Thursday

This wasn't a part of her five point plan. 

She had known him since junior high. Let him take her to all the dances, let him carry her books, let him be the first to see her in her underwear. She'd gone so far as to go to the lingerie store in the mall, lying to her mother that she was going to buy a Christmas present and that she'd meet her at the food court. Which technically wasn't a lie, as it was his Christmas present. To look, not touch. Had to keep room for the Holy Spirit.

Pablo wasn't much for the Holy Spirit. Or God, really, but made sure to leave room. 

He just hoped the Holy Spirit was a thin man.

They'd been together for six years, and now that school was officially in the past, her college diploma hanging on her bedroom wall, a framed reminder of her dedication to studying animals, she was ready.

Point three: Marry her high school boyfriend.

She'd dropped hints. He wasn't oblivious, just nervous. He spent his days stocking the frozen section of the supermarket. That was a lot of pizzas to afford the ring. 

Who knew working a frozen section could make a boy so cold hearted?

They were out for a casual stroll in the park. She had asked him to buy her an ice cream, strawberry, and was swirling her tongue around the cone. It would buy him time to work up his nerve. She could see the box bulging in his front pocket, the tree they had their first not-date under. (She had tutored him in chemistry under that tree, the scientific kind. Oh, the irony.)

Finishing off her cone, she slowed down as they approached the tree. He slowed to match her gait. She expected him to drop to one knee. He even had the forethought to wear khakis to hide the dirt stains for their 'I just said yes' selfies. How was her face? She wiped her cheeks with her napkin. This had to be perfect.

He stopped, started to bend his knee. A girl ran by, bluetooth headphones tucked in her ear.

"Don't do it," she had said.

Pablo adjusted his shoelace and stood back up.

What the heck was that? He did realize he had to flash the box and make a speech and wait for her to cry and kiss him and just who did he think he was, to tie his shoe under their tree with a bulge in his pocket and not propose?

Pablo may not have believed in God, but he sure believed in fate. 

That next week he came to the park alone. He sat under that tree, waiting for that girl. The one that had crashed his proposal, made him rethink his entire future. The one that was running towards him.

He sprung to his feet, as much as an out of shape lad could. Jogging up to her, he struggled to keep pace. Still, he needed to talk to her. Which thankfully, she caught onto to, and took a headphone out of her ear.

"Can I help you?" She didn't slow her run.

"Yeah, you told me last week not to propose to my girlfriend. I wanted to know why." He pumped his arms in an attempt to will his body forward. He really hoped that this girl would relent soon. 

Soon was now. She stopped in her tracks. "What are you talking about?"

"I was here last Thursday at that tree over there. Was going to propose to my girlfriend, and then you said 'don't do it,' and then I didn't do it." His hands rested on his knees as he hunched over to catch his breath. She chuckled at him.

"I was on the phone. I was telling my friend not to adopt another kitten. She has four, and I don't need her becoming a crazy cat lady on me." She walked towards the bench, gesturing for him to sit down. "Now, I'm no relationship expert, but if you let a stranger tell you that can't marry someone that you love, maybe you don't love that person enough to marry them."

He hated how right she was.

He also hated that he was going to throw up the hot dog he had downed while waiting for her, especially given their close proximity. He turned his head and ralphed into the garbage can.

First impressions were evidentially not his specialty.

Yet for some reason, he found himself under that same tree that next Thursday, because what else was there to do on his day off, and he found himself catching her eye as she ran past. She stopped, and backtracked.

"How are things, Ralph?"

"My name is Pablo."

"Miriam." She bent to shake his hand. Tightening her grip, she hoisted him to his feet and began to run. It was more of a trot this time, to be fair, and his stomach was empty. "You didn't answer my question."

He inhaled. Right now he was more focused on remembering how to breathe. Her hand was still in his, dragging him along, and there was a slight tingle coursing through his body.

He was going to blame it on the exercise. 

"Jenna broke up with me." 

Miriam stopped running.

"Jenna was the girl I was going to propose to."

"Yeah, I gathered that much." 

"She said that I couldn't keep dragging her along, and that all her friends were getting married, and how I needed to man up, but I told her I needed to make sure, and she was all 'make sure you love me?' and-"

Her hands landed on his shoulders. "Pablo, you are rambling."

For a guy she barely knew, she let him interrupt her run and ramble for the rest of the afternoon. He caught her up on six years of Jenna over coffee and eggs. She had insisted that he eat something healthy, because she did not want to make a habit of him ralphing into the park garbage can when there was a perfectly decent diner across the street with air conditioning and free refills.

Somehow they had made plans to meet there the next Thursday for lunch. 

Somehow she had dragged him out of the diner at 10:59, across the street to the park, convincing him that they had to run before they could eat. Metabolism, yadda yadda, and other words he had ignored for all those years.

"Tell me something about yourself, Pablo. Something that doesn't involve that trash bag of your ex-girlfriend." They had decided last week that she wasn't the best girlfriend, bending him to her whims like a whipped puppy. Besides, trashing on her made it easier to move on from his first love. 

"I really hate running." He grinned at her, laughing at his wobbly legs.

She let go of his hand. He still followed, and she smirked. For a boy who hated running, he wasn't stopping. "It's an acquired taste."

Miriam slowed her pace to a light jog to let him relax for a minute. Now that oxygen could reach the conversational part of his brain again, he decided to return the question.

"What about you?"

"Oh, I love to run. Five miles every day before I go in for the night shift. Keeps me revved up."

"I meant tell me something I don't know." He rolled his eyes. She picked up her pace again. He couldn't tell if she was evading the question or if she really did just love running.

Finally, after what felt like forever, she came up with something.

"I'm afraid of spiders." It was a common fear, yet she looked so ashamed of herself as she admitted it. "One time there was a big spider at the call center, and it crawled across my desk while I was on the phone with a customer, and I got so scared that I started screaming with them still on the line. They thought that I was being murdered. And all casually, they were like, 'look, I really just want this off my bill,' because God forbid you stay on hold while I fight off a killer, because you can't wait ten minutes to get the x rated movie your husband 'didn't buy' off your bill, and my boss pulled me into the office. It's on my record, you know. Screamed bloody murder over a spider."

Pablo dropped to the ground. In part it was over how winded he was, having survived a mile with her. Mostly it was to laugh, clutching his sides as he rolled around on the ground.

She plunked down next to him.

"When I was a kid, I had a pet tarantula. His name was Parker. Like Peter Parker, because I was obsessed with Spiderman. Wait, are you afraid of Spiderman, or just spiders?" 

"I'm not a complete nut job you know." She adjusted her shoelaces and yanked him back up. "Come on, we're not done yet."

Sure, because non-nut jobs ran for fun.

Clearly he was becoming a nut. He met her the next Thursday, wearing running shoes. He had bought them at the mall, and he was bending to touch his new toes when she met him at the park.

She didn't need to grab his hand this time.

"I used to think that the Monopoly man was a tiny man on an average sized game board. But I was thinking last night, what if he was an average man, on a massive game board?" 

"Hello to you too." Her ponytail was hypnotically swaying back and forth today. "You've posed quite the question. You know what we have to do now, right?"

He took a long swig of water (he came prepared for once) and shook his head.

"Contact Hasbro?"

"We're going to make a giant gameboard in my backyard and throw a Monopoly party. Everyone comes dressed as their favorite game piece. You busy Saturday to help me build?"

Were they ready to break ritual and meet at a different time and place for a different activity? 

He said yes.

The night of the party, he was dressed as Mr. Monopoly. Miriam had gender bent it and did the same. Mister and Misses, a coincidence. 

"Are you two like a thing now?" one of her friends had asked.

The amount of times he said the word 'no' that time was a lot. He lost track after a while. 

There was no way they were more than friends. He was over Jenna, who had already started flirting with a man at her job, but that did not mean he was going to throw himself at the next girl to come along. She loved running, and going on adventures. He was more of a homebody who wanted to stay at home and bake cupcakes.

His mind flashed back to wiping the batter off her nose.

Her perky, freckled nose.

"This was fun." She had said when the crowd cleared out. They were cleaning up, which took a while considering they had to deconstruct the game board. It had gotten dark out. "Do you want to just stay the night?"

He had protested originally. Somehow she wore him down, and he ended up fully clothed on her bed, in his suit. Half asleep, he rolled over to kiss her forehead.

Crap, she was not Jenna. Old habits died hard.

She snuggled into him harder.

Miriam never mentioned the kiss. For weeks they met up (he was finally starting to understand what a runner's high was) and became the best of friends. He was healthier than ever, physically and emotionally. 

Then one day, Jenna appeared underneath that tree.

He was running past with Miriam when she called out to him. They had both stopped, but Jenna asked for a private moment.

"Anything you need to say to me can be said in front of her." 

Jenna narrowed her eyes for a moment before turning them to puppy mode. "He broke up with me."

Miriam stifled a laugh. It was no surprise that she wanted him back. 

"That's too bad." Still freezer aisle cold.

"Give me a second chance, Pablo, please." Her hand landed on his arm, rubbing it gently.

"Don't do it." This time the words were aimed at him. No bluetooth cat lady, just a friend trying to make sure he didn't undo how far he had come.

Jenna stepped up into her face. "Don't tell him what to do."

"Don't ask out my boyfriend."

Before he could process what she had said, Miriam twisted him round by the shoulders and kissed him right on the lips. Hard. Long.

Was that her tongue?

Was that his, reciprocating?

They pulled apart, and he felt the most winded he had in weeks. He needed to sit down. 

But first, he needed to make a concrete decision.

"It's kind of sad to watch your ex make out with another girl, isn't it?"

She huffed off, and Pablo sank to the ground.

"Sorry, I just wanted to make sure she stayed off your back for good. You don't need that in your life." She sat down next to him, stretching out her legs. "Let's cut the run short. I would kill for some pancakes right now."

Miriam was very good at taking the focus off their kisses.

He, on the other hand, spent the next half hour watching her lips move, the way she licked the syrup off the fork. Was he that deprived, or was a button finally smashed in with a brick that said he liked the girl?

A small spider crawled onto the table. 

"Don't scream." He took her empty water cup and flipped it upside down to capture it.

"What are you doing? Kill it!" She backed away from the table.

Pablo took a placemat off an empty table and slid it under the cup. "Open the door for me."

Her eyes widened.

"You want to set that monster free?"

"Someone has to eat all the houseflies. Come on, door."

To his surprise, she complied.

She speared a pancake with her fork.

"You really are something else, Pablo."

He wished he could be her something. He was slowly accepting that he was falling for the stranger who had crashed his marriage proposal.

She set her fork down and took his hand. Her thumb rubbed circles.

"I know. But you like me anyway."

"You could say that."

His brain twitched as she dropped his hand and smiled. 

That smile gave him hope.