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Nick sits on the shore, careful not to shift too far one way or another. He's real close to the edge, and any wrong move would erase a whole year of his progress.
He holds his cheeks in his hands, a feedback loop of warmth, and watches the sunset.
(And the footsteps too, how many of them were theirs, his and Manny's? Every day, four am, get up and run five miles. Ten miles. Track their times. Study their breathing.)
(He'd memorized Manny's lungs, the way they wanted to breathe and the ways they were trained,)
Nick checks his email. It'd be a long while. Nine hundred years.
Today he deliberated on something, tracing his fingers in the sand, subconsciously doodling out the lines and features of a familiar face.
His face burned.
The crickets came out.
Every day they trained together, coordinated together. Once a week they met with the coach to discuss the game plan once they got to the other side. Making and remaking strategies, practicing them, and then remaking them again.
They learned each others tells.
Nick led with his left foot-- Manny with his right. Manny tended to look at the ball a moment before he threw. Manny loved the pizza place down the street but could never do walkins because it was out of field bounds but he really loved the inside.
(When Nick ordered a pizza, once in a sharply cold fall training session, he requested, 'Weird, I know, but can you take some pics of the inside? Tell us about the people who came in today?'. When the girl came she talked for fifteen minutes, showing Manny five pictures. Manny watched attentively and with a sheepish awe that Nick wanted to capture and recreate over and over again. He made it his mission to recreate that. To recreate all the happy faces Manny ever made.)
Nick is not good with feelings. He smears the likeness to the point of non-recognition and lets the tide wash it away. In the seventh grade, there was a girl named Abby. He pulled her hair and made rude faces at her. He knows now, at least, that that was a terrible way to treat her, but it was just one of many fumbling snapshots of his dating history.
He takes a deep breath and picks up his phone, pieces of sand falling off, and sends a text.
(Meet me at the sprint spot at 9?)
It was 8:30. His stomach was clenched, the pain more than any runners cramps he'd ever gotten.
He watched the moon.
Had they done things before? Was sharing a slice and talking and laughing a date when you did it every week? How would he ever go about saying, (I love you, I want you to love me, I want you to be happy, I want, I want, I want,-- What do you want?) without confronting that?
It was 8:34. He gets lost in these spiraling thoughts, flushing his cheeks, his shoulders, his ears.
Then, it is nine.
Manny comes and sits next to him, smiling oh so naturally, and the dimples around the corners of his mouth crumple in a v-shape, and Nick is entranced.
"Hey, man," Manny begins.
"Hey," Nick replies, his voice barely kept level, quiet and tense.
"What's going on, what'd you want to talk about?"
A moment after Manny finished his last word Nick was nearly possessed by the need to cup his cheeks--
(and thumb the stubble marks, in style at the time and convenient for Manny, he'd seen his cabinet, it was convenient because he was running out of shaving cream)
--and kiss him, but he resisted.
Instead, he said, "I....."
and he let it all out. A rambling speech indicative of him at the time, and looking back on it would make him bark with laughter, later. Despite everything, he was such a hopeless romantic.
And as he talked, he watched Manny's face lift through the haze of the confession, all the way up to--
("And I'm -- I'm in love with you, Manny, all of you, especially the guy who doesn't buy shaving cream and waves to every dog, and-- and--")
--that sheepish smile of awe, the same as when he saw those pictures, which Nick now recognized as unmistakable, intense affection.
And love.
For him.
Maybe they were dating before. For hundreds of years before. But any motion between them was muffled by hesitation.
Now they kissed before running strats. Held each other watching the news at night (Manny's place, Manny's couch, Nick's was a mess), and whispered, "What did I do to deserve you?" into each others shoulders on particularly rough days.
And they ran on the beach, every morning, four am, get up and make more imprints in the sand. Manny's cleats and Nick's boots, side by side.
And they made more imprints. And more imprints. And more--
(A year before they ran, Manny proposed. They'd been moved in for 500 years. A modest courting time. And they made more imprints in the sand, a beach wedding, narrowed by the field, two sets of steady prints bound together, promising each other forever, knowing that they had it to give.)
And they ran on the beach, every morning, four am.