Page 29 of The Comeback Summer

No, I tell myself.Don’t.

But when I hear my sister turn on the shower, I grab my phone and text him.

Hannah:Thinking of going for a run. Any interest in joining me?

He replies almost instantly.When and where?

I take a deep breath.At the zoo. In an hour.

Josh:I’ll be there

•••

I ARRIVE ATour designated meeting spot by the benches outside the Lincoln Park Zoo, and lo and behold, Josh is waiting in a T-shirt and running shorts, stretching his quads.

And damn, those are some nice quads. Tan and muscular and just the right amount of dark hair.

I mentally smack myself.Stop it.

At that moment, Josh sees me. I lift my hand in a dorky wave, and he smiles. The familiar dimple pops. The new laugh lines around his eyes crease, and in the space of a single heartbeat, I’m flooded with conflicting desires: run away or run toward him; smile or burst into tears; curl into a fetal position or jump in excitement.

A memory crystallizes: the day I returned from a two-week trip to Israel with GiGi and Libby. Josh met us at O’Hare with a poster that saidwelcome home banana. We all-out sprinted to each other, colliding in a heap of laughter and kisses.

Now it’s an awkward wave and a smile from a distance.

“Hi!” he says as I get closer. He seems like he’s about to pull me into a hug, so I stay a few feet away.

“Ready?” I say.

He blinks, clearly surprised by my abruptness. “Lead the way.”

•••

THE ZOO ISswamped with tourists, other runners, elderly ladies in walking groups, and moms pushing strollers. Josh is right at my side, and because of that I run faster than usual. He hardly seems winded, which I tell myself is because he’s six inches taller than me.

I set off on my usual loop through the zoo, past a snow leopard sunning on a rock, past hulking camels and chattering monkeys. We circle through the boardwalk near the south end, where a series of ponds are flanked by reeds and grasses. Geese and ducks drift lazily across the water, birds chirp overhead, bees hover near wildflowers—and in the distance, the Chicago skyline, shimmering in the late morning sunshine.

The contrast of those jutting skyscrapers with the lushnatural garden is so beautiful, my breath catches. GiGi used to tell us about the Great Chicago Fire, in 1871, when—as legend says—Mrs.O’Leary was milking her cow and knocked over her lantern. Hot winds whipped the blaze into a frenzy that ended up destroying more than two thousand acres of the fledgling city.

But the people of Chicago didn’t allow this to stop them; they rebuilt, bigger and better than before. If our city can make a comeback after such a devastating loss, so can the Freedman Group.

“Is everything okay?” Josh asks, interrupting my thoughts.

I look at him, realizing that we’ve been running in silence. “Oh. Sorry. Just thinking.”

“No worries. I respect the QHT,” he says. Quiet Hannah Time. He coined that term for my prolonged silences in high school; it became our shorthand when I needed to be with my own thoughts, because he tended to burst in with random conversational tidbits when I was silent for even a moment.

“Something’s different about you,” I say, apropos of nothing. “Both times we’ve met, at Stan’s and now here, you arrived before me. What gives?”

He doesn’t answer immediately, and I sneak a glance at him. He’s got his thinking face on, those thick, dark eyebrows pulled tightly together, lips pressed into a line.

I feel like I overstepped, and I say, “You don’t have to answer that—”

“I got diagnosed with ADHD.”

I almost trip over my own feet. “You did? When?”

He nods, his eyebrows a tight knot. “When I went to Australia. I was really struggling in my studies. Forgetting to turnin assignments. Missing tests and meetings. It was... a rough time.”

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