The Split by Laura Kay

Author:Laura Kay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

12

Sheffield’s Premier Gay Establishment

Running club really was just the three of us, and Jo took us on a ridiculous route incorporating as many hills as she possibly could. Enough hills that I honestly thought at one point my lunch was going to make a reappearance. Jo chose to keep pace with us instead of powering on ahead and annoyingly never looked particularly out of breath, but mercifully did not try and chat to us. By the time we finally stopped back at the park gates, I was questioning whether I’d even be able to make it back out for drinks at all. How could I even be thinking about what I was going to wear when at least one of my lungs was collapsing? Jeremy threw himself and his backpack dramatically onto the grass and lay out flat on his back, arms above his head, surrendering to the earth. He refused to get up for a full five minutes despite Jo’s protestations that his muscles would seize up.

‘I don’t have any,’ he moaned, ‘I’ll be fine.’

Once we were both upright and definitely not throwing up, Jo looked at us encouragingly.

‘Guys, you’re really getting there! If you can run for an hour and a half, you can definitely run a half marathon.’

‘What,’ said Jeremy, pausing to spit on the ground, ‘what if in an hour and a half you’ve only just managed half of a half marathon. A quarter marathon?’

If she was at all worried Jo’s face didn’t give it away.

‘You’ll be fine. It’s different on the day anyway, you’ll be swept up with the crowds and you’ll have all the extra adrenaline.’

We looked at each other communicating a silent ‘true’. We’d not considered all that adrenaline; we’d practically been running on empty.

*

Once we were back at mine and showered, we had a tiny window of time to wolf down some food (spaghetti bolognese, very kindly brought up on trays by my dad so we had the luxury of having a fork of pasta in one hand and a hairdryer in the other) and get ready before meeting Jo again. We also had a couple of glasses of sauvignon blanc on the go, courtesy of Jeremy’s mum (we’d popped it in his backpack on our way out). Dad’s generosity was somewhat backhanded, given that it suited him to keep us upstairs away from his teacher pals who were having a board game night downstairs. I wasn’t sure how many board games they were playing but, judging by the amount of shrieking and giggling going on, I was confident that many bottles of wine were being drunk.

It was thrilling not only to have an evening plan but to have an evening plan with two whole people and on a school night. After going for a run! I didn’t recognise myself.

I cracked open a bag of fizzy jelly snakes for pudding.

‘It’s weird I haven’t lost any weight doing this training,’ Jeremy said, stroking his tummy, a bit of snake hanging out of his mouth as he chewed.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.