Chapter 12
I SHOVE MY PHONE INTO my shorts’ pocket and grip the counter in the ladies’ locker room, forcing myself to take in slow, even breaths.
I shouldn’t have opened that email. The subject line was warning enough, but I ignored my mom’s all-caps SO INSPIRING!
! and clicked. Photos of celebrities with canes.
The link to an MS podcast hosted by an actress who can no longer even use a cane.
Something about a study involving mono, which I had in middle school, so… Why? I didn’t read on to find out.
The heavy weight of guilt pulls me deeper into the doom spiral. My parents still don’t know about the breakup. They had to deal with enough last week, and after our weepy call with my results on Friday, it seemed cruel to ring them up and hijack their tentative relief with a new source of worry.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself, anyway.
But the noble motive hasn’t stuck, which is probably why I subjected myself to my mom’s MS “research” as penance for not fessing up.
I just really, really don’t want to get into all things Cole again.
Sunday’s partial unpacking with Heather and Mark exceeded my threshold for emotional excavation, and I’m unwilling to dig any further. The bedrock is cracked enough as it is.
I’m breathing normally when I exit the locker room and walk toward the gym floor. Ian’s filling his battered Yeti at the drinking fountain.
“You heading out?” he asks. Tuesday and Thursday I’m scheduled until the eleven thirty class wraps up, and I have Wednesdays off.
I still plan to come in for tomorrow’s WOD and, hopefully, tire myself out enough for an uninterrupted night’s sleep.
Tonight will probably be a write-off, because, courtesy of my mother, I now know about urge incontinence, a malady experienced by some MS patients.
A lifetime of feeling like you have to pee and getting zero reprieve when you relieve yourself.
It sounds like hell; I already have a bladder like a thimble.
Ian frowns. “Something wrong?”
“Nope!” I force a smile and take in another long breath.
Because nothing is wrong. I just have to shift perspective.
I’m fine. I ended up back squatting my body weight earlier; that was cool.
And I made a new friend! Helen was really fun to talk to, and what she said about Firehouse showing her how to do more, instead of demanding she be less, resonated with me.
It gives me an idea. “Would you have time to do the goal-setting stuff now?”
“Oh, uh.” He checks his watch, casting a glance past me, toward the door to his apartment. “Sure, now’s fine. Let’s go out front.” He gestures me ahead.
I’m just clear of the hallway when his warm hand closes over my bicep. “Sorry,” he says, voice low. “Wait a sec.” His hand leaves my arm to point at Diego by the rig. There are no classes for the next hour and a half, so he and Alistair are the only ones working out.
Diego has set up two phones to record his back squats from different angles.
He hadn’t been kidding about dancing between sets; the man was getting down over there while I was cleaning.
Now, he’s brought one phone to the floor, and as we watch, he gets on his hands and knees in front of it, making what looks like a finger-to-lips shh! gesture.
I frown up at Ian, who smiles, mouthing, “Wait for it.”
Diego gets up, then tiptoes over to Alistair, who’s facing away from him, using an ab roller.
Alistair starts in a kneeling plank, holding on to the handles on either side of the single six-inch wheel, then rolls forward, extending his arms out as far as he can while keeping them straight.
It must be grueling; his body is shaking with the effort.
Diego stops with his hands to either side of Alistair’s feet. Oblivious, Alistair rolls himself back to his starting position, then extends, pausing to hold a plank. With a whoop, Diego grabs a foot in each hand, jogging forward with Alistair in front of him like a human wheelbarrow.
Alistair bellows an elongated “Dude!” in protest, but Diego ignores him, continuing to wheel him around, back and forth, in view of his camera setup, giggling maniacally.
I have never seen anything more absurd, but I’m laughing harder than I have since I can remember; I have to wipe away tears.
Beside me, Ian’s laugh is a deep rumble.
Diego slows to a stop, but before he can let go, Alistair tells him to keep hold because, quote, “The burn is sick.” Diego trots off, steering our roommate around the rig.
Eyes still watering, I gawk up at Ian, who starts toward the lobby. “How did you know?”
“There’s a look they all get when they’re about to fuck with one another. You’ll learn”—he’s interrupted by a yawn he doesn’t even try to conceal, then finishes—“to recognize it.”
“Aww, this is Ian’s nap time,” Diego coos, circling us with Alistair. He has a great turn radius. “Every day during the break, he’s upstairs for twenty minutes of sleepies.”
The offer to postpone our meeting out of respect for nap time is on the tip of my tongue, but I force it down.
That’s a Regular Life Ellie impulse, the knee-jerk response to be accommodating at my own expense.
Break from Regular Life Ellie is committed to her fitness journey and knows that setting goals is important.
She’d also like to avoid going home to an empty house with only her thoughts for company; if that means intruding on nap time, so be it.
“It’s fine,” he assures me, and points me toward the large table by the pro shop. As I sit, he rummages through the clipboards I organized yesterday. One has the gym liability waiver new members sign, another is for drop-in guests, and the one Ian grabs now is simply titled “Goals.”
Ian takes a seat. “First, any medical conditions that we need to be aware of…” His voice trails to give me the opportunity to jump in.
I shake my head. It’s not a lie. I’m manifesting: My limited vision is temporary. And I see no need to disclose my endometriosis. I doubt I’ll be working out during flare-ups. In my experience, referring to menstruation in any capacity is a free pass out of male-guided activities.
“Fitness history.” He taps his pen against the clipboard. “What kind of workouts or sports have you done in the past?”
“I grew up swimming. And there was a fitness center in my last apartment building, so I’d use the stair climber or whatever. Go for runs. Why—” I frown, which is what Ian started doing as I listed. “What? Why is that the face you’re making?”
“It’s not you, it’s the all cardio, no weight training you’re describing. Pretty common.”
I try to determine whether I should be offended. “Weights are intimidating if you don’t know what you’re doing. And even with the guidance here, there’s the chance I’d get bulky—”
A voice cries out behind me, and I turn to find Diego on his knees a few feet away, taking a break from his turn wheelbarrowing. He sits back on his haunches. “Women always say that! They try us, they like it, but they’re afraid of putting on too much muscle, and bail. Why?”
I shrug. “Lots of women don’t want to be bigger, period. They work out to be smaller.”
“Is that what you want?” he presses, with a hint of concern.
“That’s not my current priority.” Not that I’d mind a change in the ratio of my softer to firmer body mass, but my frustrations with my body have been so firmly focused on its betrayals that perceived aesthetic flaws take a back seat.
“Give gals a break. It’s going to take a lot more than a handful of body positivity campaigns to undo decades of social programming insisting that muscles are for men and that smaller is better for women. ”
Ian half smiles. “It takes more than lifting to pack on muscle, anyway.”
“Like what?”
He leans back in his chair, balancing it on the back legs.
It takes everything in me to refrain from telling him to keep all four legs on the floor—a lingering peeve from teaching.
Knitting his fingers together, he lifts his hands up and over to cup the back of his head, causing the muscles of his upper arms to shift in the most fascinating way. I care less about the chair legs.
“Past training and exercise. How often someone’s training. And the diet component is huge. Your muscles don’t grow much unless you feed them. But a lot’s genetic. Some people are genetically inclined to put on muscle easily, some aren’t. You—”
“Have the back of a would-be beast,” I cut in, not missing—or minding—his smile. “How about long, lean muscles?” It was practically a refrain at a yoga studio I used to go to.
Bending to retrieve Diego’s ankles, Alistair drones, “Muscles have a point of origin—”
“Where they start,” Diego grunts.
“—and a point of insertion.”
“Where they attach.”
“At both of these points, tendons connect muscles to bones. They’re fixed points. They don’t get longer.”
“How about stretching?” I ask. “Like yoga or pilates?”
“That’s an increased range of motion,” Diego says, voice straining as he holds plank.
“What about the higher reps, lower weight thing?” I’ve heard that… somewhere.
Alistair shakes his head. “For real change, you gotta challenge the muscles. Overload them. Increase the weight, add more reps, slow the tempo, take shorter rests…”
“I never learned any of that,” I admit. “You guys know your stuff.” They legitimately thought the grout in the shower was ombre, but a crash course in kinesiology they can relay, no problem.
“The more muscle mass, the higher the calorie burn during exercise and recovery. That means that when combined with nutrient-dense foods, a caloric deficit, and quality sleep, the kind of training we do here can help reduce body fat, if you’re looking for lean.
As far as any bulk…” Alistair starts rolling Diego away. “You’ll just have to live with it.”
I blink. It’s the most I’ve heard him say since meeting him.