Instead she said nothing. They weren’t touching, but she could feel the warmth from his hip just inches from her own, and she longed to lean in, just for a moment.
“You read it?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
He nodded once. “I wasn’t going to, but Grace brought it over. Came at me like a woman on a mission.”
Julie gave a tiny smile. “I can imagine. I think she figures that since she can’t fix her own love life, she’ll interfere in someone else’s.”
“Yeah, she mentioned things with Greg ended badly. How’s she doing?”
Julie hitched her heel up on the bench and tightened laces that didn’t need tightening as she wondered why they were talking about Grace instead of them.
Still, Grace was a safe topic, so …
“She’s all right,” Julie replied. “Actually … no. She’s a wreck. Says she’s going ‘off men.’ ”
Mitchell turned to look at her. “Off men. As in she’s playing for the other team?”
Julie let out a little laugh. “No. Or at least, not that she’s told me. She’s just declaring a boycott on romance. She’s angling for a year’s sabbatical, but Riley and I are trying to talk her down to six months.”
He fell silent for several mo
ments. “And you? Are you going off men?”
Depends on the man.
But she didn’t say it.
She’d already risked enough of her heart in that article. She wasn’t about to go running off her mouth on top of it.
Not until she’d heard what he’d had to say.
She dodged his question with one of her own. “How’d you know I’d be out running?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you were doing? Running? It looks more like you’re dying.”
She cut him a glance.
“Right,” he said, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “It was just a hunch, you know … that you’d come back to run here.”
“And you knew it would be today?” she asked skeptically.
He didn’t meet her eyes, and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. “I’ve um … I’ve been coming here for the past couple days, actually. Waiting for you.”
Julie’s stomach flipped.
“That’s very stalkerish of you,” she said softly.
And very sweet.
He nodded awkwardly before handing her a foil-wrapped package. Wordlessly she opened it, and when she saw what was inside, she gave a watery smile.
It was a hot dog.
Just like on that first day. No, not exactly like the first day. No relish this time. For some reason, that one small change made her feel like weeping more than anything else. It represented all of the nuances that changed a man from being just a guy to being the guy.
Although she could barely fathom the idea of eating, she took a bite of the hot dog, painfully aware that he was watching her chew.
“So all these days you’ve been waiting for me … is there something you wanted to discuss, or was it just a sit-in-awkward-silence type of deal?”