Harper snorted. “You’re missing a part of a leg, and you’re already working on slow jogs on the treadmill. I think I can handle running to the tree and back with two regular legs.”

His grin was sneaky. He couldn’t wait to watch her puke. “Quit stalling. Run. I’ll watch and judge mercilessly.”

Harper stuck her tongue out at him and turned away. She took off at what was an ugly half-sprint, half-flail, and Aldo laughed. Her shoulders were hunched, her feet kicked out at odd angles behind her, and her entire torso twisted from side-to-side as she hurled herself across the terrain.

He’d never seen anyone worse at running before.

Her pace slowed as she approached the big pine and then slowed again as she turned around. Not so cocky now that she was realizing it was all uphill back to him, was she?

“Let’s go, Harp!” he called. He could hear her wheezes from here.

Slowly, she shuffled her way back to him. “Please don’t throw up. Please don’t throw up,” she chanted.

Aldo laughed.

“AGH!” She clutched at her side and finally stumbled back to him, collapsing in front of him. “That wasn’t so bad,” she rasped.

“You sound like a pack-a-day smoker, Harp.”

“I think I have appendicitis. It hurts like a bitch,” she hissed, her hand digging into her side.

“Welcome to your first side stitch.”

“Side stitch?” she repeated on a wheeze.

“Come on,” he said, nudging her with the running shoe on his prosthesis. “Help me up, and I’ll tell you all the things you did wrong.”

“Like saying I wanted to learn to run?”

He gave her the basics while they worked their way through a series of stretches. Don’t swing your torso. Take smaller steps. Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Harper looked like she was taking mental notes.

“Let’s take a little cool-down walk,” Aldo suggested, pointing toward the glimmering waters of the lakefront.

“Cool,” Harper said, mostly recovered from her disastrous run. “So how are you doing?” she asked.

He’d known she’d pry and couldn’t say why he felt comfortable talking to her. Maybe it was knowing that her life hadn’t always been all sunshine and rainbows. And that she knew pain, too. Maybe it was that he didn’t need anything from Harper but friendship.

“Good enough that I’m moving back to my place this weekend. The doc cleared it.” It was his first Back to Real Life goal that he’d tackled and achieved.

“Aren’t you going to miss your mom?” Harper teased.

“Me moving out is the only way we’ll both live.”

They picked their way down a short, rocky decline, and Aldo marveled that his muscles weren’t screaming too loudly this time.

“Are you sleeping better?” Harper asked. “Is the pain still keeping you up?”