3. Ryan
RYAN
A fter sixteen miles on the treadmill, I’m not nearly finished. Sweat is pouring off me, creating a mess of the machine. My body is screaming at me to stop. My lungs burn. My heart is begging me to give it a rest, but I can’t.
I can’t.
One hundred dollars. Malcolm. One hundred dollars. Malcolm. Malcolm. Malcolm .
Fuck.
I grunt with effort and increase the incline, charging forward, going nowhere.
The existence of him hurts like a twisting knife in my side.
The sight of him was a swift slash to the gut from which I’ll likely bleed out slowly.
How did that fucking asshole wind up in one of the best internships in the business?
I’m still struggling with the fact that he graduated from Stanford, much less stuck around for an MBA.
When did he manage to crack open a textbook in between fucking my ex-girlfriend and going to his fraternity parties? Color me fucking shocked.
It’s not like I wish bad things for him.
I wish I could, but that’s not how I work when it comes to Malcolm Walsh.
I merely need him to exist outside my sphere in order to pretend he doesn’t exist. Is that so much to ask?
Because for the purposes of me being a functional human, Malcolm needs to have never happened—as a person or my stepbrother or an embryo even.
He should have never been born. Then I’d have been fine.
I wouldn’t be this sweaty fucking mess who can’t punish myself enough.
The most beautiful person to ever grace the earth steps up to my treadmill and strikes a seductive pose.
Long, smooth legs, golden blonde beach waves and lips photographers pay to photograph in the Maldives all belong to my new gym friend Calyx.
He always brings me up short just because how can he look like that and be real?
At first glance, he’s the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen, but Calyx is all boy. Sort of. I don’t know. He’s hard to describe. “An hour and a half is plenty,” he says over the noise of the machine.
“You’re not my trainer.”
“No, but this much cardio is gonna make you skinny.”
I glare at him and keep pounding the tread. He wipes a drop of my sweat off his face and examines his fingertips calmly, then levels his soft brown eyes at me. “You told me if I ever see you going for twenty miles again to save you from yourself.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
He presses some buttons, lowering my incline and pace.
“Hey!”
“You need a shower.”
Calyx and I know each other because he guest teaches yoga classes here, and I took one of them a couple of weeks ago.
I was hopelessly inflexible, and he felt sorry for me.
We sort of clicked, I guess, but we’re strictly gym friends.
Our relationship has not reached beyond these walls, and I don’t know how we got to this point where he feels comfortable enough to control my workout.
Calling him a friend might be a stretch. Really, he’s an extremely pretty person who sometimes interacts with me and tells me what I’m doing wrong. I consider that friendly. Over about a minute, I slow to a stop and step off the treadmill. That’s when the sweat really starts to pour.
I push my hair back, grab my towel, and wipe my face and chest. Calyx looks me up and down from his slightly shorter vantage point.
He’s dressed in tight, gray gym shorts and a tank, revealing his boyishly feminine figure and every toned muscle he’s got.
He confuses the fuck out of my sexuality.
If he were a woman, I’d be all over it, but the straight guy in me can’t reconcile how beautiful he is with his flat chest and the fact of his dick.
Still, he’s impossible not to stare at. He’s kinda mesmerizing.
“Training for Everest?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I mumble.
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m trying not to think about it.”
“Which means you definitely won’t want to talk about it,” he surmises.
“So, you can take a hint…”
He peeks at the numbers on the treadmill. “Seventeen point nine? Seriously? Who hurt you?”
Malcolm.
“No one,” I say. “Just didn’t feel like stopping.”
“What’s next? Hair shirt? You have a rack to stretch yourself out on at home? I could show you one of the Pilates reformers.”
“I’m good, thanks. I have work tomorrow.”
“How was your first day? Or should I ask?”
We walk toward the locker room together. Avoiding talking about the reason for my shitty attitude, I ask, “If you had to make a hundred dollars turn into a huge pile of cash by the end of summer where would you start?”
“Hm.” He takes a few steps and seems to be putting some thought into it. “I’d come up with a genius catch phrase, trademark it, print it on a few t-shirts and make them the next must have fashion item by forcing everyone I know to wear them and plastering them all over my social media.”
“That’s not terrible,” I say. “Got a good catch phrase?”
“Nothing PG, but I’ll think about it. I’d absolutely want a cut if you use my idea.”
“Your idea’s better than anything I’ve come up with so far.”
“This is your job?” he asks.
“It’s like a competition at my job. A side project.”
“What’s your idea?”
“I don’t have one,” I admit. “What’s worse is I think some of the other interns are teaming up so they start out with more cash, which opens up the possibilities a lot.”
“Why don’t you join up with them?” he asks innocently.
I glare at him in response.
He laughs, showing his perfect teeth as he throws his head back—all hair, neck, smooth skin. If I were that pretty, would Malcolm…?
No. I’m not going there. The answer is no. It’s no, it’s no way, it’s always been no.
Calyx was a hundred percent right, of course.
I pushed myself way too hard on the treadmill last night, and this morning I feel it in every limb.
My legs are wobbly. My arms are heavy with fatigue.
My heart rate is so low, I nearly pass out in the shower.
Once I’ve had some coffee, I’m a little better, but I’ll need to pick up some breakfast and more caffeine before I get to the office.
There’s a dine-in deli called Big Bites a few doors down from the Marks & Baker building.
It’s got a grab and go counter, so that’s where I stop in twenty minutes before I need to be in the morning huddle.
My mentor Charlie wants me doing client calls today, and I need my brain firing on all cylinders.
Another terrible song is in my head. Thematically it fits—“Don’t Close Your Eyes” by the band Kix.
Again, I’m only familiar with the whiny chorus.
It’s two lines: Don’t close your eyes. Don’t sing your last lullaby. Over and over.
While I’m waiting in line to check out with my egg sandwich and energy drink, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
I give a sharp glance back, pissed off on principle—no one should touch anyone in public period—but my eyes open wide when I see it’s not a stranger.
It’s my ex stepbrother. “What?” I snap because he doesn’t get whatever shred of kindness lurks somewhere in my soul.
“We should probably talk,” he says, a grim expression on his annoyingly handsome face.
“I don’t think so,” I say as my heart leaps forward in my chest desperate for any words he’s got for me, no matter how bad they slice or how deep they burrow.
“Maybe you don’t, but I do,” he says through a tight jaw and tighter lips.
To the outside observer, Malcolm Walsh is your basic golden boy.
It’s not until you get up close that you see how thick his dark golden hair is—the way it’s the prefect shade for his lightly olive skin tone.
You wouldn’t get the full effect of his heavy-lidded blue-green eyes, and unless he smiles, you might not notice how bright they shine.
The way I crave the sight of him is fucking pathological.
His face is etched into me far deeper than any tattoo I’ve suffered through .
“No thanks,” I tell him. I turn back to the counter, cutting myself off from the source before he sees it on me—the one way I haven’t changed.
“Ryan…”
I stiffen—every muscle, every joint. My heart feels like it has to beat harder to overcome the sudden resistance.
“Look,” he says, his deep voice taking a grim turn and giving me chills. “This internship is only three months. I don’t want any drama. That’s it. The only thing I wanted to say.”
I shake my head, mostly at the situation.
“No one needs to know we know each other,” he adds.
“They’re not gonna hear it from me,” I assure him.
“Not that it matters,” he says. “Or… It’s not like I mind.”
I scoff at that. He minds. He minds a lot.
If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be speaking to me.
It’s gotta be pretty fucking inconvenient for him that my PSU degree got me the same place his fancy Stanford one did.
“Not my problem,” I say, which couldn’t be more of a lie if I tried, but since I want it to be the truth, I figure it doesn’t hurt to speak it into the universe.
“Still an asshole,” he mutters like this comes as no surprise.
I shut my eyes and make myself breathe. I need the line to move and not because he’s wrong.
He’s right , and I don’t need to hear it from him.
Obviously I’m not going to be able to avoid the constant reminder this summer, but I can pretend it isn’t already breaking me.
At least he doesn’t have to worry about keeping his shit together the way I do.
He broke a long time ago, and I know because I was the one who took a perfectly nice guy and turned him into a raging dick.
To say regret is the defining pillar of my existence doesn’t begin to cover it. I have the word tattooed on my left inner forearm in bold, block letters—a visual representation of what I carry with me along with a warning for anyone who gets too close .
“I fuckin’ hate you, man.” Malcolm says in a low voice behind me.