that.”

She swats me on the arm. “Quiet, I’m talking.”


I stay silent for a handful of heartbeats and she continues, 


“Most people have to find reasons to keep going at mile ten, fifteen, twenty. You get tired. You find excuses.”


“Not me. Like I said, I don’t need an excuse to lie on the couch and – ow, hey!”


“Save it for when you’re outside of arm’s reach. Yeah, I never needed to find reasons to run. I had to find reasons to stop even after twenty-six miles. There’s something in me that never shuts down or turns off.”


She stretches her hand towards the tree that stretches toward the sky and stares through the gaps in her fingers.


“You need an outlet.”


“I needed an outlet.”


“Needed?”


She rolls over to kiss me.

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