Chapter 4
FOUR
SUTTON
Cooper leaves within a blink.
I turn over my shoulder and watch as he storms down the stairs.
I should go after him, but I’m glued to the chair.
There is a battle going on within me. The devil on one shoulder is convincing me this is payback for what he did in high school.
That finally I have the ammo to do exactly what he did to me.
On the other shoulder, the angel is reminding me that he used to be my friend, that our families are close, and I could help him.
My case study…
Still frozen to my seat, I pull my phone out of my backpack and dial Dr. Manning.
“Sutton?”
“Hi. Morning, Dr. Manning. I’m sorry to be calling you this early. I hope I’m not interrupting any—” There is an echo of child laughter from her end, and I realize I am interrupting. Of course I am, her niece is visiting. “Never mind.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in your first session right now?” she asks, ignoring me, and stopping my thumb from hitting end.
“About that. Is there another student available?”
“Is there a problem with Mr. Carmichael?”
Yes? No? Maybe? Everything is a problem when it comes to Cooper.
One of the reasons I look up to Dr. Manning is her no bullshit mentality. Meaning she isn’t going to accept my half a decade’s worth of dislike and rivalry as a valid excuse.
Still…I try.
“We don’t see eye-to-eye. We have a pa—”
Dr. Manning hmms. “I see.”
“Not like that. We’ve never been romantic before.”
“Okay,” she says leerily. “Whatever is going on between the two of you, put it aside. This industry requires you to be unbiased. And there is no other option. This is a requirement from the department chair, Sutton. You have a choice: work with him or we drop the independent study.”
I sigh, a long, drawn-out huff. “Fine.”
“Is that all?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you next week.”
The line clicks at the sound of a squeal in background.
I groan, slouching forward till my forehead hits the table in front of me.
My worst nightmare is coming true.
I need Cooper Carmichael.
Checking my watch, I’ve wasted twenty minutes of the time I allotted. I’ll figure it out, but in the meantime, I need to clear my head, and I now have an hour back in my day.
Any spots in your next class?
Elliot
What are we sweating out?
I’m about to tell her, but I stop at the fresh memory of Cooper’s knuckles going white, gripping the chair when he admitted he is struggling, as if it was the first time he’s allowed the truth to emerge.
I’ve been there. After my injury and during recovery, realizing I’ll never play again.
I respond with a half truth.
Had some free time pop up.
Elliot
Bike 15
“Last two minutes! Lower your resistance to thirty-five from forty. We will be in the saddle, but when the beat drops”—Elliot smiles, sending a devious brow raise across the room—“turn that resistance back up! Minimum forty-five.”
Her cycling classes are the best. She’s been teaching on campus for the past two years.
The rec center drops classes on Sunday for the following week. If you don’t log in precisely at two, you won’t even make it on the waitlist for her cycling or mat Pilates classes. And even then, students show up in the hopes that someone no-shows.
I adjust the red knob, pulling back my resistance.
My legs are killing me as I try to keep up with the eighty-to-one-hundred cadence she calls out.
Even though I’ve graduated from cycling to running in physical therapy, my left knee still throbs occasionally—the pulse syncing with the beat of the song.
Elliot is already calling out another cue. “In ten, we are out of the saddle. Resistance minimum forty-five and maintain cadence. Ready? Three. Two. One.”
A Justin Bieber remix carries us through the last minute of work before our cooldown.
The song changes, and everyone sits back down, toweling off and grabbing their water bottles. Elliot leads us through five minutes of stretching before high-fiving the group at the door.
I unclip my shoes, then hang around till everyone is gone. This was her final class of the morning, and I promised her when I showed up, I’d help her clean before we went to lunch at the coffee shop in town.
She bounces over to me, straight hair tied up in a high pony with her emotional support scrunchie. “What’d you think?” Elliot asks.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to move tomorrow.” I offer her a half smile, half grimace. “That was your best one yet, Elle.”
Her cheeks are tipped pink. Unlike the rest of us, whose cheeks are tomato red from the intensity of cycling for forty-five minutes, Elliot looks like she could hit the red carpet. I swear she’s glistening instead of sweating. Her self-tanned skin is highlighted by the periwinkle set she’s wearing.
“Thanks.” She bites her lip. “Wanna know something? You can’t tell anyone.”
Did I miss the memo that today is National Secret Day?
“Yeah, of course.” I give her a weak smile, bracing for my second secret bomb of the day. Elliot never keeps anything from me. I give myself one second…then another to question our friendship before I mentally slap myself.
I follow her to the cabinet in the corner of the room to grab a rag and disinfectant spray. We start wiping down the bikes and weights.
“I submitted an audition tape for a new virtual cycling studio. It’s a stationary bike that people can buy and then take classes whenever they want. I’d record different rides—time, music, intensity.”
“What! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because let’s be real, they aren’t going to accept a college junior. They probably received applications from instructors who have been doing this for more than two years.”
“So? Does not mean they are better than you. When are you supposed to find out about next steps?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. Application window closes in two weeks.”
“No keeping it a secret when you find out.” I tug at the end of her pony.
“Fineeee. It was on a whim, though, so I don’t expect anything, and I would have told you once I heard back. I didn’t want to get my hopes up.”
I know a little something about that.
“Is this the revelation about what you want to do postgrad?”
Elliot has had seven majors since we started college. She came into Lakeland undecided. After your first semester, you are required to declare a major, which she did until Elliot decided to play leapfrog from one major to the next.
“Yeah. I’ve always loved fitness but never saw it as a potential career.”
“People make a career out of everything. If you love it, you should go for it.”
Elliot smiles warmly, nodding. She drops our towels in a laundry basket before grabbing a mop. I dust the cubbies in the corner, putting the few abandoned water bottles in the lost and found.
“Ugh,” she groans. “Don’t they know I have the patience of a racehorse?”
We finish cleaning while Elliot tells me more about the company and daydreams about opening a studio someday. By the time she’s handing me my coat, she’s decided to go back to a business major and schedule a meeting with her advisor.
I tug on my floral beanie, taking my curls out of the braid I had thrown them into. All of my baby hairs are either glued to my skin by sweat or trying to make a break for it.
We’re walking out of the studio and down the hallway toward the exit, passing one of the three weight rooms. We both fall prey to letting our eyes roam over the guys working out. Simultaneously, our heads rotate to the left. I swear I see Elliot’s tongue peak out of her mouth, wetting her lips.
I know it’s a double standard, but come on, it’s a large glass window, and a majority of them opted not to wear shirts.
It’d be the number one exhibit if colleges were a zoo.
Men in their natural habitat. Flexing in the mirror to see who has the biggest biceps.
Pretending they did one hundred chest presses when they only did eight.
My eyes catch on one guy: Zach Brighton.
I’ve had an on-and-off crush on him for the better part of my college years.
Zach is a pitcher on the baseball team. He’s tall with thick muscles stretching both his shirt and shorts. He flips up the hem of his shirt to swipe at his brow, flashing a tattoo that stretches up from the waistband of his shorts and wraps around his ribcage.
He’s not as defined or sculpted as our guy friends. More broad. Large and a little softer, but you can see how strong he still is.
Zach drops his shirt, talking to one of his teammates. Dirty blond brows pinch together, his green eyes magnetizing beneath them.
Someone squeezes my bicep, my head jerking in their direction.
It’s just Elliot. I was so enthralled with him for a minute that I forgot where I was.
“Zach is smiling at you!”
“What? No, he wasn’t,” I immediately combat.
She turns my body, and she’s right. “Explain that.”
An already enormous smile grows when our eyes catch. Signaling something to the group he’s working out with, he sprints through the entrance.
I keep walking, dragging Elliot with me. Her steps slow purposely.
“Sutton?” My name echoes behind us, bouncing through the other voices in the hallway.
“Keep walking,” I whisper to her, only to take a step forward and trip. Elliot is stopped dead in her tracks, my body ricocheting, momentum taking me down.
Shoes screech on the floor as Zach whirls in front of me, catching me with one arm around my waist. He helps me get my bearings, steadying me back on two feet. Over his shoulder, I spy Elliot biting her lip, stifling whatever witty comment she wants to say.
“Clumsy?”
Are voices supposed to be hot?
I stare blankly at him. Words to formulate a response swirl in my head but get lost somewhere on their way to my tongue.
Answer him, Sutton. Anything. One word. Yes or no. It’s not that hard.
“Y-yes. N-no.”
Oh my gosh. This cannot be happening.
My cheeks burn with embarrassment.
I smack a hand over my face. This is not how I imagined our first conversation going. I’ve pictured it in my head countless times. Working it one way, then reworking it another. Each time I’m confident and easy going, entirely myself, and he falls head over heels for me.
I’m not shy or stunned. I’m not inexperienced or afraid to say the wrong thing. I’m not the little girl who watched everyone else get chosen to go on dates with potential families. I’m not on the sidelines of my life; I’m the main character.
Why is picturing something so much easier than living it?
“I’ll catch you either way,” he says, ignoring the way I’m also clumsy with words. “We’ve never formally met. I’m Zach.”
“I know.” Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t be myself. My feet jitter. Shifting side to side, my toes curling on the soles. “I’m Sutton Davis.”
“I know.” He hands me my water bottle. Our fingers brush, and I try not to appear too utterly freaked out. Zach blushes, and for a second, I think he might be as nervous as me. He shifts on his feet. “I’ve wanted to ask for your number for a while, but—”
“We have plans,” I blurt out awkwardly. “Elliot and I,” I modify my statement.
Elliot frowns, eyes falling shut as she shakes her head. She’s been giving me tips for talking to the opposite sex, but I’ve apparently forgotten every single one.
I dated a guy in high school briefly. Then someone else most of freshman year, but haven’t since.
My roommate steps in as my lifesaver—literally and figuratively.
“We are going to lunch. I’d offer for you to join, but I think you are needed back in there.
” She points to the weight room where we are collecting a small crowd who pretend not to be watching us.
“But she’d love to grab coffee sometime. Do you have your phone?”
“I don’t drink coffee,” I whisper to Elliot.
“Shut up,” she whispers back.
Zach shakes his head no.
Elliot reaches into my coat pocket, fingers like chopsticks, and pulls mine out. She types in my passcode and opens a new contact—note to self: change passcode. Flipping my phone around, she passes it to Zach. He hands it back, and she returns it to my pocket.
“Thanks, Zach. Tell Tyler to text me.” She winks, then drags me down the hallway.
Twisting backward, I find Zach still standing there, a smile on his face. I lift my hand, tight and in front of my chest, waving bye to him. He returns the gesture before miming a phone to his ear, then pointing at himself and mouthing Call me.