Free You Can Run by Norah McClintock Page B

He didn’t stop running until the sounds of traffic had disappeared.
    â€œNick, I need to catch my breath,” I said, gasping. I run a couple of times a week, but I’m not a sprinter. I pulled my hand out of his and bent over, breathing hard, my heart pounding. I stumbled over to a bench facing the river and dropped down onto it. “Who was that guy?” I said. “What’s going on?”
    Nick stood in front of me, his chest heaving, his face pinched and gray. He was holding his left arm in his right hand again.
    â€œThat’s Aunt Beverly’s boyfriend,” he said.
    â€œYou never mentioned him before.”
    â€œThey’ve been seeing each other for a while,” he said grimly. “Now my aunt says it’s serious.”
    â€œWell,” I said, “there’s that expression, love is blind.” The big man wasn’t my idea of boyfriend material, but there was also that other expression, it takes all kinds.
    â€œShe says he brings her flowers,” Nick said, sounding bitter. “Does stuff around the house for her. He even takes her dancing.”
    â€œHe sounds like every woman’s dream,” I said, trying to imagine the bullying hulk I had just seen waltzing Nick’s aunt across a dance floor. Trying, but not succeeding.
    â€œShe’s crazy about him.” He moved his sore arm tentatively and winced.
    â€œSit down,” I said.
    He held his ground.
    â€œPlease?” I said.
    He stepped a little closer. I took his good hand and pulled him to the bench. He sat.
    â€œLet me see,” I said. I started to push up his left sleeve. I got it high enough to see some deep bruising before he let out a gasp of pain and yanked his arm away.
    â€œMaybe you should get that looked at, Nick.”
    â€œIt’s fine.”
    â€œYour face is white.”
    He didn’t say anything. I might as well have been talking to a tree.
    â€œWhat was going on back there?” I said. “I heard a crash.”
    â€œI bumped into something.”
    I waited for more, but in the end had to prompt him.
    â€œWhen I got to Aunt Bev’s, Glen said she was at the hairdresser. He said he was taking her out tonight.”
    â€œOn a Tuesday?” I know Nick’s aunt. She’s nice and, if you ask me, she really cares about Nick.
    â€œThey’re going to celebrate their two-month anniversary,” Nick said.
    â€œAnd your aunt didn’t tell you?”
    â€œGlen says she left a message for me at Somerset. But I never got it.” He looked angry and hurt.
    â€œIt sounded like you and Glen were fighting,” I said. “Physically, I mean.”
    â€œI fell,” he said. But he looked at the ground instead of at me.
    â€œDid he hurt you?” I said.
    Nothing.
    â€œThat bruise on your arm,” I said, “that’s at least a couple of days old.” There was no way a bruise that color was the result of what I had just overheard. I remembered Nick slipping on his hooded sweatshirt in the taco place. I wondered if he’d done it to hide the bruise. “What happened, Nick? How’d you get that?”
    He jumped to his feet. “What are you doing here anyway?” he said. “You show up uninvited and you start in with a million questions.”
    â€œI didn’t—”
    â€œI don’t get along with the guy, okay? I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. So what?”
    â€œBut if your aunt is serious about him—”
    â€œIf she’s serious, she’s serious. It’s none of my business.”
    â€œYeah, but—”
    â€œI gotta go,” he said.
    â€œBut Nick—”
    He turned and started walking down the footpath that ran along the riverbank. I got up and ran after him. At first when I caught up with him, he pretended I wasn’t there and kept walking, looking straight ahead. But after a couple of minutes, he slowed down and took my hand