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and… manly? crashed into her body, flattening her on the ground. She could hear cheers, cries of “aww,” and a sonorous beeping that she finally recognized as her chronometer.
    The time: My time!
    Dazed, Marlea shook her head at the race volunteers who rushed toward her with outstretched hands. Waving them off, digging the toes of her shoes into the gravel, Marlea nearly gained her feet when the… was that a man? moved beneath her foot. Her eyes widened when they met his, and he wrenched his big body to one knee. Feeling trapped in time, Marlea couldn’t stop the disaster she saw coming and he crashed against her shins, bringing her down again.
    The chronograph still sounded against her wrist and Marlea realized she had lost all track of time. Planting her hands against the ground, pushing herself up, she finally managed to untangle her body from the man’s. Stepping over him, she sprinted for the finish line, eyes searching for the time clock. Unable to find it, she circled back toward the finish line. “Time?” she asked the nearest volunteer. “Where can I find my time?”
    “Over there.” The volunteer waved an arm in the general direction of the official podium. Marlea ran toward the high wooden bandstand in the center of the vast green space.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Fine.” On his feet, AJ dusted his hands against his shorts and shook his head. “See? That’s how we got cut,” he scolded his knees. When they didn’t respond, he stood straighter and looked down at the medical volunteer staring anxiously up at him.
    “I’m okay,” he told the short, white-shirted man. The hand he passed over his head told him he had lost his cap somewhere in his tumble with that long-legged runner. “Wonder where it went?” he mumbled, looking at the path around him. He saw the cap, muddy and obviously beyond repair, flop beneath the feet of a running quartet. “Poor hat.”
    “You took quite a tumble,” the volunteer insisted, his blue eyes intense and bulging behind thick prescription lenses. “Why don’t you…Hey, I know you! You’re that guy…the football player…the one on TV who…I swear, I been watchin’ you since before you took the Heisman trophy back in ‘92. An’ that last game against New York, when you rushed for…Are you sure I can’t help you?”
    The man raised his bushy black brows, and AJ raised a hand. “Really, I’m fine. Can you tell me which way the lady went? The lady I, uh, inadvertently tripped.”
    Awed, the little man grinned sloppily and hunched his shoulders. AJ left him on his own.
    Crossing the finish line, AJ raised his hand to greet clapping spectators, glad that they were happy to applaud any human body finishing the run. One little guy, about six years old, ran along the sidelines giving high fives to every runner he could reach. When AJ held his palm out, the kid slapped and grinned. Something about the boy’s smile with its missing teeth made him feel better. Maybe the woman would smile, too, when he found her.
    Still at a slow jog, he tried to remember what she looked like, but it wasn’t easy. He had a distinct impression that she was tall and pretty, long, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She was wearing pretty much standard running gear: a white Nike shirt and bright shorts. “And she was serious about her running.”
    For the first time since the race started, Marlea was having trouble breathing. Instead of her usual rhythmic exhalation, she was panting. Anxiety, she decided, fingering drops of sweat from her face. Sighting the official time station, Marlea angled her run in that direction. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could hear Libby’s voice: Relax. Calm down. If this is meant for you, it’s yours. All those platitudes—what the hell did Libby know, anyway?
    AJ finally spotted her running across the open green field toward the time officials. “Least I can do is own up to what I did and apologize,” he figured, jogging toward