Race day had come and Lara’s Ladies were ready. The eleven of us lined up in front of the sign-in desk to collect our purple and teal T-shirts with Ellery Hospital Cancer Center proudly printed across the front. Positive energy buzzed in the crowd of colorful T-shirts and bright smiles and allowed us to overlook the cold March drizzle as we pinned race numbers to each other’s backs. I wouldn’t be cold during the run though; Vanessa had seen to that. She’d dragged me to the sporting goods store again and squawked at me until I bought an insulated warm-up jacket and special socks. I also splurged on a new technical swimsuit to wear under my T-shirt. I had overheard the high school girls talking about how they wore their race suits a size smaller than their practice suits. I bought a black knee skin suit with bright blue silicone straps that was three sizes smaller than my original suit. It made me feel like a bullet ripping through the water and could double as both running and biking gear. Vanessa bought pink padded bicycle pants and special gloves with rhinestones embedded in the leather. We might not have been the fastest competitors, but we were definitely the best dressed.
Liam gave the group one last pep talk and sent the other Ladies off to the start zone. Since there were eleven of us, and none of the other Ladies could keep up with me, Liam had recruited a running partner for me. He waved a slightly balding boyish-faced man out of the crowd and introduced him as Sebastian Lincoln. I said a polite hello and stepped away to stretch. I had been training for this race for months. I wasn’t going to let some dude Liam dug up slow me down.
When the crowd began to move in the direction of the starting line, Liam and Sebastian found me at the edge of the parking lot. “You ready, Lara?” I nodded even though my stomach was in knots. “Remember what Elkie said and try to have fun. You don’t need to win.”
“Yes I do.”
Liam snorted and turned to Sebastian. “It looks like we’re going to start soon. I’ll hang on to your warm-ups for you.” Sebastian leaned over and unzipped the sides of his pants. They fell away to expose a curved alloy prosthesis where his left leg should have been.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed. “Where the hell’s your leg?”
Sebastian looked down and feigned shock. “Golly gee! Where could it be? I know I had two legs when I left the house this morning!” he said in falsetto. He started jumping in place to warm up. “Liam, you said she was prickly, but you didn’t say she’s an ass.”
Liam shook his head as he took the pants from Sebastian. “Good luck out there, you two. I’m not sure which one of you needs it most.” He turned and disappeared into the crowd.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “What happened?”
“Cancer, just like you. You can just see my missing parts better,” Sebastian said with a smirk.
I am going to kill Liam. He has got to stop talking about me behind my back. I don’t care how sweet he is. The crowd began to move, walking at first then building to a slow jog.
“Can you really run on that thing? It looks like something out of a science fiction movie.”
“Faster than you can.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’ll bet you dinner I can. The winner picks the restaurant.” The crowd sped to a run, allowing me to not respond. This man intrigued me. He was damaged.
“When’d you lose your leg?”
“I didn’t misplace it. They cut it off. Five years ago. Bone cancer. I was 26. When were you diagnosed?”
“August. Did Liam tell you about my cancer?”
“No. Liam’s cool about stuff like that.” We started jogging faster. “The team’s name is Lara’s Ladies and you are said Lara. Ergo, you must have cancer. I take it you’re feeling okay. You run well. You look good. Better than good.” I felt my checks get hot. I somehow didn’t mind that this Sebastian was flirting with me.
“I’m doing really well. I still get tired. Better though.”
“Liam said you had a great pair of legs when he asked me to do this with you. Were you always a runner?”
Sebastian didn’t even sound out of breath yet. I picked up the pace a notch, testing how fast Sebastian could go.
“I was a gym rat… before.” I ruefully thought about my days of endless cycling to nowhere in sterile rooms with a booming bass beat drowning out all conversation. “This is my first race outside.” It was getting harder to talk. “Like the swimming best.”
“Me, too. At least now that I’ve got my one-legged kick down.”
I was impressed by Sebastian’s gait. We had left most of the pack behind by the two-kilometer flag. The curved foot of his prosthetic was efficient. I struggled to keep up with his pace. “Different footie thing for the bike?”
“Yeah. Bike shop hooked me up. Custom prosthetic.”
“Cosmic Cycles?”
“Damn thing cost more than my first car.”
“Train with a team?”
“Nah. My greyhound, Mitzi, every morning. Forces me out of bed. Doesn’t care if I only have one leg.”
I thought about Barkis. He couldn’t care less if I had an intact cervix or not. “Me, too. Pit-bull mix. Looks mean. Big baby.”
We ran on in companionable silence for two more kilometers, passing the runners who had taken off too fast and could not maintain their pace. We crested a hill at the front of the pack. At the side of the road was a young couple with a sable greyhound quivering on the end of her leash. As soon as she saw Sebastian come over the top, she tried to launch into the road.
“Mike!” Sebastian yelled. “Mitzi!” The young man tugged on the leash keeping the dog from knocking me down. The greyhound barked and whined until we turned the next corner.
“Your dog?”
“My brother gets bored. Starts talking.”
“Why bring her?”
“Hate leaving her at home. School all week. Take her everywhere on the weekends. My students say I’m obsessed.”
“Teacher?”
“English. Bunch of miscreants. Can’t tell Hemingway from Hawthorne.”
“Both American. Different centuries. Lavish description. Hardly any.”
“Thank you!” Sebastian said. “What do you do?”
My thighs were burning. I wanted to stop running, but I didn’t want to stop talking. “Research. Commodities firm. Minerals.”
“Like banking?”
“Investments.”
“Do people scream and run away when they see you coming?”
“Not everyone,” I giggled. I was having fun. “Just lazy people. Or those bad at math.”
“Like it?”
“Yeah. Changed jobs. Same company. Change can be good. Thinking about moving closer. Don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe I should wait.”
“For what?”
When we rounded the last corner, I could see Vanessa jumping up and down like a toddler at the finish line. She and her partner were in a later start group. “Look,” Sebastian said. “Toy poodle.”
I laughed and almost broke stride. “My friend. Vanessa.”
“I’m sorry. Sure she’s a lovely woman.”
“She is. And brightly colored.”
We sprinted to the finish line. Sebastian let me cross the line first and made a show of pretending to have been bested. I turned to say I knew he let me win, but in the hustle and bustle of finding my bike and getting back on the road, I lost him. I didn’t see him on the road. He may have been ahead of me or far behind. As I found my cadence, I smiled thinking about the intriguing man with the silver leg. I wondered if he was serious about having dinner with me. I hoped he was.
The bicycle portion of the race went well. The saddle that Liam had installed supported my pelvis so I could concentrate on staying in the pack of mostly men and hit the pool with only a handful of other competitors. I lost some ground during the mile swim but ended up finishing the triathlon as the third woman and in twenty-fourth place overall. At the closing ceremony, Liam picked me up and twirled me around until Elkie came over and made him put me down. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “It’s a rare woman who can do a race like this so soon after radiation.”
“I encouraged her to do it,” Vanessa whined from behind Liam.
“Yes you did, dear,” Elkie said dismissively. I felt a surge of satisfaction at being the favored child. I stood in the bleachers ostensibly to watch the winning teams receive ribbons, but I was looking for Sebastian’s balding head and silver leg. He was listed as coming in thirty-third. My stomach rumbled loudly as I heard a voice directly behind me say, “So what kind of food would you like?”
I whipped around with a grin. “I don’t know, but I could eat a horse.”
“That’s what I like. A girl with an appetite.”
“Who are you?” Vanessa asked, stepping protectively between Sebastian and me.
“Vanessa, this is Sebastian.” I gently nudged Vanessa to the side. “He’s the guy Liam paired me with for the run. He bet me dinner that I couldn’t beat him.”
“Dinner?” Vanessa raised an eyebrow and gave us a knowing look. She stepped away toward the rest of the team. “I think I’ll ask Celeste if she’ll give me a ride to the pizza place. Catch up with us later. Or don’t.”
Crap, she thinks I’m ditching her to go on a date? “Bye,” I called after her. “I’ll call you later.”
Oh my God! I am ditching her to go on a date!
After the ceremony, Sebastian and I joined the stream of people flowing to the parking lot. He no longer hopped along like he did with his running leg. His gait was fine. I wouldn’t have guessed he had an artificial leg. “How about barbecue? I know a place where we can split a quarter of a pig plus hush puppies, onion rings, and slaw. And they have these great Cheerwine floats.”
“Cheerwine? I haven’t had that since I was little.” I remembered how my grandfather had loved the sticky red soda. A bottle of Cheerwine would be the perfect way to top off a good day.