This Is 35

by Stacey Wiedower

  Leo straightened up and then looked past her toward the bland rows of cars, the dark uniform line of trees, the expressway bridge looming dimly in the distance. When he spoke again his voice was so low Erin wasn't sure she heard him right.

  "If I were him, I'd never let you climb a mountain without me."

  Her jaw went slack, but when Leo stepped forward and caught up to her, all he said was, "Are you parked in this lot? C'mon, and I'll walk with you. It's getting dark out here."

  She nodded and started walking, digging in her bag for her keys and phone. They got to her car first, and Leo waited as she unlocked the door and climbed in.

  "Be safe. I'll see you in two weeks." He gave her a nod and turned.

  "See you," Erin echoed faintly. She closed her door and turned the key in the ignition.

  Before putting the car in gear she finally checked her phone. She had a text from Ben that read How'd the class go? I think I can make the next one. Work should be lighter this week.

  Erin closed her eyes for a long moment and then opened them again, a wry smile on her lips. A bit late, hon. Too late for the show, anyway. But it was better than nothing. She brightened as she thought about introducing Ben to Arturo.

  I'll schedule us a session, she texted back. Cannot WAIT to see you in morning.

  Ditto. U home? Call me?

  Heading home now. Calling…

  She plugged her phone into the car's USB and hands-free dialed, anxious to hear his voice. As soon as he answered she said, "So, you want to learn how to cook?"

  She pushed aside the odd exchange with Leo, not giving it another thought.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, on the Wednesday after her thirty-fourth birthday, Erin had just pulled off her running shoes and was rubbing her left arch when the back door creaked, signaling Ben's arrival. She glanced at her phone. 8:23 p.m. Well, he was home a little earlier than usual.

  "Been out running this late?" He kissed the top of Erin's head and sank onto the ottoman, placing her foot on his lap and taking over the massage. Erin moaned and fell back into the squishy, worn cushions of their striped blue chair, another grad school holdover that was well overdue for replacement.

  "Well, the race is in a little over two weeks, you know." She cracked her eyelids to gauge his reaction.

  "Two weeks? That soon?"

  He looked alarmed enough that Erin felt she'd finally found her opening. "That soon. Everything list-wise is crunched in together right now because of the shooting schedule."

  Ben was still rubbing circles into the bottom of her foot with his thumb. He pulled her other foot onto his lap as Erin closed her eyes again and feigned nonchalance.

  "Any chance you're still up for doing the race with me?" He dug into both arches with the pads of his fingers. "Mmm, that feels good."

  He was silent long enough that Erin had to peek. She peered up from under her lashes and noted his guilty expression. Her stomach sank, and she closed her eyes again. "Guess that answers that." She didn't bother to hide the disappointment in her voice.

  "Hey, now." Ben placed her feet on the ottoman and perched on the flat, square-edged arm of the chair. When his hands touched the sides of her head, Erin jumped. His thumbs forced her eyelids up gently, as if she were a kid feigning sleep.

  Erin couldn't help herself. She giggled, swatting his hands away. And then she extended her lower lip in an exaggerated pout. "I might have forgiven you if you hadn't stopped massaging my feet."

  She looked up at him, expecting more joking around. But Ben's face was contrite.

  "I haven't been training," he said. "I can't train for and finish a triathlon in under two weeks."

  Erin knew he'd say that. She'd suspected for weeks now that he wasn't doing the race. Still, she couldn't stop herself from saying exactly what she shouldn't, in the exact tone she knew she shouldn't use. "You could do a triathlon without training. You could get up off this chair and do one right now."

  It was probably true. Ben had run sixteen marathons. Full marathons. In four of them, he'd medaled in his age group. His athleticism outpaced hers by…well, by about a minute and a half per mile.

  She turned her chin defiantly away, but he angled his body around until her eyes met his.

  "I'm sorry. Really, I am. I had no idea this Lester project was going to drag out for this long or turn into something so big. The timing couldn't be worse." He stood and started unbuttoning his work shirt, which told Erin her window was closing. Any remaining hope that he might compete congealed into a tight ball in her stomach.

  "I know," she said. "You've said that already."

  Ben's lips turned downward. Erin squeezed her eyes shut, hating the way she'd handled the situation. All this waiting for the right moment, and instead of talking to Ben in an adult, rational manner, she was acting like a whiny teenager.

  She forced herself to accept no as his final answer, knowing that at this point it wouldn't change, and she jumped up suddenly from the chair and stood on her tiptoes to give him a conciliatory peck on the lips. The last thing she wanted was to ruin the one hour she'd get to spend with him today before he zonked out in front of the TV.

  "I know," she repeated. "I know you'd do the race if you felt like you could." She snaked her arms around his waist despite the fact that she was crusty with dried sweat. If he'd walked in five minutes later, he'd have found her in the shower.

  He softened at once, and the tension around them slowly dissipated. Ben was rarely anxious, and when it did happen Erin was rarely the one to bring it out in him—usually it was a situation at work and usually one that involved The Nemesis, otherwise known as his boss, Melody.

  One thing was still bothering her, though, and she decided to just spit it out, get all the discomfort over with at once. With her arms still wrapped around his waist and her face muffled in his chest, she said, "Um, Ben?"

  "Mmm-hmm?" He pressed his lips into the top of her sweat-damp head. For a second she was distracted, wondering if she could coax him into the shower with her.

  "You are at least going to do the ballroom dance lessons with me, right?" She pulled back and looked him in the eye, pleading wordlessly. "Please tell me you're not going to make me dance with a random partner on camera?"

  To her relief, the tension didn't come back into his frame. He chuckled and then pulled her back against him. "Are you kidding me?" His voice grew deeper, possessive. "You think I want you dancing with some random dude? I'm busy, but I'm not dumb."

  "So that's a yes, then?" The relief was heady, but she wanted a firm confirmation.

  He chuckled. "That's a yes. Let me know when you want to book it so I can make sure I put it in my calendar."

  Erin squeezed him tight, as if she was afraid to detonate a grenade. Even though they hadn't technically argued, she sensed their first married make-up sex on the horizon. That thought brought a smile to her lips. She loosened her grip on his waist and pulled him in the direction of the shower.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Somewhere in Between

  July 8, eleven months to thirty-five

  Erin shook out her jelly arms and hunched forward, her hands on her knees. Ben watched with empathy—and probably a little guilt since unlike hers, his body hadn't been through torture in the last two and a half hours.

  But at least he was here.

  She hadn't thought he'd show up. He'd left the house before her this morning, an equipment emergency pulling him into the lab even though it was Saturday—so it was a nice surprise when he was waiting for her after the race.

  Erin wondered if Leo knew Ben was here. Every time Ben didn't show up, Leo did. He couldn't help it, of course—it was his job—but Erin felt like he was milking Ben's absences, even enjoying them. She played back his jibe outside the cooking school. "Get that clown in front of my camera next time."

  When she'd found Leo before the race, and Ben wasn't with her, Leo was smug, like he'd expected it. And now she didn't see him anywhere.

&
nbsp; "Where's your crew?" Ben asked, as if reading her mind.

  "I don't know." Erin straightened up and peered around at the dispersing crowd of racers. She'd figured he'd be hounding her for post-race footage, but neither Leo nor his crew was anywhere in sight. She shrugged and turned her attention back to the fire in her hamstrings.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, she finally spotted Leo in the party tent. He was talking to one of the athletes, a brunette with porcelain skin and a long wavy ponytail who Erin pegged to be around twenty-five. Leo definitely had a "type."

  He noticed her and waved, but didn't stop what he was doing to set up for a post-race interview as she expected. He didn't even have equipment with him, let alone a crew. Ben waited at the door of the tent as she limped over to say good-bye.

  "Is that a wrap, boss?"

  Leo laughed. "You're the boss. You tell me."

  Erin perched on the back of a chair. Leo was standing in the shade of the tent next to a large plastic "window." He had an entourage of two, the dark-haired woman he introduced as Gracie and another woman Erin assumed was Gracie's racing partner. She was pale and thin with lank blonde hair. Leo forgot her name—Angelica—as he introduced them.

  "We're about to head home," Erin said. "You leaving this afternoon?"

  Leo shook his head. "Tomorrow, bright and early." He looked at Gracie when he said this, who blushed and glanced down at the tabletop.

  Erin empathized with the girl, remembering what it felt like to get hit on after an exhausting race—it had happened to her after her first marathon when she'd wound up on a quasi-double date with Sherri, Alex, and Travis, a member of Alex's band. Unbeknownst to Erin, that "date" had made Ben jealous as hell, even though Erin had ditched Travis and bailed out early, too exhausted to even think about any other ending to the night.

  Erin considered Gracie. Even if the girl found Leo attractive, some part of her, Erin knew, just wanted him to go away and leave her alone to recover. She glanced from her to him, trying to pick up on their vibe to see if she should "rescue" her from Leo. After a two-second internal struggle, she decided it wasn't her business.

  She turned to Leo. "I'm good. I don't think we need a post-race wrap-up. It'd probably be throwaway footage anyway. We're going to have less time per segment this season with eleven stories to tell."

  "That's what I figured." He shrugged.

  Erin peered closer at him, puzzled. Usually Leo was dogged with the lens, no matter how much footage landed on the cutting room floor. And then she realized he must be in a hurry to hustle her out of there so he could continue feeding pickup lines to the dark-haired girl.

  He was watching her with an amused expression.

  "OK, then." She pushed away from the chair and turned to the two women. Nice to meet you, Gracie, Angelica." She put a slight emphasis on the second girl's name. Leo's lips twitched.

  After the two women mumbled niceties, Erin asked, "Two weeks?"

  Leo pursed his lips, considering. "I think I'm back here in a week and a half," he said. "I'll check my flight itinerary and email you."

  Erin's eyes widened. A week and a half. She hadn't even researched dance schools yet. Geez, time's flying. Before she knew it, she'd be camped out in L.A., hanging out in the bullpen for weeks on end and viewing mind-numbing amounts of video footage. She was glad this was almost over—being an "actor" on her own show was exhausting. She'd had no idea back when she'd said yes that YOLO's timeline would crush down on her so hard. When she'd made the 35 by 35 list, she'd given herself four and a half years to complete it. Easy-peasy. OK, yes, she'd started slow. But thanks to YOLO, she was now trucking through list items as if the deadline were two months away, not almost a year.

  Dance training a week after finishing a triathlon? That was just nuts. Her calves emitted new waves of pain at the mere thought of it.

  At least the rest of her bucket list would seem easy by comparison. All except… Erin's stomach dropped as the last item popped into her brain: No. 35: Get pregnant.

  A year seemed like a long way off, but it'd be here in a flash. She should have written Start trying as the list item, not Get pregnant. If they were going to be pregnant a year from now, shouldn't they be trying much sooner? It had taken Hilary and Mark at least a year to get pregnant. And assuming they did get pregnant, as busy as she and Ben were, how would they fit a baby into their lives? Would Ben slack off at work, or would Erin be the one to make all the career sacrifices?

  It was one more thing they had to discuss…when they found the time.

  She sighed and shook her head—and then remembered where she was. She was standing in the midst of Leo and two strangers, staring off into space, getting in the way of Leo's hookup. He was watching her with an amused glint in his eyes. She smiled wryly and backed up a couple steps.

  "Yeah, OK," she said. "Email me." She turned and looked for Ben, spotting him outside the beer tent. "You kids have fun."

  Leo's voice drawled after her. "Oh, don't worry about that."

  She glanced back to see him swing a leg over the chair next to Gracie's, so close that her long hair fanned out along his right arm. Angelica was sitting apart from them, tipping back in her white plastic chair, scrolling through her phone.

  Erin rolled her eyes, thinking with the way he picked up women, Leo probably had a hookup in every city in the United States and maybe in a few other countries, too. Ugh. Not my problem.

  She left the tent and joined Ben, and together they walked out of the gate and toward their cars.

  * * *

  Date: July 8

  Age: 34

  Time to 35: 11 months, 6 days

  List Item: No. 18: Complete a triathlon

  Well, it's official. I'm a triathlete! Finishing a triathlon has been a goal of mine for a long, long time. It was daunting as a list item because even though I've been running since I was a kid, I'm a rookie in the water. Remember, I'm from Frisco, Texas—landlocked in the extreme. I grew up going to pools in the summertime (The Texas heat is not exaggerated.), and I worked as a lifeguard for two summers in high school. But mastering the breaststroke and getting trained in CPR don't exactly prepare you for a mile-long swim in open water.

  So, let me tell you a little about this challenge and how I prepared for it. What I signed up for was an Olympic triathlon, not the whole "Ironman" thing the kids are talking about. (This is *35*, not 25. Yeesh.) That meant I had to be ready to swim 0.93 miles, bike 24.8 miles, and run 6.2 miles. I still run regularly, and I've finished two marathons, but what I HADN'T done was run six miles after swimming until my lungs were ready to give out and then mount a bike and cycle cross-country till my butt was numb and my legs were like two sticks of Jell-O.

  For twenty-ish weeks (interrupted some by work and then by my wedding and honeymoon), I swam, biked, and ran like a woman possessed. Even this didn't prep me for the intensity of the race—the unknown terrain, the competitiveness that comes from being surrounded by tough athletes. And I'm not going to lie—it kicked my butt. I even fell after getting on the bike—got too close to another rider, and my back tire snagged the curb. I hauled my butt back on the bike and kept going.

  I have even more respect now for athletes of all shapes, sizes, ages, and stripes. As I was cooling down after the race, I found myself looking around at the other competitors and wondering what their stories were. How many of them were seasoned endurance athletes? How many were checking off a bucket list like me? How many were grabbing life by the handlebars after a traumatic experience? Overcoming a fear, or responding to a challenge, or heading off a mid-life crisis?

  Living life out loud (YOLO!) isn't easy, and that's what fascinates me about making and carrying out these lists. Some days it feels absolutely ordinary—I'm not so special—and some days, when I'm drained and dreary and it's damn near impossible to do anything but sit on the couch and stare at a rectangle with sound coming out of it, it feels essential. Instead of making me ask myself why I'm doing this, it m
akes me ask why on earth I ever wouldn't do this. Have you ever had that feeling? In the comments let's chat about WHY we need our lists. What inspired yours? When have you felt the way I'm feeling now? I can't wait to hear from you.

  Erin ran through the words of her post one more time, double-checking the photo captions and making sure she'd used the right keywords for Google optimization. She hadn't known how to do any of these things when she'd launched 30 First Dates, but now her blog was more than an online journal—it was a business and a brand. She posted daily. She ran contests and had sponsors. Her daily readership ranged from around five thousand to upward of ten thousand when she wrote a heavily shared post—usually these were the behind-the-scenes posts about the show.

  Some days she loved her work with a fiery passion. Some days it was just work. Today fell somewhere in between. Erin sighed and placed her elbow on the desktop, plopping her chin into her hand and puzzling over the fact that what she really felt was bummed.

  She wasn't lying in the post—her list had finally pushed her to complete a triathlon, something she'd never figured she'd actually do, and that felt great. Checking off this list item gave a bigger high than most of the other items combined. Kind of like running her first marathon while she was working on her first bucket list.

  Hmmm.

  She was hitting on something—she could feel it.

  Why am I not more excited?

  And inexplicably Leo's face popped into her head. Staring at her laptop screen with the triathlon post ready to publish, she thought about the way Leo always seemed to be humoring her, or at the very least inserting his wry commentary into her bucket list performance. He liked to pick on her. Did he do that with the show's other contestants, too, or was it just her? She thought about it, tried to remember if Leo's personality had seeped through on footage from the previous season.