Chapter Eleven
Chapter
eleven
“AM I GETTING WORSE?” I asked after a kick landed me on my butt. I was ready to say Never mind, this was a bad idea. My face felt hot, and I knew it was probably red. “I feel worse.”
“Surprisingly, no,” Theo said. “You’re getting the motion down. You don’t have the right shoes either, so there’s that. Bring your soccer cleats tomorrow; they’ll help with traction.”
“Tomorrow?” I asked, standing and wiping the grass off my hands and backside.
“Well, whenever you come next.”
“Tomorrow will work.” Between school and homework and responsibilities at home, really, we probably only had weekends. And there weren’t very many of those left, so he was right, I needed to come tomorrow.
“Weights time.” He led me back to the house, where I assumed a weight system must’ve been set up in the garage.
But it was more than that. Way more. He basically had a gym. And not in his garage either. A dedicated room in the house. Mirrored walls, a stationary bike and elliptical, free weights but also machines with ropes and pulleys. A punching bag hung from the ceiling in the corner.
I hit the punching bag as I took a lap around the gym. “This is better equipped than the school weight room. Must be nice.” I added that last sentence under my breath.
“It is,” he answered. And I wasn’t sure if that was a response to my first sentence or my second. I didn’t ask him to clarify. “How often do you lift?” he asked.
I cleared my throat. “I used to lift a lot.”
“I didn’t ask how much you used to lift.”
“I know! But that was the better answer.”
He laughed. “So never?”
“Pretty much.”
He gave a single nod. “Legs every other day until tryouts.”
I widened my eyes. “Are you trying to give me Hulk legs?”
“You won’t get Hulk legs.”
“Have you been waiting all your life for the opportunity to torture someone? Is that why you agreed to this? Is that why you have a little gleam in your eye right now?”
He didn’t deny it. “Grab that squat bar off the wall.”
“UGH,” I GROANED IN PAIN. I lay on the black rubber-tiled floor of Theo’s gym, my legs twitching even though they weren’t working anymore. He expected me to be able to kick tomorrow? I wasn’t sure I’d be able to move. Sweat dripped down my temple, and I swiped at it with the back of my hand.
I held a fake microphone to my mouth. “How does it feel to have killed your trainee on day one?” I threw my hand in the air, pointing my fist toward him.
He walked over, pretended to tap it for a sound check, then leaned down and into my hand said, “Feels like my trainee needs to toughen up.”
I froze, looking up at him from my place on the floor, his face upside down in my view.
“What?” he asked.
I dropped my hand to the side. “Nothing,” I said, having a hard time shaking the surprise of him actually playing along.
“How are you with extreme cold?” Theo didn’t seem dead at all even though he’d done a lot of the workout alongside me. He had definitely favored his left leg. I’d tried not to notice and I absolutely didn’t point it out after how defensive he’d been about his injury, but he did.
“In what context?” I asked.
“In the context of being surrounded by floating chunks of ice.” He pointed to a windowed door in the room that led outside.
I pushed myself up to sitting with a grunt. “I’m confused.”
“There’s an ice barrel out there.”
“A what?”
“I’ll show you.”
He led the way out the door to a small patio on the side of the house. A black barrel with a three-step stool jutting off the side stood on one corner of the cement. Against the house was a full-on ice machine, like the ones at hotels. He lifted the door and began scooping ice into a bucket.
“Your whole house is set up like an NFL star lives here. Wait, is your dad an NFL star or something?”
He looked over his shoulder at me as he poured the first bucket of ice into the tall barrel. It made a sloshing noise as it hit the water. I should’ve stopped him. I really did not want an ice bath. I hadn’t even brought a swimsuit.
“Pretty sure the whole school would know if my dad was an NFL star.”
“Maybe a retired one?”
“No.” He moved back to the machine to fill the bucket again. “My dad played in high school.”
I turned a slow circle. From this side patio, I could see the shed and kicking net in the backyard. My circle finished with me looking back through the windows into the decked-out gym. His parents had put a lot of money into his football career. I wondered if they were just as upset as he was about his injury. This house, this setup, showed that they expected a lot of him.
He stepped back from the barrel and held his hand out to the side like an invitation.
I groaned again. “I don’t have a suit.”
He looked at my running shorts like he didn’t understand what I was saying.
I sighed. “Fine.”
I was wearing a sports bra under my tee. So what if my shorts got wet. I toed out of my shoes, peeled off my socks, and approached the three small steps that would end in more torture. I took a deep breath, took off my shirt, threw it on top of my shoes behind me, then went for it. It was cold…freezing…and I was only shin-deep. My arms were shaking from holding myself out of the water.
“It works better if you get all the way in,” he said.
“Just hold your stupid horses. It’s cold.”
“My horses aren’t stupid,” he said. “They are very intelligent.”
My toes were now numb as I lowered myself another inch. “Do you actually have horses?” I asked, not really surprised.
“No, I don’t. But my figurative horses are smart.”
My chin quivered with the cold, my teeth clicking together, making an actual sound.
“Once you get all the way in, I’ll start the countdown.” He held up his phone to show me the timer on his screen.
I lowered myself immediately with a hiss of air. The back of my legs bumped into something. “Is there a ledge in here? Is it this barrel’s intention that I actually sit for a length of time, as if this is some sort of leisure activity?”
“Yes, it’s a sitting ledge. But since your lips are purple, you will only stay in for one minute. That ledge will help you exit.”
My skin felt like it was being pierced by a thousand needles. “I can’t last one minute.”
“Forty seconds now. You can last forty.”
I shivered even harder now. “How long can you last in here?”
“I usually do three minutes. Sometimes five.” His timer said thirty seconds.
“I can’t, I can’t. I need to get out,” I said, my breath gone, the needles still stabbing my legs and chest now. I wasn’t sure my numb legs were coordinated enough in their current state to exit the barrel, but I moved to the edge.
He seemed to sense my concern and said, “I’ll help you.”
I nodded, my teeth still clacking away, my skin on fire. I stepped onto the ledge and then swung one leg over the side. He put one foot on the bottom step, and I braced my hands on his shoulders as I pulled the other leg out. I now sat on the lip of the barrel, my hands on his shoulders, staring down at the step that seemed too low to reach from this position. Who designed this thing?
“Just slide down,” he said. “I’ll help.”
“Am I going to hurt you?” I said through my shivering lips.
“You’re not going to hurt me. I have you.”
“I don’t feel had.”
He reached up, took me by the waist, and lifted me up and around until both my feet were on the patio next to the steps.
I gasped in a cold breath of air. Oh. I was had.
A cabinet of towels stood to the right of the door. He got one and tossed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said. I felt stupid for not staying in for the full minute. But it had felt impossible while I was in there.
“No problem.”
“Your turn.” I wrapped the towel around my shoulders, then nodded to the barrel. “You need to prove this five-minute claim.”
He smiled but was obviously competitive because he was shoeless and shirtless and in the barrel in less than ten seconds. “Ah,” he said, resting his chin on his crossed forearms, which were draped along the edge. “So relaxing.”
I pulled out my phone and made a show of turning on my timer. His breathing didn’t even sound strained as the seconds ticked away.
“You hide your pain face well,” I said as he passed the two-minute mark.
“You do not.”
“No, I don’t. My grandma says my face is always giving me away. She says it’s because I have such a pure heart that it shines out my eyes.”
Theo scoffed. “Does she know your pure heart has turned evil for the next four weeks?”
The smile that had been on my face moments before wavered.
He threw a piece of ice in my direction. “Don’t lose heart now. We both know he deserves it.”
The timer passed three minutes. “I better go.” It felt like I’d been here for hours even though it was only ten o’clock.
He vaulted out of the barrel. It was really unfair how good he looked doing it. I averted my eyes as he grabbed a towel.
I tugged my shirt back over my head and collected my shoes. I started to hand him the towel when he said, “You can bring it back tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“You did good today, Soccer Star.”
“Stop calling me that,” I said.
He just chuckled. If he knew I played soccer, he must’ve known I wasn’t that great at it. That Deja was the actual soccer star. I wondered if that’s why he found it so funny. That hit a nerve.
Was one session enough? Could my friends take over the job of training me now?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Four weeks. Just four weeks. “See you tomorrow.”