We ran pressed up against each other for a few seconds before settling back into our run, grins on our faces.

I almost choked on my laughter and lunged to my right to side-check him. He looked over at me, hands held over his mouth in horror. I nearly tripped over a crack in the road. “Faith wants to get pictures of us in our dresses and tuxes while the sun is still up.” “One way or another, it’ll all be settled tonight. “Something like that.” Sam had never been Vee’s biggest fan, but he tolerated her because he knew we were like sisters.

“That’s why we love her, right? Never a dull moment.” “I told her she’ll still get enough votes, but she doesn’t believe me.” Plus, her mom had been telling all her friends that Vee was a shoo-in for Queen, so now she was worried about losing face. She was convinced that her Homecoming was ruined. It had been a week since my best friend Vee’s injury, and every day I had to talk her off the ledge. “Last thing you need is to bust your ankle, too.” So it surprised me when he kept on the paved trail instead of running through the uneven paths in the woods. Normally, Sam’s as much of a stickler about routine as I am. We didn’t talk much at first, not until we got to our one-mile mark-the entrance to Gordon Park. On some days, it seemed like we even breathed in sync.

Sam pulled back his stride a little to match mine, and I stretched out just a bit to match his. Over hundreds of runs, Sam and I had established a rhythm, a pace that we no longer had to think about, as if we were running to the same internal song. For a moment everything felt perfectly still. He looked serious, almost solemn as he stretched, but when he saw me his face lit up and he leaned in for a kiss. He had started to warm up, his breath coming out in puffs visible in the chilly late autumn air.

The morning before Homecoming, I met Sam at the bottom of my driveway as usual. When I start out on an early-morning run, there’s a clarity to the world, a sense that it belongs to me. There’s something sacred about being awake when the rest of the world is sleeping, when the sky is just turning toward the light, and you can still hear the sounds of night before the engines and conversations of the day drown them out. For Joe, because I know you would love me no matter what my chromosomes were.Īnd for O and G: I hope that you are never afraid to fall.ĭawn is my favorite time of day.

None of the above gregorio