Pumped (Mars Fitness #3)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER

THREE

EVEREST

The music is thumping, I’ve got a good buzz going, and I’m this close to bringing this cutie home with me. We’ve already been eye-fucking each other all night and I just need his friends to stop sucking tongue so he can tell them he’s leaving.

I wrap my arms around his waist and nuzzle the sweaty skin of his neck. My chubby is pressed nice and snug against his bubble butt. My dick is going to get a treat tonight.

“Fuck, let’s get out of here.” He turns his head to murmur in my ear.

“Your friends?” I ask.

“Covered. Yours?”

I glance over at the three of them. Sawyer and Logan, my besties from work, and Connor, whose boyfriend, Donnie, also works with us at Mars Fitness. They’re all partnered up with the loves of their lives, leaving me the sole bachelor holding down the fort. They wave at me from their spot at the edge of the dance floor and I wave back.

“All good. Let’s go.” I need to get my dick in some ass before I burst. I take the cutie’s hand and we make a beeline for the club’s exit.

It’s early spring in New York City and the temperature plummets after sunset. Despite growing up in Massachusetts, the few years I spent on the West Coast have turned me into a sunshine and beaches kind of guy. The cold night air cools the sweat on my skin, leaving me shivering, and I cuddle closer to the cutie to stay warm.

“You wanna call a car?” he murmurs between kisses.

“Mmhmm.” I reach for my phone in my back pocket. As soon as I have it in my hand, it starts vibrating.

Ugh. Another spam call. Nobody actually calls anybody these days.

Without taking my lips from the cutie’s, I bring my phone over his shoulder so I can end the call without answering it.

Except… I stop and blink. That’s Eden’s phone number. Why the hell is my sister calling me now?

“Uh…” The cutie pulls back when my lips stop moving against his. He glances at the screen displaying my sister’s picture and cocks an eyebrow. “Do you need to answer that?”

I stare at the screen for a second, tempted to send her to voicemail. She can shoot me a text and I’ll deal with whatever it is in the morning. Except, it’s the middle of the night and she wouldn’t call unless it was important, right?

“Sorry, hold on.” I reluctantly step away from the cutie and swipe to answer the call. If she’s just bored and wanting to bust my balls, I’m going to strangle her. Way to cock block her little brother. “Hello?”

“Hi, uh, is this Everest?”

The voice one thousand percent doesn’t belong to Eden. It’s about twenty years too young. I pull the phone away from my ear to check the screen again. I didn’t hallucinate Eden’s picture, did I?

Nope. That’s Eden, all right. From when she was in high school and came home piss drunk, hair all over the fucking place, and vomit down the front of her shirt. I took the picture as blackmail. She hates that I use it as her profile pic.

But then I notice the actual number on the screen. It’s not Eden’s cell phone. It’s the landline from her house. Some stranger is in her house? What?

“Hello?” The young female voice jolts me out of my stupor.

“Yeah, sorry. This is Everest. Who are you?”

“I’m Adeline. Ivy’s babysitter.”

That explains the landline thing, but why the hell is my niece’s babysitter calling me? “Okaaayyy.”

“So, um, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert aren’t here yet. They were supposed to get home two hours ago.”

“Oh.” That’s… weird. Eden’s not the most on-time person in the world, but Jeremy pretty much operates like clockwork. He’s never late. “Have you tried calling them?”

“Yeah, of course I did. They’re not picking up.” Adeline’s eye roll is so loud, I can hear it from here. “You’re the first person I’m supposed to call if I can’t reach them.”

“Oh.” That’s… super weird. Both that they didn’t pick up and that they told the babysitter to call me. I can never be trusted to answer the phone, but Eden and Jeremy are annoyingly fond of actually talking to people. They wouldn’t ignore a call, especially if they’ve left Ivy with a babysitter.

“So are you coming or not?” Adeline’s teenage annoyance comes through the phone full blast, so strong I wince at the impact. “Because I love Ivy and everything, but I gotta get home.”

“Uh…” Fuck. What am I supposed to do? I’m not anywhere near their brownstone in Park Slope, and I was gonna bring this guy home with me, and why am I the first person the babysitter is supposed to call? How the hell would I know what to do?

“Hello?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Um, okay, I’m on my way.” I pause a beat before continuing. “You’ll stay until I get there, right?”

“Yes, I’ll stay,” Adeline says like I’m the dumbest person in the world. But I don’t know how babysitters fucking work, okay?

“’Kay, I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

She sighs and her breath blows directly into the phone’s mic. “Fine. Bye.”

The call disconnects so abruptly, I don’t realize it’s dead for a moment. Not until the cutie who’s been waiting for me speaks.

“You’re leaving?” His arms are crossed over his chest, hip thrust out to the side. He’s giving me the stinkiest of stink eyes.

“I think so?” I’m still not entirely sure what just happened and a part of me wonders if I can bring him with me. Like, maybe Eden and Jeremy are just running late, and they’ll show up by the time I get there, and I can still salvage the evening.

But the cutie rolls his eyes hard enough to out-roll Adeline. “Figures. I always pick the wrong ones.” He stalks back toward the club, leaving me standing on the sidewalk, alone and cold.

My buzz is gone, but my head isn’t quite on straight just yet. Where the fuck are Eden and Jeremy? And why the fuck aren’t they picking up their phones?

I try Eden’s cell on the way over to their house. It goes directly to voicemail. I try Jeremy’s. Same thing. My thumb hovers above a number labeled “The Asshat” in my phone.

Owen.

He probably knows what’s going on. And even if he didn’t, he’d know what to do. He’s so “responsible” and “reliable” and really goddamn boring.

I can imagine it already. The condescending voice. The irritated expression. He’ll barge in and take over, leaving me standing on the sidelines like some kind of loser.

No. I lock my phone. I don’t need to give Owen any more ammunition. He already thinks I’m useless, I don’t want to prove it to him by calling him for help. I’m an adult. I’m resourceful. I can take care of this myself.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? Maybe both their phones ran out of battery. Totally weird, but it could happen. Ivy’s probably asleep by now. I’ll just check in on her and then crash on their couch until they get home. It can’t be more than a few hours, right? They’ll be back by morning, for sure. Everything’s fine.

A teenage girl, who I assume is Adeline, is waiting in the foyer when I get out of the rideshare. She opens the door as I jog up the stoop and starts talking before I can even say hello.

“I tried Eden and Jeremy again, but nothing. I fed Ivy dinner, helped her with her bath, and got her into bed. She woke up once, then fell asleep again without any trouble. Questions?” She already has her coat on and one foot out the door.

She rattled all of that off so fast, I could barely follow her. But I’m pretty sure I caught the important stuff—Ivy’s in bed, I just have to stick around until Eden and Jeremy get back. “Uh… I don’t think so?”

“Good. Eden can Venmo me when they get home. Bye.” She skips down the steps and disappears into the night before I can offer to get her a car to take her home.

I’m left holding the door, blinking at the empty street in front of the house. A gust of cold air rushes in, knocking me out of my daze. Quickly, I close the front door and lock it, then I head upstairs to check on Ivy. Her bedroom is on the second floor, along with Eden and Jeremy’s home office.

I crack open her door. The heavy shades are drawn, blocking out the night lights of the city, but a softly glowing lamp sits in the far corner. The pink walls are decorated with rainbows and unicorns. Gauzy fabric hangs from the ceiling above her bed in a canopy.

Ivy is nothing more than a little lump in the middle of the mattress, her blonde hair spread in a halo on the pillow. She’s hugging Zuzi, her favorite squishmallow, a pink unicorn with a gold horn. I got it for her a couple years ago and she takes it with her everywhere. Owen’s gotten her other plushies since but she always goes back to my unicorn.

Take that, Owen.

My chest warms at seeing my niece sleeping so soundly. She’s the reason I decided to give up my nomadic van life out west and settle in New York instead. I hadn’t planned to initially, but after a few visits when she was a baby, I realized how much I was missing. Kids grow so fast at her age and FaceTime just doesn’t cut it.

So I sold off Betsy, my van, couch-surfed for a few months, then landed at Mars Fitness as a personal trainer. I run their classes, mostly boot camps like the one modeled after the training FBI agents have to take. And recently, a super dope skipping class. I’m working on a drumming class based on traditional Japanese drumming and yoga stability balls. I really want to do goat yoga, but my bosses, Beau and Gavin, won’t let me bring goats into the gym. Shame.

Quietly, I close Ivy’s door and cross the hall to the home office. Both Eden and Jeremy have desks in here. But there’s also a futon against the far wall.

It takes a bit of wrangling, but once the futon’s flat, I toe off my shoes and collapse face-first onto the cushions. I’m out before my head hits the throw pillow.