The next morning Lauren woke up about 6am. It was still dark out, but she decided to go for a run. Pulling on clothes and her tennis shoes, she walked outside.
"Skills."
"Parker,
hey." She smiled. "Happy Thanksgiving, by the way."
"Thanks. What are you up to?"
"I was going to go
running."
'Yeah, me too." He smiled back. "Want to come
with me?"
"Sure" It was a good idea, since he knew the area.
"Roads or woods,
Skills." He asked as he stretched his calf muscles a bit.
"Either
one is fine with me." She replied, bending at the waist.
"Okay,
let's go."
They took off and soon settled into a companionable silence. It had been a while since they'd done this, a few weeks at least. It had been so cold, and the clinic had been so busy during the start of cold and flu season, they hadn't found the time, and had just played basketball at the gym instead.
She turned to look at him, admiring the way his body moved in motion. His hair hadn't been cut for awhile, and the combination of sweat plus the fact that he'd rolled out of bed caused it to curl a bit on the ends. She shook her head to dispel the heat in her belly at the thought of running her fingers through it, maybe being the cause of sweat and rolling in a bed. She had to concentrate to keep up with him…just breathe, she told herself. Run and breathe…
"So what do you think Skills?"
"Yes."
He looked over at her with a confused smile.
"Yes, what?"
"Hmmm…what?" Now she was confused. "What was the question?"
"I asked what you thought. About my family." He said, turning to take them off the road and onto a path toward some woods.
"Oh…they are great. It's nice."
"Yeah it is nice." They followed the path to the edge of the woods, and paused for a moment.
"There's a path?"
"Yeah. It's nice, and it goes back to the house. What do you think?"
"Sounds great." She knew she was panting a bit, and she was sure her face was flushed, but she loved running. She beamed at him, her green eyes sparkling. "Let's go for it. It's beautiful out here." She resumed jogging on the path.
"Beautiful, yes." Parker answered as he followed her. All that talk from his sisters yesterday about how pretty she was caught him off guard. He supposed she was pretty, okay, very pretty, actually. From behind he could see the way her cotton pants hugged her firm legs and tight rear end. Okay, pretty and amazing, actually. He caught up to her, hoping to distract himself. She looked over at him and smiled. Okay, amazing, and gorgeous, but, they were friends, so he really didn't have any business thinking of her like that. As they continued running, he admired how tall she was, how she could keep up with him on a run, her long legs matching his stride for stride. An image of how those legs would look…whoa…where had that come from? He shook his head and concentrated on running and breathing…that's it, just running, and breathing, and running, and breathing…
