Dream Runner (2 page)

“Dude,” Dench said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” AJ was hard pressed to know whether it was a comment or a criticism. He crushed the letter in his meaty hand and glared at the assistant coach.

Finally able to breathe, Dench stood straighter and stared at the ground. “I thought you ought to know,” he said.

Ought to know that his career was over? Know that his numbers were as high as they were ever going to go? That he would never earn a Super Bowl ring to call his own?

Eyes on the sky, it took AJ long seconds to reply. “Yeah, but I thought that when it got to be this time…”
What? They would throw me some kind of special big hints? An “over the hill” party? What?
That last play of his last game unwound itself in his head again. The memory was so vivid, he almost felt the searing rip hack its way through his knee when he went down. He could hear the muted voices, as if they thought he couldn’t hear…

He’s had a long run…

Could be career ending…

More than a setback…

What if this time…

What could anybody say that would make it any easier? He could go back to his agent, get her to find another team. That was the beauty of hiring your kid sister as your agent. She could ask for some kind of waiver that would give him…
a Super Bowl ring? That rushing record I’ve run my whole life for? Or maybe I should just shut my eyes on the game, the only thing in life that has truly given me pleasure, and move on. Suck it up.

“I didn’t want this to come as any more of a shock than it already is. They won’t make the announcement for another couple of weeks, but I wanted you to be ready when it came out.” Dench watched AJ circle him, and knew the thoughts that must be running through his mind. He had come so close over the years. Been traded twice, always up, but traded all the same. Every team promised but none fully delivered. AJ was always left hungry.

“I always knew this wouldn’t last forever…” Even as he said it, AJ couldn’t stop himself. A lot of what he thought tended to spill from his lips. It was a bad habit, talking to himself, but it was one he had never been quite able to shake.

Dench crossed his arms over his solid barrel of a chest. “We’ve been together a long time, man. I know the hurt you’re feelin’, but this doesn’t have to be the end. You’ve still got power. You can still run.”

“An’ I’m a thirty-four year old runner in a game played like war by twenty-two year olds. Lasting ‘til you reach thirty is a good stretch for a runner. The irony is not lost on me.”

“But it’s not the only thing you know. You’ve got other things going for you,” Dench suggested. Antoine Jacob Yarborough Jr. was a smart man, smart in a lot of ways. Not a lot of the men gifted enough to play in the NFL had his kind of savvy—even if he did talk to himself. AJ might truly hate his given name, but he was smart enough to have finished the education degree as he had promised his folks. He had gone on to complete the master’s degree that got him into physical therapy school during the off-seasons. It’s not like he’ll ever be hurtin’ for money, his friend thought, realizing where the real pain would always come from.

“So, ah, AJ? You got any plans?”

“Not yet,” the now ex-player said, pacing. “Maybe I’ll go ahead and set up a PT practice on my own. The Lord knows I’ll sure have time for it now.” Stopping midstep, he looked back the way he had come, then turned and stared out at the road ahead of him. His eyes narrowed, and he wiped his big hands against his sweatpants. “Besides that, I don’t know, but I gotta go forward. Got to.”

“How you gonna do that, AJ?”

The player began a steady jog up the road. “Only way I know how.” He picked up speed, forcing the other man to run harder. “I’m gonna run.”

Chapter 2

July 4th, Peachtree Road Race

Standing in the middle of Peachtree Street, Marlea glanced over at the Westin Hotel, then back over her shoulder. For as far as she could see, past the stretch of Lenox Mall and down the hill, there were wall-to-wall people, six lanes of die-hard runners decked out in holiday-themed running gear. Lots of red, white, and blue, with more than a sprinkling of Uncle Sam or Lady Liberty outfits.
Good thing the weather’s cool this morning,
she thought, watching the runners line up around and mostly behind her.

Spectators had been stopped and rerouted a mile back. From where Marlea stood, she could see the seeded runners, those with highly competitive amateur time records in the time group behind hers.
You’ll be in the first group,
Libby had fussed.
Even though you’re running with the elite runners, I don’t want you taking any chances. Don’t push any harder than you have to, a six-minute mile is good enough to get you in—anything else is gravy.

Libby’s words were like music to her ears, and Marlea’s face changed, lit by her inner smile.
Elite runner, that’s what they call the people this far up in the crowd. That’s what I am, and though this race is outside my usual class, I’m going to prove it.
Libby caught the smile.
Just don’t get hurt out there, you don’t have to prove anything. And keep your feet dry,
she had added as an afterthought.

“Right, right, right,” Marlea had agreed to get the trainer to move on. “Everything’s going to be great. I’ll see you in the park.”

Not convinced, Libby reached for Marlea’s race number and flipped it over. “You didn’t fill it in. You left all the emergency information blank. What were you thinking?”

“That I’m a healthy, capable adult?”

“Here.” Libby pushed a black ink pen into Marlea’s hand. “I don’t believe you, 55,000 people out there, and you want to take a chance like that…” The coach’s voice was as dry as her expression. “Be sure to put my name and home and cellphone numbers on there. Just in case…just in case.”

“Just in case,” Marlea mimicked, dutifully writing. Finished, she accepted safety pins from Libby and pinned the number to her shirt. “Satisfied?”

“Very.” Libby sucked water from the bottle draped over her shoulder, and looked around. “This is a sharp group,” she noted, watching the runners headed for the starting lineup. “I think I know him from the Colorado training center,” she said, pointing, then waving, at a tall blonde runner who noticed her and waved back.

“I want you to go out there and do what you came to do, Marlea, but have some fun, too. Don’t think of this as work.”

“Running is never work for me, but don’t you need to head for the train if you’re going to make it back to Piedmont Park in time to catch my finish?”

“Oh, you’re going to run that fast?” Libby raised a brow and tipped her head when Marlea stopped and crossed her arms. “I’m just saying. You might meet somebody nice during the run—if you let yourself. Somebody you might want to get to know better. It happens.”

“It happens,” Libby repeated.

Sure, it could happen—in my dreams,
Marlea thought, ignoring the smile from the lean, dark man wearing number seven as she bent to stretch her hamstrings. He offered a brief two-fingered salute, but she pretended not to see. She heard Libby’s voice again.

“Here I am ignoring him—as if he’s about to ask me for a date or something.” And if he did, then what? Marlea shook her head and changed legs, knowing she would laugh the invitation off. Not because he wasn’t handsome, because he was; and certainly not because he wouldn’t be able to understand her physical discipline, because his number seven said he himself was disciplined.

Olympic gold and men don’t mix.
Marlea still had a laugh from time to time when she remembered the first time that she had heard that line, though her mother had been talking about a boy and not a grown man. It had been years ago, while she was still in high school. A thoroughly pissed-off Cyndra caught Marlea kissing an excited and happily adventurous Robert Jennings in the back hallway of the old house on Grand. Both teens had been thoroughly embarrassed. Robert got sent home and threatened with a report to his parents. Sixteen-year old Marlea’s suffering hadn’t been nearly so brief.

A boy can experiment in a lot of ways a girl can’t,
Cyndra had lectured, shaking a stern finger under the girl’s nose.
A boy having sex will never get pregnant. It’s always a girl’s baby and a boy’s maybe. You are not a boy, and you are going to have to make them respect you, in every way, if you want anything out of this life. So let me tell you something, little girl. You go on experimentin’, an’ if you bring home a baby, girl, you are going to have to raise it. Your runnin’ days will be over for the next eighteen years. Eighteen years. Do you hear me? Eighteen years!

Loud and clear,
Marlea recalled.
Relationships are never easy, and everybody isn’t blessed to fall in love with a Bob Kersee. What I want takes sacrifice, and I know it. World-class runners have to make a plan and then stick to it, and that’s what I’ve done. I get gold, then I’ll get a man.
She looked around at the two Kenyan women stretching on either side of her. They looked as determined as she felt.

Loudspeakers blared, and runners shifted like cattle at the start of a roundup when volunteers toting flags and barriers moved her group forward. Marlea moved, too, stopping where the line held across the street. Funny how the start of almost any race set her pulse pounding. She closed her eyes and visualized the finish line, saw herself crossing the line ahead of the pack. And then the gun sounded.

AJ Yarborough felt more than saw the start of the Peachtree Road Race. Swept along by the wave of runners, his run began with shambling steps, almost a hobble. Morning air, cool for Atlanta, took on a sudden humidity, almost as though it resented being moved by so many bodies. In the distance, behind him, he could hear a steadily growing roar of other runners.

Local TV and radio stations were out in force. A reporter, complete with remote microphone, jogged at the edge of the crowd. Runners, intent on getting to Piedmont Park and that coveted tee shirt, smiled and stepped around the reporter. AJ pulled his Braves cap lower over his eyes and headed for the center of the street. “No need getting noticed and winding up in a conversation I don’t want to have.”

Still not ready to discuss his release from the team, he wasn’t sure of what he might say if asked about it. “Besides,” he muttered, “football was good to me, and this ain’t the place to share that.” Enjoying the light jog, he kept his head low as the crowd pace picked up. He could afford to start out slow, knowing that he had a little over six miles to pick it up.

Overhead, a pair of Black Hawk helicopters maneuvered in salute to the racers, and a small airplane pulled an Atlanta Braves banner across white clouds in a china blue sky. It was immeasurably different from every other kind of race he had ever run. “Like being out for a run with 50,000 of my closest friends.”

The first four or five minutes of the run allowed the runners to shift and find their own places along the width of Peachtree Street, and AJ wondered how many people were behind him. “If I’m wearing number 107, wonder what number the last person in this crowd has?”

“Don’t even think about it,” the long-legged redhead in a cutoff 1999 Peachtree tee shirt said, winking an emerald green eye. She shook back the curling mop of shimmering hair and grinned. “I know you,” she said, “you’re that football player, aren’t you? Yeah, you are.” She jogged faster, matching AJ’s steps. “I belong to the Atlanta Track Club, and nobody told me you were going to be running this year. Is this your first time with us?”

“Yeah.” Uncomfortable with the attention, AJ almost wished he had taken Dench’s advice and skipped the race. The baseball cap wasn’t a very effective disguise when your face had been on the evening sports shows for the past week. His feet moved faster.

“You tryin’ to outrun me, big fella?” The redhead’s laugh was a lilting giggle. “You might want to know I hold the club record for women in this race.”

“That’s, uh, nice.” AJ was sincerely grateful for the dark-haired woman who pushed through the crowd to intercept his self-appointed buddy. Clearly angered by the intervention, the redhead stopped running, forcing traffic to flow around her and the dark-haired woman.

The narrow escape made AJ shake his head. “Point is, if I want a woman, I want to find her. I want to just happen up on her, spend time with her, know that we share some things in common. Not just have her drop out of the sky and try to take over. That one back there, she was too aggressive for my taste. Man, and I’ve seen aggressive.”

Bianca Coltrane came immediately to mind. “Now, that was an aggressive woman.” At the start of it, Bianca wasn’t all that different from the redhead. She, too, claimed legs that went all the way up to her ears and had a clear, chiming laugh. Like the redhead, Bianca was more than pretty; she was beautiful, and she knew how to make the most of it—and AJ had been more tempted by her than he had ever been by any woman before or since.

But Bianca’s exotic sexual tastes and limitless wanton hungers were beyond anything AJ had anticipated, and what might have been died before it was truly born. Not that she had been less than exuberant and imaginative in her efforts. “If I tried to keep track of her tricks, I’d run out of fingers and toes for counting,” AJ muttered, his thoughts riddled with her last kisses.

They had parted at a cabstand outside JFK a year ago. She was twirling her paisley silk umbrella and he was leaning on a cane. She said something about life moving on, and AJ kept hearing echoed conversations—echoes of conversations with several, now former, teammates.

AJ recalled the words, the speculation on who and what Bianca had done. Personally unwilling to think the worst, he had bowed out of a lot of the conversations, but not before he learned that she kept a list and rated men on their performances. When he had asked her about it, she had unwrapped her white silk blouse, stretched it wide, flashing him. “What would be the problem?” she had smiled.

And AJ knew it was over—if it had ever been anything more than mindless, release-driven sex. The thought that his name, among others, might be on such a list was unbearable. “And those dudes didn’t seem to have any problem with it.”

Breaking up with Bianca was a kind of oxymoron. To break up with someone, you kind of had to be going with her, you had to have a specifically singular relationship with that person, didn’t you? And if your woman was trying to set world records as a sexual athlete, what happened to that “singular” relationship? For AJ Yarborough, the answer was nothing—not even a birthday or Christmas card.

On Peachtree Street, AJ kept running past spectators shouting encouragement and holding signs. His speed was faster, and the sun was stronger and climbing quickly. Passing a water station, he accepted a cup from a boy of about twelve and winked when the boy gave him a thumbs up. He tossed the water down in a single gulp and returned the gesture.

From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the redhead and picked up his pace. “Chicks like that—the reason I don’t do Buckhead.” It was a known party district, and AJ made it a rule to give Buckhead a wide berth for anything outside of restaurants and shopping.
Don’t go lookin’ for trouble and you won’t find it,
his father liked to say. It was one of the few things about which he agreed with Antoine Jacob Yarborough, Senior.

Funny about Bianca, though. Nothing ever came of their time together, brief as it had been, but she always had a kind of hold on him. “Maybe it was because she came along around the same time my knees started to go,” he speculated. Or maybe it was because when he had looked into her oval face with its beautifully matched features, he had wondered what their children would look like. Listening to her voice, soft in conversation or husky with passion, he had wondered what her ‘mommy’ voice would sound like to a child with a skinned knee.

He had shared the questions with Dench and looked sheepish when he laughed. “Man,” Traylor said laughing, “you sound like your biological clock is ticking. I think you just need to get laid.”

“I took his advice, and it ain’t workin’ yet.” AJ smiled when he thought of the last woman he had slept with. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, she possessed the kind of curves that could only have been carved by the hand of a gracious god. She was elegant to the point of appearing almost feline in her grace. “She was also dumb as a rock.” His smile widened when he thought of the conversations the beautiful woman was at an absolute loss to follow. “Dench ain’t never settin’ me up again. And I told him so, too.”

Dench Traylor had sat across the table in AJ’s broad-windowed breakfast room and laughed the morning after, swearing that the hunt wasn’t always about capture. Sometimes, he insisted, it was just about the hunt. “I’m not just about the hunt,” AJ had told him. “It’s sure not that I don’t like women; it’s that I want to fall ass over teakettle for the right one and have her be a part of my life forever.”

Dench just laughed. But the thing of it was that AJ knew and believed in his heart that every woman passing through his life had left something behind. Every one of them had left him knowing just a little more of what he did and didn’t want. They left him knowing just a little bit more of who he was, what kind of man he really was.

Looking down, at his feet moving along Peachtree Street, he knew that every lover in his past had been a way station to completion—a stop on the way to where he knew he was meant to be.

“That sounds damned self-involved, if I do say so myself.” He cast a fleeting look over his shoulder. The carpet of running, jogging, walking humans seemed to stretch for miles behind him. “Many folks as there are out here, wouldn’t it be nice to just run up on the right one?”

Peachtree Street had always seemed like a series of curves to Marlea, but the climb to mile four of the race route was known as “Cardiac Hill” and, even in training, it was a challenge. Her face tightened and her arms pumped when she heard the timer beep on the monitor she wore on her left wrist. “I slow down, and I drop my time,” she reminded herself, inhaling deeply. Lifting her head, she looked past the bulk of Piedmont Hospital, fixed her eyes on a cloud, and pushed to the top of the hill.