While he was jogging through the town he would pass people taking their dogs for a walk, other joggers, people heading out to work, and sleepy children being dragged by their parents into their cars to take them to school. After two and half hours of jogging, he stops at Tamnia River dripping in sweat. Up in the sky, the sun was rising higher and higher into the air and the dark sky started to turn from bck to a murky blue, and then to a nice blue. Lincoln did a hundred push-ups, Fifty sit-ups, and fifty squats before he stretched and sat on the grass to catch his breath. After he catches his breath he stops his music and takes out his earphones with care. Trying to not damage this set as he was now on his fourth set of earphones, just this month. He then takes off his rucksack from his back. Pulls out a towel and a bottle of cold water to wipe the sweat off his face, and sips some water. Once he had two to three rge sips of water, he put his stuff back in his rucksack, ys down on the short fern-colored grass, and stared up at the sky with a small smile on his face. Feeling satisfied with how his day was going. While lying there he would feel the cold breeze every now and then hit his face, which was quite pleasant to him.

  *His stomach grumbles* "I didn't know I would be this hungry." He chuckles. "Oh well I guess I'm just gonna have to wait until I get home," He says out loud before he closes his eyes and embraces the cold breeze some more. After a couple more minutes of lying on the grass, he hears the sound of the grass being crushed under someone's shoes, as they casually approach him.

  "I thought you would be here." As soon as he hears Brodie's voice, he pulls a small grin and opens one of his eyes, to see Brodie standing over him. She was wearing a grey suit with the first two buttons to her bzer undone to show the white shirt that had bck buttons on it. She was also carrying one of her handmade bags in her hand. "I thought you might be hungry so here," she says as she pulls out a pstic container and hands it to Lincoln. The container contained a sad that had shredded carrots, sliced cucumber, and sliced grilled bell peppers, seasoned simply with salt and bck pepper.

  "Nice one," Lincoln says. *Click. Click. Click. Click* Was the sound of the lid slowly being unclipped. He opens up the container, picks up the metal fork that was inside of it, and digs in while Brodie sits down beside him. As he takes his first mouthful of carrots his face lights up with enjoyment. The carrots were fresh, crunchy, and coated well with the right amount of salt and pepper.

  "You know Cullen was looking for you," Brodie says.

  "He was, I wonder why?" Lincoln replies in a confused tone, even though he knows why Cullen was looking for him. Because Brodie knew he was pying dumb, she nudges him before she says.

  "Don't py dumb, you knew he would want to pick you up from the hospital. He called me asking if I had seen you as you weren't there and I told him. Nah I hadn't but I knew if you were going to go anywhere it would be here."

  "Well he would have wanted to go and celebrate my release, and there's no need for that," Lincoln says with a small mouthful of fresh cucumber in his mouth which makes Brodie give him a stern look. "Fine, fine." He swallows the crushed-up cucumber that was in his mouth. "I'll make it up to him."

  "Good," Brodie says as she takes a piece of red bell pepper from the container and eats it. After a couple of seconds of silence, Lincoln says.

  "I didn't know you were going to a job interview." In a sarcastic tone as he already knew exactly where she was going.

  "Shut up." She says in a joking manner before she smacks him on the arm with the back of her hand. "Gosh you are so annoying sometimes, I swear." She pulls out her colored version of her book from her bag. "I finally finished the colored version of my book, so I was heading to the office to get it approved by Freya." She pauses for a second "Actually. I know this is st minute but can you check it again? Just to triple-check and make sure it's okay to show her," Brodie says as she starts to hand it to him. Slightly worried that he was going to say no as he would most likely be annoyed from checking it so many times.

  "Sure," Lincoln replies before he takes it from her and starts going through it. As he was going through it he was making loads of hmm on certain pages, just to tease and make her more nervous. And he was succeeding as she was now sweating slightly and getting worried.

  "W-W-Well, what do you think?" Brodie stutters as it was killing her not knowing what he thinks of it.

  "Hmmm... I don't know this page here" -he holds up the book towards the sky- "Is that a dark splodge there?" Once Lincoln says that she snatches her manga from his hands and looks at it thoroughly to try and find the dark splodge he was talking about. But she couldn't see the dark splodge at all.

  "Where is the splodge?" She asks.

  "Can you really not see it?" Lincoln says with a small grin which she didn't notice as she was too focused on checking for the error.

  "Yes, so tell me," Brodie snaps.

  "Weeeeell, you can't see it cause." He pauses. "It's not there." As soon as he says that he starts to ugh.

  "That's not funny!" She shouts after smacking him in the arm once again but this time harder.

  "You know I was only messing, and even if you did make a splodge. Not everyone has hawk-eye vision like yours, and notice it," Lincoln says while he rubs the area on his arm where she smacked him.

  "You would be surprised how many people would call me out for a thing like that," she responds.

  "I guess you're not wrong" -he picks up a long slice of bell pepper- "but that doesn't mean you have to be so pinpoint that you'll ask your publisher for more time just because in your eyes the color isn't the right shade." He fires back before he puts the bell pepper into his mouth, chews it into small pieces, and swallows it. The yellow slice of bell pepper was warmer and softer than the carrots but even so, it didn't make it lose its fvor.

  "Well, that was a one-time thing. And in my defense, I was cking sleep," Brodie says back trying to defend herself.

  "Now we both know that it hasn't been a" -he does air quotes- "one-time thing. Plus haven't there been times when you asked for more time to correct an error that wasn't there hmmm?" Lincoln asks which makes Brodie start to blush slightly.

  "Shut up," she says in a flustered way as Lincoln ughs.

  "Well don't worry, it looks good like always." He wasn't wrong either. Her art was really unique and not in a bad way. You could tell that each panel took her a long time to first pn out to make sure it looked appealing to the eye and then draw.

  "Thanks," Brodie says. After an hour of them talking about multiple things, like Lincoln asking how everyone was since he was in the hospital. To them talking about FmFck, to them arguing about their favorite character in Salvation, and talking about the test update in the game. As they were going to move onto a different subject, there were two things that Brodie was thinking about in the back of her mind. The first was that she was surprised that Lincoln hadn't cried once after losing at Eclipse, even though he was so close to winning for the first time. Everyone knew how much winning meant to him but he didn't even cry once or mention how unfair it was that he lost. The second was how she was going to apologize to him, as she felt like she was one of the main reasons why he lost. "Pssssst Earth to Brodie. I repeat Earth to Brodie, are you reading me?" He asks as he knows that she isn't really paying attention to what he is saying.

  "Huh sorry. I was thinking about something else." Brodie says while she looks off at the river. Lincoln sighs before he nudges her and says.

  "If you're thinking about how you are the reason why I lost then you're wrong."

  "But if I-"

  "It wasn't your fault." He pauses for a second. "Granted after you said how you loved me, it did want me to show off a little more and let you see me shine but at the same time" -he scratches the back of his head- "It gave me more motivation to not give up. I already told you this but the reason why I lost was because I wasn't strong enough." He pauses once more before he lets out a long sigh. "But now that Eclipse is over I need to move on to the next one. But before I do that, there's something I need to tell you," he says as he slowly turns her head to face him. He then moves a strand of her light chocote brown hair that was in her face so that he could see both of her emerald green eyes.

  "W-W-What is it?" Brodie says now red as she had no clue what he was about to do. Every second that went by he could feel Brodie get hotter and hotter in body temperature. It was like she was a kettle with water in it slowly getting hotter and hotter until the water was boiled.

  "No need to be so nervous," Lincoln says with a devious smile while he softly strokes the left side of her.

  "S-S-Shut up and just say it," she says, not trying to sound nervous even though inside her brain. She was freaking out and felt that his next words and actions were either going to make her defte like a football, cry or bst off like a firework. He knew that if he kept postponing what he had to say, she would get so hot that he wouldn't be able to touch her without her realizing that she was hot.

  He smiles softly and says. "I-" *Brodie's ringtone pys* But before he can finish his sentence, Brodie's phone starts to ring. At that moment they just look at each other in disappointment. After the phone rang for the third time Lincoln let out a sigh of his disappointment and slowly removed his hand, and says. "I think you should answer your phone."

  "Ah... Okay," was the words she said sadly but in her head, she was screaming FUUUUUUUUCK. She checked her phone and saw the caller was Freya. "Sorry. It's Freya. I-I, um..." She sighs and then continues. "Fuck," she says sadly. "I gotta take this. I'm sorry." He could tell just from looking at her green eyes that she felt bad that he wasn't able to say what he wanted to say so to try and make her feel less bad he said.

  "It's fine what I had to say can wait," Lincoln says, letting one of the biggest lies he had told in a while. With that Brodie tightens her grip on her phone as she answers it while looking upset.

  "Hi."

  "Hello. Sorry if this is a bad time but how far are you now?" Freya asks.

  "No it's okay, I'm about twenty minutes away. I'm sorry I'm taking so long at an important time like this." Why of all times did she have to call? She thought to herself while she responded to Freya.

  "It's fine. Don't worry too much, as long as you are here by ten thirty then we should be good. But I would like to double check it and discuss the promo for it more in detail."

  Okay, I'll see you soon."

  "Alright see you soon."

  "Bye."

  "I'm guessing you have to go?" Lincoln says as Brodie slips her phone back into her pocket slowly, puts her manga into her bag, and stands up.

  "Yeah. Sorry," she replies sadly.

  "Again, it's fine. I'll talk to you ter." Lincoln hands her back the pstic box with only shreds of carrot, half a slice of cucumber and the fork left inside of it. "Thanks for the sad, I enjoy it," he says which makes her smile a little.

  "No problem," She says. She then takes a couple of steps before stopping, turns around, and taps the bottom of the pstic box on the top of his head. "Oh yeah, now that you're out of the hospital. Turn your phone back on. It'll make it easier to get a hold of you," she says as she walks up the hill and drives off. Once Brodie's car was not in sight, Lincoln looked straight at the river as he pulled out bdes of grass, and thought about how much of an idiot he was for not telling her how he really feels about her. After a couple of seconds, He lets out a sigh before he says.

  "I guess I'll head home." He then stands up, dusts himself off, and heads home. He had to walk for some time, as the Tamnia River was quite far from his house. It would normally have taken him thirty minutes to get home. But he didn't mind taking his time as the weather was nice, and he wanted to clear his head.