Chapter 16
Kai
It had been over a week since I’d arrived, since I’d gone to the gym.
I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, my body encased in tight, brown leggings and a pale blue sports bra. I could admit only within the safety of my own mind that my shoulders were nice, and my arms were defined in a way I quite liked. I’d crafted them very carefully. My backside was something I was relatively fond of as well, as I’d managed to get my lats to a width I was happy with and my squats did a decent job on my lower half.
That didn’t really matter though, did it? What my body looked like.
My journey with my vessel had certainly been a long one. I was sick a lot as a kid. I had trouble with portion control, feelings of fullness, and knowing my limits. By the time I went to college, my weight had moved to more…appreciated places. I didn’t feel nauseous all the time, and I didn’t mind the way clothes fit me anymore. Neither did other people, and the way they looked at me, touched me, intruded on me, eventually brought me right back to hating again, but in a different way. It wasn’t so much discomfort within anymore, but discomfort on the outside. No touching. No closeness.
Then I found the gym. Hate was replaced with rage and it fueled me in becoming a fountain of power. I grew my shield. Anyone daring to get too close to my flesh was repelled by the metal aegis lying underneath. Or at least I liked to think that way. My mind wasn’t as strong as my body was, and it wasn’t pleased with what it saw in the mirror today.
Muscle begins to atrophy after a few weeks, not one. It’s fine. You’re fine.
But I felt sluggish. Uncomfortable. A girl pulling her shirt over her backside. A woman with unwanted red marks strung across her hips after a night in too-tight lingerie. I wanted to get back in the gym. To move. To run. To do anything. The lines of my abdomen were perfectly visible, though not as sharp as they were last week. I had to fix that. I have to fix that.
No.
You’re fine.
Shut up.
I pushed through the bathroom door and moved across the hall to the bedroom, painful surges of emotion already stinging behind my face.
Truly, I had a good relationship with my body. Finally. But my body wasn’t the issue, my head was. As long as I stuck to my routine, I wouldn’t break down. But I hadn’t stuck to my routine. I’d gotten lost in the move, and my brain begged me to simply get back on track. It had a habit of derailing when I strayed too far from my activities.
Jonah sat in his computer chair, clicking around on his programs and music platforms. I pushed the corners of my mouth down as he looked at me to let him know I was feeling sad. He immediately snatched his headphones off and launched from his seat, wrapping me in a bony hug.
My breath bounced back at me as I mumbled into his T-shirt, his hand rubbing between my shoulder blades. “Will you take me to a gym?”
He sighed and held me tighter. “Are you sure that’s where you need to go?”
He probably wanted to ask, Wouldn’t you prefer a therapist’s office? And the answer was no. Not for this particular problem. I’d spoken to many helpful professionals over the years and I was quite aware of the way my brain started to schlep when I was robbed of my routine. My habits were not a prison. They were my joyful freedom, my regulation, and my choice.
“I just want to get back to my hobbies. And I need more content for work. I’m running out of drafts.”
He backed up and shoved his hands in his pockets, straightening his elbows fully as he nodded. “I already looked into it for you before you came.” My insecurity cowered away from the forefront of my mind, Jonah’s efforts having replaced it with a smile. “There’s a gym that’s big and open with lots of light right up the street. It’s content-friendly. Recording is allowed. You can walk there in fifteen minutes. There’s a dance studio too, but you’d need to take a car to get to it. I know you haven’t been going to the studio much, but it’s there and it has the most flexible options for hourly rentals. But if you want to look up your own places…” He shrugged.
“Were you that excited about me coming?”
“Yes,” he answered immediately, the last syllable of my question hardly having left my lips.
I paused for a moment to take him in, wondering how I ever got so lucky to have this beautiful man on my side. On my team. “It’s hot when you get all analytical,” I teased.
His face fell as he grabbed his phone and wallet from his desk, likely getting ready to accompany me to this supposedly spacious gym. His eyes didn’t leave mine as he placed the items in his pockets and walked toward the door. “Careful, Kai,” he said as he passed me. “If I think you’re interested, I just might take advantage.”
My jaw dropped. A warm, bubbling sensation began forming in my lower abdomen, sending tingles around my insides. For a moment, I just stood there in silence with my mouth agape. This was not the Jonah I’d known all my life. He was just as quiet and reserved as ever, but where the hell had all this teasing come from?
“Too far?” he asked with a grin as he held the door open for me.
I crossed my arms and let him sit with his ridiculous self for a few seconds longer. I was going to have to ramp up my game with this new version of him. He was so oddly intriguing. “If I say no, I’d be consenting, and if I say yes, I’d be lying.”
“Smart girl.” His eyes flicked over me once in a way that had me worried about just how much I was enjoying this interaction. “You win this round.”
I raised my eyebrows, looking him over from head to toe. “I always will, Jo. But I won’t lie, you’re putting up an impressive fight lately. I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
“Kai, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m kind of a big deal around here.” He put his arm over my shoulder and led me out the door casually. “I’m a rockstar, an influencer. I am raw, real talent.”
“Oh.” I sucked in a pained breath and pulled my cheeks back. “I’m so sorry, but I’m more into quiet nerds.”
He kissed me on the side of the head and snorted. “Then I’m afraid we’ve missed our window.”
Jonah walked me to the gym and stayed while I set up my membership. I told him I’d be two hours, and he promised to come back when I finished, though I assured him he didn’t have to. He was probably worried I’d get distracted and go off exploring or something which, to his credit, was a fair concern.
It was 10:30 a.m. and the gym was starting to fill with late morning lifters. The walls of the main room were charcoal gray with red detailing all around, the machines a mix of red, black and silver. It was clean and spacious and while it was well-equipped, it was set up in a way that didn’t make it so overwhelming to look at. What really made the place beautiful were the floor-to-ceiling windows at the entrance that lit up the entire facility.
After leaving my things in the locker room and doing a quick loop around the main room, I managed to find an empty platform and a rogue barbell. It was enough for a simple workout. First day back, after all. I finished a warm-up and four sets of deadlifts before taking off my T-shirt. The mirror in front of me revealed my physique under the bright gym lighting. I observed the lines that cut over and around my belly button and the curves of my legs through my hazel leggings.
Better. You look better already.
Stupid.
I moved to the right side of my barbell and squatted low over my feet, pulling my screaming headphones down so I could take a moment to breathe. The safety clip on the bar clicked open, and I began heaving off the first plate to finish up on the exercise I was doing and move on to the next.
A deep voice sounded to my left as I tugged on the heavy circle. “You know, if you put a small plate underneath to lift the barbell up, it’ll be easier to slide those bigger plates off.”
I gritted my teeth. Twenty minutes in and I was already getting unsolicited advice from some gym guy. Fucking typical. I should’ve just left my fucking headphones on.
The voice piped up once again. “You’ll hurt your back that way.”
I ridded the bar of the plate and stood to face the man. Men. There were two of them, I was now seeing. I looked at the one who’d spoken. He was tall, dangerously tall, with black tattoos twisting up his arms, contrasting heavily with his pale skin. I liked the silver ring in his nose far more than his personality thus far, and his haircut wasn’t bad either. I liked black hair, though I preferred it a bit longer. If I were feeling better about this interaction, I might’ve considered him handsome, but I wasn’t.
The other man was smaller, the dirty blonde bun on his head poking up as he scratched at his chin nervously. He was square and muscular, and his wide eyes may or may not have been communicating an apology to me.
Impressive builds on each of them, though I wasn’t yet keen to admit it.
“Woah,” the voice said, eyeing both my face and physique. “Never mind. Seems like you’ve got it handled.”
“Sorry about him.” The smaller one peeked out from behind his large counterpart. “He’s a little intense.”
“I gathered that,” I said with a smile. The smaller one didn’t seem so obnoxious. As a matter of fact, I liked him just by those few words. I looked back at the giant. “Thanks for the tip.” My gratitude was not genuine.
The grin that spread across his face was even more dangerous than his height. “I’m Aaron. This is Briggs.” He gestured to his sinewy friend. “I’m not an asshole…”
Briggs interjected. “Yes, he is.”
“It’s just that I threw out my back the same way last year, so I wanted to offer some help.”
I crossed my arms and sank into one hip. Aaron was right. Of course, he was right. I knew it wasn”t the best way to take weight off a bar before I even crouched down to do it. But I’d done it plenty of times, and I was lazy. He’d evidently been going to the gym long enough to understand that, and to understand why his comment was fucking annoying, so I dropped my grimace and bumped his fist. A truce.
“Are you hitting back or legs?” he asked as he reached his knuckles to mine.
“Legs. I’m back after a week off.”
“Briggs and I are about to squat. His girlfriend, Thalia, should be here in a few…”
“Not my girlfriend,” Briggs said.
Aaron ignored him. “Let’s work in together.”
Hmm… That proposition could go one of two ways. Either he was a total dick and was trying to hit on me as he did every other girl in this place, which would completely ruin this gym for me in one way or another, or he was genuinely just being nice which, based on my experience, seemed unlikely. But I’d never had a gym crew before. Not like other influencers I saw on Instagram, all huddled up with their gorgeous bunch. I didn’t really need any more close friends. I had Jo, Oli and June. And Tiff and Noah were well on their way. But none of them went to the gym, and Aaron said Briggs had a girlfriend, after all. Maybe she’d be nice…
Perhaps it could be fun to have someone to throw shit around with. To get angry with.
“I’m Kai,” I said, suddenly realizing I hadn’t introduced myself when they had. I still hadn’t quite worked out what my plan was in terms of befriending them, but I decided to just see what happened.
“We know who you are,” Aaron said. “I’ve been liking your pictures since you were at that gym with orange walls.” I guess that explained his reaction when he finally saw my face. Maybe he wasn’t being a jerk, maybe he was just surprised. And the gym with the orange walls? That was my first ever gym. That would mean that Aaron would’ve been somewhere in my first fifteen thousand followers, and it’d mean he’d been watching me for at least a year.
“He’s like…super obsessed with you,” Briggs said. Aaron’s giant hand shot out and pushed Briggs so cleanly he fell into a sideways stumble, Aaron having hardly moved a muscle.
His smile stayed in place as he said, “I can appreciate the hard work, that’s all. We do content too. Briggs likes editing, so he uses the gym to film and then gets to play around with it. I like myself, so I take pictures and videos of that.” He held his arms out to the side as if it were completely obvious that he was painfully attractive.
I mulled it over for a moment. I wanted to have friends that did the same thing I did. These two had a cool vibe, and my inner radar wasn’t going off despite my hesitancy.
I looked at Aaron, folding my arms over my ribs.
“Don’t worry,” he said, glancing down at my stance and back at me. “You’re hot. I won’t lie. But so am I. So are a lot of other people I meet. I won’t be a creep.” Mind reader. I started to smile at him when he added, “Unless you want me to be.”
Both Briggs and I rolled our eyes simultaneously, catching each other’s glances.
“You’ll get used to it,” Briggs said, wrapping his lifting belt loosely around his hips and stepping up to the platform with me.
“Please, B,” Aaron said, flicking his friend on the shoulder. “You should be more like me. Maybe then Thalia would actually pay attention to you.”
Briggs whirled around, jutting his finger at Aaron as his eyes inspected the rest of the gym, searching for her. He must’ve been making sure she didn’t hear. Aaron had said she’d be arriving soon.
But she never showed. Apparently, she did that often. She had a gym set up at home, and while Briggs was her neighbor, he was never “man enough” to ask to work out with her there, as Aaron put it. It had been a year since Briggs met her. A year since he fell in love with her. Right here at the squat racks.