Chapter 5 The Weight Room #2
The team facility is still half crime scene, so I google "gyms near me open early" and pick the first result that isn't a CrossFit cult.
———
The gym in Ballard is the kind of place you go if you want to be ignored. Half the lights are busted, the mirrors are warped, and the front desk is manned by a guy who looks like he sells weed out of the vending machine.
The air is thick with the stink of old rubber and underachieving men, the kind of sweat that’s less about self-improvement and more about holding off the inevitable collapse of the body one week at a time.
I pick this place because it’s not the team facility, hell, the Steelhawk Center is still half cordoned off, which is what happens when your home rink gets national coverage for “senseless violence”, and I pick it because nobody here cares who I am, not even the sad regulars with barbed wire tattoos and ten-dollar hoodies.
I park three blocks away so I don’t have to walk past the news vans, and by the time I get inside, my hands are already shaking with the anticipation of the burn, the ache, the beautiful static of muscle fatigue that drowns out everything else.
For the first three minutes, I am a ghost, just a warm-up routine in search of a reason to exist.
Then I see him.
Darius is at the bench, plates loaded up like a dare, his back flat and arms out, moving the bar with the kind of controlled violence that only comes from years of fighting your own body for supremacy.
He’s wearing a gray t-shirt that’s so tight it looks painted on, the sleeves cut off because even here, in exile, he has to show he’s better than the room.
Our eyes meet for exactly one heartbeat.
There’s a nod, barely. The kind of recognition you give a guy whose dog you accidentally killed, not a teammate, not a survivor.
Then he racks the weight and sits up, towel over his face, hiding from me or from the world.
I almost turn around. Instead, I walk to the far end, the squat rack, and start my own routine.
I keep my head down, count every rep in a whisper. Six sets in, the lactic acid is singing and I can almost pretend I’m alone.
But I’m not. Every time I look up, Darius is still there, working through the circuit with the same ruthless precision, never resting more than thirty seconds, never missing a beat.
He doesn’t look at me again. He doesn’t have to. The whole room is saturated with the memory of what we saw, what we didn’t say.
The distance between us is the same as it was in the equipment room, a thousand miles or the width of a cheap gym towel.
After twenty minutes, my legs are rubber and my heart is rattling like an engine about to seize.
I move to the free weights, which is a mistake, because from here the only thing in my line of sight is Darius, now at the cable station, arms roped and glistening.
I try to focus on the dumbbell, the way the cold metal bites into my palm, but it’s no use.
I look away, but not fast enough.
He finishes his set and walks over, slow, as if he’s got all the time in the world. “Need a spot?” he says, voice flat.
I want to say no. I want to say, “I’d rather lift with the guy who used to deal meth at my high school,” but the words get stuck somewhere behind my teeth.
“Yeah,” I say, and hate myself for it.
He stands behind me, silent. The smell of his sweat is clean, like cedar and rain, nothing like the rest of this shithole.
I get under the bar, stare up at the ceiling, which is water-stained and full of cracks.
I start my reps. One, two, three. At four, the world narrows to the bar and the sound of my own breath. At six, I’m shaking.
“Push,” he says, barely above a whisper.
I do. I get to eight, and then the bar starts to slip.
He catches it, hands steady on either side, but instead of just racking it, he lets it hover, and for a second I feel the full weight of him, the pressure, the insistence that I can do this, that I’m not broken, not useless.
I finish the set and sit up, dizzy.
Darius puts a hand on my chest, steadying me. His palm is warm, almost burning.
It stays there a beat too long, just long enough for me to notice, just long enough to make it weird.
He pulls back, wipes his hands on his shorts. “You good?”
I nod, but my throat is tight.
He steps back, gives me space, but I can feel him watching as I rack the weights and try to play it cool.
Every nerve is lit up, every muscle vibrating. I don’t know if I want to scream or laugh or just lie on the rubber mat and wait for the cleaning crew to sweep me into the dumpster out back.
We finish our routines without another word. When I leave, the air outside feels electric, charged with something I can’t name.
I get in my car, sit there with the engine off, and wonder if the next time will be easier or harder. If there will even be a next time.
I drive home in silence, every turn of the wheel a new chance to rewind the scene, analyze every detail, every glance, every accidental brush of skin.
When I get back to my apartment, my hands are still shaking.
Not from the workout.
But from the touch.
———
The next morning, I wake up before the alarm.
My body feels like it’s been through a woodchipper, every tendon whimpering in protest, but there’s a pulse under it all, a weird kind of anticipation, the kind I used to get before championship games.
I think about texting Darius, something stupid like “You alive?” but I don’t want to seem eager, so I just stare at the ceiling until the gray daylight leaks in.
By seven, I’m back at the Ballard gym.
Same empty parking lot, same busted vending machine guy nodding me through. I figure it’ll be another solo session, just me and the ghosts, but as soon as I hit the weights floor, I see him.
Darius is there, again, already half-sweated through his t-shirt, hair sticking to his forehead like he’s been doing sprints since dawn.
He looks at me, doesn’t say anything, just points at the squat rack next to his and nods.
I drop my bag, stretch my quads, and load up the bar. We lift in tandem, each in our own world but always aware of the other’s presence.
It’s like running parallel lanes in a pool, you never touch, but the wake from the guy next to you keeps you honest.
Fifteen minutes in, he grunts, “How’d you sleep?”
I don’t even try to lie. “Like shit.”
He cracks a smile, like he expected nothing less.
We go back to the reps. The silence is heavier this time, but not in a bad way. It’s almost companionable, the kind of quiet that doesn’t require filling.
Darius starts a new set, then, between reps, says, “You ever get that thing where you hear the shots in random noise?”
I know exactly what he means. “Car backfired yesterday. Almost threw up in the Rite Aid.”
He laughs, a real one, deep in his chest. “Fuck. I thought it was just me.”
I want to tell him he’s not alone, that none of us are, but the words jam up. Instead, I ask, “You eat yet?”
He shakes his head. “Can’t taste anything. Everything just tastes like ash.”
He freezes, maybe realizing the pun, and for a second he looks mortified. “Sorry. Didn’t mean…”
But I laugh. Loud and ugly. The sound bounces off the gym walls, and even the guy at the cable machine looks over.
I haven’t heard my own laugh in weeks, and I’m not sure I recognize it.
Darius grins, sheepish. “Didn’t mean it as a burn.”
I wipe tears from my eyes, still laughing. “It’s fine. You should see my inbox. All the trolls just call me ‘Ashtray’ now.”
He snorts. “People are creative when they’re assholes.”
We fall into a rhythm, trading jokes, trading old hockey stories, sometimes just working in silence. I tell him about my family, the daily check-ins, the way my sister tries to meme me out of depression.
He tells me about his dad, how he keeps sending links to TED Talks about “resilience,” as if a motivational video could plug the hole in your chest.
At one point, Darius leans in, voice low. “You miss Cap?”
I nod, the ache settling in my ribs. “He was the only one who remembered my name every practice. Never made it weird if I bombed a shift. Just told me to keep skating.”
Darius’s face softens, and for the first time, I see the exhaustion behind his eyes. “He said you were the best at getting up. Every hit, you just bounced.”
“Yeah, well, I’d rather be the guy who doesn’t get leveled in the first place.”
He shrugs. “That’s overrated.”
We finish the session in a quiet, not the old silence, but the new kind. The one where you know the other person is thinking the same thing, and it’s okay not to say it.
The clock hits eight. The last of the morning regulars shuffle out. The only sound is the clatter of plates as we rerack our bars.
At the door, Darius turns. “Same time tomorrow?”
It’s so casual, it hurts. Like he’s offering me a cigarette or a stick of gum, not a lifeline.
I nod, try to play it cool. “Yeah. Three days a week, or you’ll lose your edge.”
He smirks. “Is that what you tell yourself?”
I want to say yes, but what I really want is to not be alone with my own brain for another day.
Instead, I say, “You’re on.”
He walks out, and I stand there a minute, watching the rain start to bead on the cracked glass of the gym windows.
I let myself feel the burn, the ache, the weird looseness in my chest that wasn’t there before.
I sit in my car, engine off, watching the wipers smear the world into gray and silver lines. For the first time in two weeks, the vise grip around my heart has let up.
Just for an hour. But it loosened.
I rest my head against the steering wheel, close my eyes, and breathe in, slow.
Maybe, just maybe, I can do this.
Maybe we both can.