For healing.
And I was trying. Truly, I was. I’d only allowed myself four days of lounging around in full self-pity mode before I’d peeled myself out of my dark bedroom and started being a human again. I was recording for the podcast, editing and planning, working on social media marketing and self-care challenges to get more sign-ups and listens. I booked myself with other podcasters, and even started putting together a mini video series where I would help new podcasters figure out where to start and how to bring their ideas to life.
If I said I was completely avoiding thinking about Tyler, it would be a lie. Some days I did my best to keep my mind busy, but others, I submitted to every drowning thought and memory he produced in me. Some days, I’d close my eyes and trace every feature of him until it felt like he was standing in the room with me. Some days, I’d look back on old pictures of us, or old notes we’d passed in school, or text messages from the wedding weeks — though those were mostly short and direct, little things Morgan wanted him to tell me or me asking where he was because he was needed for something.
On my strong days, I’d feel the memories of him only as a soft warmth under the surface as I worked on any little thing to keep myself busy. I hadn’t made it to the point that I was going out with friends yet, but I was getting there, and I’d been in constant contact with Morgan, who was still on her honeymoon, sending me pictures and recaps every day. I’d surprised her with chocolate-covered strawberries and a couples massage for her birthday, courtesy of the resort they were staying at, and hearing her delighted shock over the phone was the closest I’d been to feeling okay since I left Bridgechester.
I was eating relatively healthy, aside from the sleeve of Oreos I sometimes consumed when pity snuck in.
And I was back in my daily routine of running.
Checking the time on my watch, I decided that was what I’d do next, since my editing brain was fried from the early morning. So with another scrub of my hands down my face, I stood, my back aching in protest from where I’d been bent over my laptop. I stretched, changed into my running shorts and tank top, laced up my sneakers, and dragged myself out of my apartment and onto the street that led to Lake Merritt.
Lake Merritt was a fresh and saltwater lake that sat in the center of downtown, and I’d picked my apartment location solely based on how long it would take me to get there. It was by far my favorite running loop in the city, an easy three-point-four miles that I could run peacefully, and as I picked up my pace from a walk to a slow jog the closer I got to it, I already felt myself growing lighter.
When my sneakers hit the official loop trail within the park, the sidewalk wide and following the circumference of the lake, I found my pace, settling between a jog and a run that I knew I could hold for a long time. I had a feeling this would be one of those mornings when I’d want to spend hours on the trail.
It was too early for the loop to be crowded, given that the sun had just made its ascent over the horizon, but there were a few joggers who nodded good morning at me as we crossed paths, acknowledging that we were one of the few crazy enough to get out of bed and put on sneakers this early. The lake itself was vacant, too, not a single paddle board or kayak to be seen, though I knew it would be crawling later. And the necklace of lights that hung between lamp posts was still the main source of light, the sun not quite yet filling the sky.
It was exactly the right mood for me to slip into the universe I only found while running.
Inhale. Exhale.
My breath steadied, settling in for the journey.
Pat, pat, pat.
The rhythmic sound of my sneakers on the pavement was familiar and welcome.
Ga-gong. Ga-gong.
My heartbeat echoed in my chest and between my ears, its pace fast, but not labored.
That was the beauty in running — it never changed. No matter where I was, what scenery surrounded me, whether I was stressed or happy, whether it was sunny or pouring rain, running was constant. It was familiar, like an old friend, or an old love. I knew what to expect when I went running. There were no surprises, nothing to throw me off track.
It was just me, and the loop, and my sneakers.
It was my mind quieted, my body alive, my soul fed.
Until the exact moment that I ran under the columned arches of the mission revival-style pergola that adorned the lake and found Tyler Wagner standing in the center of it.
My heart stopped automatically, feet quickly following suit as I blinked over and over, again and again, wondering if he was a mirage or a dream. But every time my eyes opened again, there he was — standing in the center beneath the large oval canopy top, his hands in the pockets of his rust-colored slacks, white polo hugging him the way all his shirts did, hair mussed, eyes dark and hooded and zeroed in on me.
It was just the two of us under the canopy, the lake still quiet, sun still rising. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, though, and I swallowed once the shock had faded, somehow finding the courage to take three careful, measured steps toward him.
“Tyler?”
I watched his chest rise and fall with his name on my lips, and he took three steps that matched mine, over and over until we were just a few feet from each other under the pergola’s shelter.
It might have been an hour, us standing there with his eyes steady and focused on mine. Or maybe it was days, me rooted to the spot, chest tight and throat thick with emotion. Perhaps it was a lifetime, and we would always be destined to watch each other from that distance — close enough to feel, yet never close enough to touch.
The necklace of lights that surrounded the lake flickered off, and it was that small change in the atmosphere that seemed to shock us both back to the present moment. I was suddenly self-conscious of my damp hair I’d piled into a bun on top of my head, of my makeup-less face, of the bags I knew had lined my eyes for weeks.
“What are you doing here?” I finally asked, fighting the urge to reach up and fix my hair. I crossed my arms over my chest, instead.
“I came to get my girl.”
A shuttering kick of my heart. A stolen breath.
“What?”
The word was barely a whisper from my lips, but Tyler stood strong and confident before me.
“I didn’t want to let you get on that plane, Jasmine. It was the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life, to sit there in that car and let you go. But I knew that I couldn’t ask you to stay. I knew that this time I had to do everything right.”
I shook my head, his words another language for how much they were lost on me. “I don’t understand.”
Tyler inhaled a slow breath. “You were right, that morning after we slept together. We weren’t thinking. We acted on impulse, not caring for who might be hurt in the process. I thought about what you said every day after that — about Jacob, about Azra, about my sister and my family and the fact that you and I are not just you and I. At least, we haven’t been.”
A small step toward me, one that I felt like a fiery volcano below the earth’s surface.
“But what I thought about most?” he whispered. “Was how you said you loved me. I replayed it a million times — the way your lips formed around the words, the way your eyes were glossed with tears and pain that I’d caused you, the way I felt that declaration so deep inside me that it might as well have been a tattoo on my soul.”