Maggie is late.
She pulls up to the logging road gate and sees Will's truck already parked. She's frustrated her alarm didn't go off. She grabs her hand held water bottle and carefully steps over the gate. She glances as Will's truck as she passes. No note on the windshield. She guesses that he waited for her for fifteen or twenty minutes. But she's more like thirty minutes late.
Maggie has been running with Will for the last few months at lunch and he's finally invited her to go on a weekend run up a nearby box canyon on gated logging roads.
It's getting warm out and Maggie is wearing a jog bra and a pair of skintight boy shorts.
She's not wearing much on purpose, because:
Will is an attractive man. In fact, Maggie thinks he's downright gorgeous.
And Maggie has been without a boyfriend now for several months.
Will is nice to her, and they have become good friends, just by running at noon. He works at a nearby office. They bumped into each other one day while they were both finishing up a lunchtime run. They've been running partners ever since.
Conversations at lunch are fairly benign. She knows that his wife left him recently, although doesn't know all the details. She suspects it has to do with a third person, but she can't tell for sure. She can tell he is somewhat distrusting of women, although he is always very polite to her. Running at is where he draws the line with her. Although she finds him very attractive, and has tried to get him to ask her out, he always has an excuse.
Will is tall and muscular, and swims and runs regularly. He's ten years her senior, to her twenty-five. His hair goes beach blonde in the sun, and his skin goes to a dark tan. Maggie has seen other women turn their heads and look at him, although he is oblivious to it. She likes that he is humble.
Maggie is shorter than Will, and fit. She runs five days a week. This morning, after she slipped on her sports bra and contemplates a shirt for the top, she admires her own flat stomach, and beginnings of washboard abs. Her hair is auburn and long and pulled into a ponytail. Her legs are long and shapely. She smoothes her hands over her smooth shaved legs and looks approvingly at her ass in the mirror. Admires the way the shorts hug the very bottom of her behind. She hopes it's enough to get Will to look twice. She's not wearing any underwear. On purpose.
Two days ago Will and Maggie were running and getting along well. Maggie told him a story she heard about a friend of a co-worker who runs in the nude when on vacation in the desert outside of Death Valley.
"I don't know," Will said, "I think that might be something he should keep to himself."
Maggie laughed, "It's on the list of things to do."
"Really?" Will asked, genuinely surprised.
"Really." Maggie responded.
Will seemed to change the subject.
"You should go running with me this weekend. It's closed logging roads and no one ever goes up there. I go up there almost once a week."
Then adds like a tease, "You can run naked up there. No one will see you."
Will continued and tells her she needs to bring a handheld water bottle because its southern facing and can heat up. The run usually takes anywhere from an hour and half to two hours.
"Why the time difference?" Maggie wanted to know.
"Just depends on what route I take, or if I stop and smell the roses." He smiles at her.
So she agreed to go.
And now she's late. And it's not her fault. Okay, maybe it is a little. A comedy of errors really- Her alarm didn't go off, and then getting stuck in traffic- who would have thought there would be traffic on a Saturday morning?
She starts off at a jog up the hill, but it's pretty steep, made for logging trucks in a low gear, and it's a grind. She sees Will's footprints in the dust of the middle of the road, and is satisfied she won't get lost.
Will is right. The south-facing slope does get warm quickly. She's glad she's not wearing an extra shirt, even if the lack of clothing was to tease Will, or maybe entice him into her body hugging boy shorts. She's not usually a tease at all, but after all, Will is so sexy.
She's working hard up the slope. Her GPS watch beeps. She's gone a mile, then two. She looks up and sees a figure on a side slope, running on what looks like a steep ramp cut into the side of the mountain. The nearby slopes have been logged a few years back and smallish trees are growing in clear-cut. She smells the fir trees on the light breeze and thinks that despite how hard the run is, it's good to be out of town and in the great outdoors.
She stops and squints in the bright light. Sweat is dripping off of her now. Looks like it's probably Will, and he's got his shirt off.
I should take mine off too. She laughs to herself. Then continues on up the gravel road. She keeps him in sight, and gains some ground on him, working hard at a faster pace than Will is running.
She rounds a corner and the road follows a ridge like a ribbon of gravel, rising an falling gently until it rises again and disappears into the trees. She sees Will about a quarter mile away, maybe slightly farther, and she stops dead in her tracks, and pushes her sunglasses down her nose, looking over the top of them.
Maggie almost laughs out loud, but instead, smiles broadly.
Will is running naked.
There's no mistake at all. He's not wearing a stitch of clothing save his running shoes. He's maybe got something his hand, but from this far away, it's hard to tell.
She trails him, still gaining, but also trying not to let him see her. Will runs up the final stretch of road into the trees, and she's not too far behind him. She comes around a bend just in time to see him take a right turn down a spur road.
It takes her several minutes to make it to the spur, and she approaches the turn slowly. She doesn't see him, and she continues up the spur until it widens out into a landing. She doesn't see Will. She carefully picks her way to the end of the landing and sees a trail that heads off into the trees. She sees Will's footprints and follows it for a short distance until she can see a break in the taller trees and the forest gives way to a meadow in the sun.
She pauses at the tree line and looks for Will.