Chapter 15 Dan
DAN
It’s a hazy Monday a week later when I pull into the parking lot of Gene’s Gym, the sky turning purple as the sun rises.
But Carson isn’t looking at the horizon. She’s peering through the windshield at the double doors of Gene’s like there’s a combination root canal/colonoscopy waiting for her inside.
“Are you okay?” I ask, shutting off the engine.
She nods very hard for way too long. “Yeah, totally! Totally, totally fine,” she chirps. When I raise an eyebrow, she sighs. “It’s just that at this moment, my nervous system seems to think I’ve traveled back in time to middle school gym class.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t. “There won’t even be that many people in there this early. Gene’s isn’t that popular. There’s nothing to be scared of. “
I can practically hear her eye roll. “Uh, says you. You look like you were designed in a lab to be in there. I look like I star in some jerk’s TikTok about what a disaster I am in there.”
I clench my jaw, the thought of some asshole tormenting her making me want to tear the doors off this car. “This gym has a no filming policy, and even if they didn’t, if I saw anyone filming you in there, I’d remove their teeth from their head.”
Her cheeks turn pink, but she still looks skeptical, and I have to remind myself what it was like to be new at the gym.
I was in college when I first started going.
Jameson dragged me there after much protestation.
Growing up, my brothers were always in the weight room at school, Archer and Felix for hockey and Owen during baseball and track season.
But I never took to sports growing up. I figured one of us had be unathletic, and that was me.
I was the quiet one, the serious one, the one who would rather stay home and play video games than get up early for practice.
I was the kid in gym class who was happy to be hit early in a dodgeball game so I could sit in the bleachers and flip through the paperback I’d smuggled in.
My only goal in high school was to get the hell out of Cardinal Springs, and sports were not part of that plan.
When I got to Princeton, I assumed my real life would begin.
I was in a new place where nobody knew me.
Everything had to get better. But that first semester, my classes kicked my ass, and the social thing didn’t go much better.
I couldn’t figure out why it was so easy for everyone else to make friends and find their place.
I’d see groups in the dining hall laughing and talking, people spread out on blankets in the quad, and gaggles trudging from house party to house party together.
Where had they all met? Had I missed some kind of make-a-friend event where they’d all exchanged numbers?
The only person I managed to talk to in the first month of freshman year was Jameson, and that was only because he was my roommate.
But after six weeks, Jameson finally had enough of me rotting in my extra-long twin bed between classes, my laptop cooking me as I watched Netflix and perused message boards. He dragged me to the gym, walked me through the space, showed me how to use every machine and dumbbell, and make me lift.
But I don’t know how to tell Carson about my pathetic social trauma, or maybe I don’t want her to know just how awkward I can be, so instead I say, “I wasn’t always built like this. I worked up to it by going there.” I point at the double glass doors, and she sighs again.
“Fine.” She climbs out of the car, plants her feet on the cracked asphalt of the parking lot, and squares her shoulders, her brows knitting together in determination. Her lips move as she gives herself a silent pep talk, and then she gives the slightest nod. “Let’s do this.”
I take her to the front desk, where a barely awake teenager stands behind a desktop computer that probably predates him. I flash my laminated membership card.
“And I’ve got a guest,” I say, nodding to Carson.
The sleepy teen says nothing but pulls a sheet of paper out from beneath the desk, nodding at a chipped mug full of mismatched pens, most of them missing their caps.
“This place is delightfully low-tech,” Carson says while she fills out the bare-bones release form. “No app? No key tag to scan? No influencers in candy-colored spandex?”
“Gene’s does not do frills. I don’t think the membership cards have changed since the eighties, when Gene got a laminator,” I say. “That’s what I like about it.”
“Well, it’s certainly not the smell.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You don’t love eau de gym socks and rubber?”
“I usually lean more toward citrus and bleach, but this will do,” she says with a grin, and I think she might be working through her anxiety. But as soon as we start to walk toward the machines, she tenses.
I reach for her arm to stop her. “Hey, look at me,” I say, and when she turns tilt her chin up with my finger.
I wait until she meets my gaze, and then I have to take a beat, because looking straight into her big eyes the color of a summer sky damn near knocks me out.
“I’m going to be by your side the entire time.
I won’t let you get hurt, I won’t let you embarrass yourself, and I won’t let anyone give you any shit.
But if at any moment you need to tap out, you can do that. Okay?”
There’s a long pause, and for a minute I think she’s going to march past me and straight out the door. Instead, her lips quirk as she says, “Can we have a password?”
“A password?” I ask. “You mean like a safe word?”
She blushes, and I have to beat back all the thoughts that come along with that particular fantasy. I told her I needed a friend, after all. Anything else would be ungentlemanly.
“Yes,” she says.
I nod. “Name it.”
She thinks about it. “Lemon.”
My mind immediately goes to the wallpaper sample in her kitchen and the look on her face when she told me about it.
She loves it, clearly, but something is holding her back.
She isn’t ready to explain what, and I’m certainly not going to push her to talk.
But I like that she’s bringing it up with me now. It’s like she sees me as safe.
I like it a lot.
“Okay,” I say. “You want to leave, you just say ‘lemon’ and we’ll get out of here.”
She nods. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s do it.”
“Attagirl,” I say, and give myself three seconds to enjoy the rush of pink that floods her cheeks.
Then I shake it off. She’s nervous. I told her I would help her.
And that doesn’t include objectifying her, no matter how good she looks in her black leggings and pink tank top, the crisscross straps of a green sports bra sticking out tantalizingly underneath.
“Okay, let’s do legs today. Quads will help you skate, and glutes will help you hit. ”
She nods, her brow set like I’m her drill sergeant.
“We’ll start with some mobility to get warmed up.”
I take her over to an open space in front of a bank of mirrors and grab two mats, then lead her through some basic stretches and gentle joint movements.
She watches me closely, sometimes pulling her pillowy bottom lip between her teeth, sometimes letting out these breathy little sounds as she sinks into a stretch.
I thought the gym would be a safe space. I’ve never once walked into this place, which smells like sweat and old sneakers and has a soundtrack of eighties hair metal and the occasional male grunt, and thought of sex.
But that was before Carson was standing next to me in front of a full-length mirror, her ass encased in black spandex, her strawberry-blond hair pulled back in a bouncy ponytail that begs for me to wrap it around my hand and yank.
But, you know, in a fun way.
It takes every ounce of my concentration not to let my body react to her. But I manage to lock it down, because I don’t want to be a fucking creep. And also my gym shorts don’t leave much room for error.
And then a welcome distraction appears in the mirror behind us.
“Always with the stretching,” Norm grunts, because he’s forever teasing me about how mobility is new age woo shit and not the number-one way to make sure I’ll be able to get out of bed without wincing when I’m eighty.
Then his eyes land on Carson.
“And who’s this?” he asks.
For the first time in the year that I’ve been working out beside him, Norm isn’t glowering. No, suddenly there’s an actual gleam in his eye.
“This is my, uh, friend,” I say, glancing at her as I try the word on for size.
Friends—that’s what we are. Roommates too, I guess, but I hope that even after I move back into Decker’s apartment, if the plumbing ever gets fixed, Carson and I can stay friends.
I don’t make many of them, so I’d like to keep her, if I can.
And from the smile she gives me, I think she might agree. “This is Carson Webber.”
She smiles and holds out a hand, which Norm seems to find charming as all get-out. When he takes her hand, he pulls her in a little, dropping his voice as he says, “He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?”
And then the smooth motherfucker winks.
Suddenly, grumpy, sullen Norm is goddamn charmer. Mr. Shut Up and Lift looks like he’s ready to sit down for brunch with Carson and yap about whatever the Real Housewives are up to.
“He’s been really helpful,” she says, glancing at me with a smile. “I’m a little bit nervous, to be honest.”
Norm chuckles. “Oh, it’s not so hard. Just pick up heavy things and put them down again. That’s all there is to it.”
Carson giggles, and I’d glare at Norm for hitting on my girl, but she’s not my girl. And his words also seem to have calmed whatever nerves she was still holding on to, so I guess I should be grateful to the motherfucker.
“You know what the hardest part is?” he says.
“What?” she asks.
He points toward the front. “Walking in that door,” he says. “Congratulations. Now get to work.”