CHAPTER 10
MAPLE
When I look back at my life one day and think about the choices I made, good and bad, I’ll remember this moment as one of the worst.
Sweat is dripping down my face.
My legs are noodles.
I have no power left in my body.
And we have two more sets of overhead presses to complete before we’re done.
Graydon has been pacing through this workout like it’s a regular walk in the park. He’s shifting from one exercise to the next with ease, while I’ve been dragging my body along, begging and pleading every muscle within me to hold out until I’m in private and I can collapse in shame.
“What, uh…what are those? Twenty-fives?” I ask, trying to seem nonchalant as I engage in gym talk.
Graydon glances over at the two water bottles in my hand that I’ve been using as weights because the facilities don’t carry small enough weights for a lady like me. “They’re fifties.”
Fifties?
Dear God in heaven.
I’d be lucky to even drag that across the gym floor, let alone have one in each arm and lift them over my head.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Yeah, I’m working up to those.” Then I lift my water bottles over my head as we start the second-to-last round.
And it’s the most pathetic thing I think I’ve ever seen.
Us both sitting on angled benches, our backs pressed against the vinyl at a ninety-degree angle, me with my water bottles, bright-red face, and tongue nearly hanging out of my mouth, giving the impression that I’m seconds away from death.
Him with his burly chest pushing against his threadbare, soaked T-shirt, his rock-hard arms and massive weights hoisting over his head, acting like the god of the weight room. Quite the scene.
I made sure to get this in the video because in all honesty, it’s comical and I’m never one to shy away from honest self-deprecation.
We finish up our set, and I rest the water bottles on the ground, letting my arms have a break while he rests his weights on the ground as well and leans forward on his thighs.
“So this is fun for you?”
“Some days.” He then looks over his shoulder at me and asks, “Is cleaning flamingo shit fun for you?”
“No, but it has to be done.”
He nods and turns back to focus on the floor in front of him.
Seeing that there might be a moment of peace between us, I ask, “So what does a defensive person really do? Like…what is your position in charge of?”
“I’m a defensive end,” he says, keeping his focus on his weights.
“Right. Defensive end. And what does that entail? Like, do you run after people, like someone who catches a ball?”
He glances at me again, and this time, there’s a hint of humor in his eyes. And I mean a hint.
“Do you know nothing about football?”
“Zero. And anything I might know is from Friday Night Lights, but in real life, I think maybe I’ve watched a second of a single game ever. There’s a ball being thrown to score points, and that’s the extent of what I know.”
He slowly nods and then picks up his weights. “Last set.”
Okay…so we’re not going to talk about the game? Good to know.
I grab my water bottles, and then together, we lift the “weights” over our heads, my arms numb to the point that I’m surprised they keep moving up and down because I can’t recall telling them to do such a thing.
Exhaustion rips through me as we finish up our workout, my body thanking me for the reprieve from hell.
After the last rep, I dramatically drop the bottles to the ground and let my arms hang to my sides as he gracefully stands with said fifties and puts his weights back on the weight shelf where he got them.
Hope he doesn’t ask me to pick up my water bottles, because I don’t think I have it in me. I have depleted any and all resources I’ve stored in my body.
“Time to stretch.” He nods toward an open area with extra cushioned mats on the floor and giant rubber bands hanging next to them.
“Do you want a bonus workout that could perhaps involve picking me up and setting me on the mats?”
His razor-sharp eyes fall to mine. “No.”
“You sure? Might be a nice opportunity for you.”
He doesn’t respond to that, instead tugging one of the bands from a hook and handing it to me.
“What’s this for?”
“To stretch,” he says and then effortlessly gets on the floor, hooks the band over his foot, and lifts his foot toward the ceiling, stretching out his hamstring.
Ugh, looks like I’m going to have to drag my body to the ground on my own.
I stare down at the ground, willing my body to gracefully get into the same position, but every muscle holding my skin and bones together whimpers in pain, begging me to end their misery and never use them again.
From squats to lunges to some weird box-jumping thing to more squats to this bench press thing-a-ma-bob to every which way you can move your arm with a weight in your hand.
Nothing was left out of today’s workout.
Nothing.
It’s why when I slowly start to lower my body, attempting to curtsy down to the ground, it instead decides to give out on me, seizing in every which way.
Oh no.
Lady down…
I barely have enough time to pinpoint where I’m landing before I flop straight on top of the chest of the one and only Graydon St. John.
“Oof, fuck, what are you doing?” he asks.
Great question.
The only answer that comes to mind is…death.
I’m dead.
The fish has flopped and has found the end of its life.
There is nothing left inside me.
There is no shame.
There is no humiliation.
There is no…stamina or fucks to give as I lie lifeless on top of Graydon.
Nope, this is where I live now.
This is my new home.
Pull up a potted plant and a picture of a flamingo, because I don’t see myself moving in the foreseeable future.
“Hello?” he pokes, trying to get me to answer him.
Mumbling, I say, “I live here now.”
“The fuck you do.”
To my surprise, he lifts me by the shoulders like I’m a pool noodle and flops me to the side so my head is now right next to his hip.
“Jesus Christ, why aren’t you…folding properly?”
I stare up at the fluorescent lights, angels singing to me, pulling me into the heavens where I know I will feel no more pain.
“Is this what death feels like?”
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters as he slides away from me, stands, and then looks down at me. “Are you serious right now?”
I blink a few times, his dark gaze breaking me away from my attempt to fly into a safe space where I will no longer feel. “I…I don’t foresee myself getting up from here. Please tell Phil to find someone worthy enough to look after my pink-feathered friends.”
He rolls his eyes and then bends down and drags me by the legs, straightening me out across the mat. Then he lifts one of my ankles, kneels between my legs, and holds one down while pushing the other up.
“What on earth are you doing?” I ask as his entire body crowds the juncture between my thighs. “I tell you death is knocking on my door, rigor mortis firmly taking hold, and you get me into a sexual position?”
His brow cocks up. “I’m stretching you so I don’t have to explain to my coach why there’s a woman face-planted in our weight room.”
“I am not face-planted.”
“You will be in a second.” He switches legs, making me holler in pain as he stretches the muscles that I thought no longer existed inside me.
“Just leave me for dead. Have them scoop me up with a shovel and deposit me in the back of a garbage truck. Please put my pitiful savings toward a bench that sits in front of the flamingos. And for the love of God, tell Big Hermy he was my favorite.”
He rolls his eyes once more and then, in one fell swoop, he turns me on my stomach and starts stretching my quads.
“Mother of God!” I shout, burying my head into the mat, a mat that is probably infested with things like ringworm and imprinted with sweaty man balls. But it’s my solace right now, my peace, the only thing keeping me from losing all sense of control.
Oh, dear sweet mat, please swallow me into your sanctuary where hairy backs and moist ass cracks find solace.
Graydon spends the next few minutes stretching me out, maneuvering me around like his own personal lump of Play-Doh, and then, when he’s done, he lifts me to my feet and holds me by the shoulders, keeping me in place until he finds that I’m steady enough to walk on my own.
“You good?”
I sway for a few moments, and when the darkness around my vision recedes, I slowly nod. “I think so.”
He grumbles under his breath and then takes off for the exit, but when I don’t follow him, he stops. “For the love of God, keep up.”
I take one step forward and feel that my leg can handle it, so I take another, and another, and find myself very slowly walking toward him.
Thata girl.
“I told you not to do the fucking workout,” he says in a terse voice.
“And I said I could do it, and I did. I did it.”
“With water bottles.”
“Hey.” I point my finger at him. “That was good content, showing people you don’t need a state-of-the-art weight room to get in a good workout—water bottles will do the trick.”
“Whatever you need to say to make yourself happy.”
I reach out and tug on his arm, barely grasping him. “Can you…can you please not walk so fast?”
He sighs but slows his walking, and it makes me think maybe…just maybe, he’s not all that bad.
“And you said you worked out,” he huffs.
Actually, change of mind. He’s bad.
He’s the worst.
And I hate him.
He’s rude and inconsiderate, and sure, he might have stretched me out and deposited me on my feet, but he’s still a jerk, and I hope he steps in gum today.
“I lift things at the zoo. I’m not training to get rammed in the head by another human.”
“We don’t ram each other in the head.”
“Really? Because it seems like you’re missing a few brain cells.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
I mean, I kind of thought it was.
“You tell me.”
He jerks his head to the side. “It’s not.” His lip curls into a snarl, and I fear I might have woken the beast. I blame my exhaustion, mental and physical.
I shall never recover from this.
Never.