Dear Carver,
It’s only been five days since you last wrote, and yet it feels like five weeks for me. I didn’t realize how much your letters were grounding me, and while I feel far too vulnerable confessing this … I miss them. I miss you and your words.
I was wondering when
A knock on her door interrupted her.
Iris paused, her fingertips slipping off the keys. It was late. Her candle had burned half of its life away, and she left her sentence dangling on the paper as she rose to answer the door.
She was shocked to find Roman.
“Do you need something?” she asked. Sometimes she forgot how tall he was, until she was standing toe to toe with him.
“I see you’re working on more front-page war essays.” His gaze flickered beyond her to the typewriter on her desk. “Or perhaps you’re writing to someone?”
“I’m sorry, is my nocturnal typing keeping you up?” Iris said. “I suppose we’ll have to ask Marisol to move you to a different roo—”
“I wanted to see if you would like to run with me,” he said. Somehow he made the possibility sound sophisticated, even as they stood facing each other in wrinkled jumpsuits at ten o’clock at night.
Iris’s brow raised. “I’m sorry?”
“Run. Two feet on and off the ground, pushing forward. Tomorrow morning.”
“I fear I don’t run, Kitt.”
“I beg to disagree. You were like wildfire in the field yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes, well, that was a special circumstance,” she said, leaning on the door.
“And perhaps another occasion like that will arise again soon,” he countered, and Iris had nothing to say, because he was right. “I thought I’d ask, just in case you’re interested. If so, meet me tomorrow morning in the garden at first light.”
“I’ll consider it, Kitt, but right now I’m tired and need to finish this letter that you interrupted. Good night.”
She gently shut the door in his face, but not before she noticed how his eyes flashed, widening as if he wanted to say something more but he lost the chance.
Iris returned to her desk and sat. She stared at her letter and tried to pick up where she had left off, but she no longer had the desire to write to Carver.
He was to write her first. Whenever he was able or cared to.
She needed to wait. She shouldn’t sound so desperate to a boy she hadn’t even met.
She pulled the paper from the typewriter and tossed it in the dustbin.
* * *
She really didn’t want to exercise with Roman. But the more she remembered the sight of him returning from his run—all vigor and fire, as if he had drunk from the sky, untamed and unburdened and alive—the more she wanted to feel that herself.
It also helped that she conveniently woke just before dawn.
Iris lay on her pallet, listening to him move in his room. She listened as he quietly opened his door and walked past hers on gentle tread, down the stairs. She imagined him standing in the garden, waiting for her.
She decided she would go, thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get in better shape before she was summoned to the front lines.
Iris dressed in her clean jumpsuit, rushing to don her socks and lace her boots in the dark. She braided her hair on the way downstairs, and then had a stab of worry. Perhaps he wouldn’t be waiting for her. Perhaps she had taken too long, and he had left her.
She opened the twin doors and found him there, pacing the edges of the garden. He stopped when he saw her, his breath hitching as if he hadn’t believed she would come.
“Worried I would stand you up, Kitt?” she asked, walking to him.
He smiled, but it could have passed for a wince in the shadows. “Not in the slightest.”
“What made you so confident?”
“You’re not one to let a challenge slip away, Winnow.”
“For being a mere acquaintance and office rival, you seem to know a lot about me,” Iris mused, standing before him.
Roman studied her. A few stars burned above them, extinguishing one by one as day broke. The first rays of sun illuminated the tree boughs overhead, the ivy and mossy stones of the B and B, and the flittering of birds. Light limned Iris’s arms and the length of her braid, Roman’s angular face and tousled dark hair.
It felt like she had woken in another world.
“I may have said you were a rival,” he countered. “But I never said you were an acquaintance.”
Before Iris could scrounge up a retort—was that a good thing or a bad thing?—Roman was striding to the gate, stepping onto the street.
“Tell me, Winnow,” he said. “Have you ever run a kilometer before?”
“No.” She began to keenly regret her decision to join him; she realized he was bound to run her ragged, to gloat with his stamina. She could already taste the dust he would kick up in her face, leaving her far behind. Perhaps this was some sort of twisted payback, for making him work to become columnist when the position would have been given to him on a silver platter if she hadn’t been at the Gazette. A column that he surrendered almost as swiftly as he had earned it, which continued to puzzle her.
“Good,” he said as she followed him through the gate. “We’ll start simple and work our way up every morning.”
“Every morning?” she cried.
“We need to be consistent if you want to make any sort of progress,” he said, beginning a brisk walk up the street. “Is there a problem with that?”
Iris sighed, keeping pace with him. “No. But if you’re a sorry coach, then don’t expect me to return tomorrow morning.”
“Fair enough.”
They walked for several minutes, Roman keeping an eye on his wristwatch. The silence was soft between them, the chilled morning air sharp as a blade down her throat. Soon, Iris felt her blood warm, and when Roman said it was time to run, she fell into a slow jog at his side.
“We’ll run for a minute, walk for two, and repeat that cycle until we need to return to Marisol’s,” he explained.
“Are you some sort of professional at this?” She couldn’t resist asking.
“I ran track at school, a few years back.”
Iris tried to imagine that—him dashing around a circular track in very short trousers. She laughed, partly embarrassed by her train of thought, which drew his attention.
“That’s hilarious to you?” he asked.
“No, but I’m wondering why you’re going so slow for me when you could run laps around this town.”
Roman checked his watch. She didn’t think he was going to respond until he said, “And now we walk.” He slowed, and she mirrored him. “I often run alone. But sometimes it’s nice to have company.” He looked at her. Iris quickly glanced away from him, distracting herself with details of the street.
They fell into a dance side by side, running for one minute, walking for two. At first, it felt easy to her, until they reached the hilly side of the bluff, and she suddenly felt like she might expire.
“Are you trying to kill me, Kitt?” she panted, struggling up the slope.