Jennifer Lohmann - Winning Ruby Heart

“Plus,” Haley continued, “before you run another race, how do you know that reporter isn’t looking for you?” Was her cousin trying to convince her to move out or to hide in a bunker?

“According to NSN’s website, he’ll be at a Brewers game that weekend because they’re honoring some ex-player he’s going to interview. In fact—” Ruby’s excitement grew with every word she spoke, both at the thought of another race and beating Haley in this argument “—because the Brewers are in Milwaukee and I’ll be in Indiana, I’ll be farther away from Micah than I have knowingly been in five years.”

Haley let out a big puff of air. “Fine. But I think you’re overplaying your hand. Move out of that house. Get a job. Live a normal life.”

“Just one more race.”

“Said the addict to the heroin needle.”

* * *

AS MICAH REWATCHED some of the film Amir had taken of Ruby, an itch developed between his shoulder blades. There was something off about her stride and a look of pain on her face that couldn’t be the fifty-kilometer run, because she was only five kilometers into the race, which had been her best distance as an Olympian. He looked at her finishing time, which he’d written on a sticky note and stuck on a printout of the photo of her with the American flag high over her head. The itch paced in a circle between his scapulae, nearly wearing a line in his skin.

Ruby had been slow. Even assuming she was trying to get her ultra legs under her, she had still run a slow race. And if she was only running one race—as she claimed—he thought she would have put everything she had into getting the best time possible. Four hours and forty-three minutes was someone’s best time for a fifty-kilometer race, but it sure as hell wasn’t Ruby Heart’s best time.

Micah shifted his shoulders around but couldn’t get the itch out of his back. He drummed his fingers against his desk, then pressed Play on the film again. Ruby had tossed her hat in an attempt to hide from him and Amir, which meant the camera had much better shots of her face, even through the drizzle that had plagued the race. He slowed the film, reassessing what he saw. The look on Ruby’s face wasn’t pain—it was restraint.

Even if she was consciously holding herself back, he knew top athletes as well as he knew his own grandmama, and she couldn’t have been happy with that time. The four hours and forty-three minutes would needle at her brain and pride until she had to see if she could finish better. And even if she was curtailing her normal power for a very good reason, her natural competitiveness would win out. A woman who cared enough about an Olympic gold medal to stick a needle in her arm wasn’t going to let such a poor time stand as the only record of her ultra career.

He stopped the video and opened a browser. She had run one 50K race and he would guess she would run another. Micah navigated to an ultramarathon website and started searching. He stopped when he came to the trail run in Indiana in three weeks. A 50K, with at least a few spots still open. Easy driving distance from Chicago. The arrow of the mouse twitched on the screen as he considered the chances she wouldn’t be there.

If he was wrong, well, he and Amir would have more footage for NSN’s series, so the entire trip wouldn’t be completely wasted. But he wasn’t wrong. He would see Ruby’s tight ass and sleek thighs encased in running shorts as certain as the yuppies at Wrigley Field would spend more time on their cell phones than watching the Cubs play. Micah picked up his phone and called his boss.

* * *

THREE WEEKS LATER, Amir slid into the driver’s seat of the production van with a huff that Micah ignored. His photographer was a baseball fan and had found the last trip out to an ultramarathon—this one in Idaho to film Currito—to be “about as fun as watching a slug climb a rock.”

Despite Micah being a sports guy, Amir’s slug description sounded more interesting than a baseball game to Micah, a secret he would take to his grave. Watching the ultramarathoners push their bodies to the limit of possibility fascinated Micah, and he felt a certain kinship with a sport based on the idea of giving the middle finger to the world’s perception of what was possible for one body to achieve.

What had possessed Ruby to even try an ultramarathon?

They were on I-94 when Amir asked the question that must have been gnawing at his brain since he’d learned about the change of plans. “If this Ruby Heart really is an—how did you say it?—embarrassment to everything sports stands for, why are we skipping out on what should be a great baseball game, not to mention the festivities afterward, to drive to Indiana and watch people run on dirt for eight hours?”

“We don’t have to stay for the whole race. Just until Ruby finishes.”

“Five hours, then.”

This race was hillier than the one in Iowa had been, but Ruby would be trying to run faster. “No more than four and half.” Micah had also looked at the race times for the top runners for this race. Ruby wouldn’t be at that level yet, but she would be gunning for it, even if she didn’t realize it, and those runners did this race in four hours.

“Still, there’s nothing interesting anywhere near this race.” Amir braked to avoid hitting the car in front of them, then moved to the left lane and passed a long line of cars while muttering under his breath about stupid drivers and stupid Indiana. He had made the same complaint in Iowa and Idaho and would probably repeat it again if they watched the ultramarathon in Chicago. “Why lower your standards to follow this fraud?”

“You never complain when I interview baseball players. And you didn’t complain about the Tour de France, either.”

“Sure.” Amir shrugged. “I like baseball and I’m not foolish enough to complain about a trip to France.” Amir had been his photog for almost three years and remembered those interviews as well as Micah did, though through a different lens. “But while the baseball players and the cyclists both wear tight pants, none of them have pigtails.”

Micah didn’t say anything. The pigtails probably spoke to some disturbing fetish hidden deep within, but he thought they were hot.

CHAPTER SIX

RUBY STOOD AMONG the other racers at the starting line, tapping at the dirt with the toe of her running shoe. The weather was perfect. Most of the race would be spent in the trees, so the bright overhead sun would be welcome, rather than a hindrance. The temperature was cool enough that she shouldn’t overheat at kilometer twenty and there was—thankfully—no rain in the forecast. Her main concern was that the loop crossed two streams and she’d not had much practice running with wet feet.

Still, she thought, lifting her head to look at the morning sky visible through the bright green spring leaves above her, she’d invited the deities Nike and Hermes along for the journey and they’d obliged. She could feel them crouching among the other racers. There would be no measly three minutes to haunt her drive home this weekend.

Haley had flatly refused to provide an alibi for another weekend. Her cousin had said she didn’t have a problem lying to Ruby’s parents, but Haley was all out of plausible excuses and she didn’t have the energy to think of implausible ones the Hearts would believe. Ruby had been about to forfeit her entry fee when her mom had announced that she was taking a spur-of-the-moment spa weekend, which meant her father would use the opportunity to stay in the city and work. Or whatever else he did.

She shifted her weight from side to side, partially to keep muscles pliable and partially to move the uncomfortable knowledge of how naive and self-centered she’d been far enough into the back of her head that she didn’t have to stare at it throughout the race. When she’d been training she’d been so focused on herself. Her entire family had been focused on her. All the spare resources went to Team Ruby. She hadn’t even noticed how unhappy her family was until she didn’t have anything else to occupy her mind and they no longer had her to rally around any. Her career hadn’t been the glue that held them together; it had been the butterfly bandage barely keeping them from falling apart when really they’d needed stiches. Now they were left with a scar that would never go away.