The Push Start (Unexpected Victories #1)

Warm-Up

Tish: Big news!

The message flashed up at Misty Kaufman from the phone on her desk. She’d left it there so she wouldn’t be distracted as she did a read-through of her latest client’s project, but she had gotten up to hydrate and seen the text from her best friend.

The text had a time stamp from about twenty minutes ago and nothing else after. Had Tish been waiting for her to ask?

Misty: Great! What is it?

Tish: I have to tell you in person.

Misty: Don’t leave me in suspense!

Tish: I won’t...on my way to the gym now. Can I stop by your place to tell you?

There was no shortage of gyms near Tish Douglass’ Upper West Side apartment and workplace, but she insisted on going to this huge, fancy downtown gym.

It didn’t make sense to Misty, but she wasn’t about to question it, not when it sent her best friend into her neighborhood so often.

She sent a reply—Any time you want—and took a sip from her water bottle, watching the level bob from ‘You are getting dewy...very dewy...’ to ‘The true halfway mark.’

Tish: Great. You’re gonna want to hear this, and I hope you’ll want to join me.

That was it. Misty’s concentration was officially shot.

She’d needed something constructive to do with her afternoons now that kickball season was over, and this commission to design a set of smart-ass mugs to correspond to a local author’s holiday romance couldn’t have fit the bill better.

It had become her practice to hold off on doodling anything until the second read-through, but ideas were already starting to dance in her head during the first read.

Now, though, curiosity about Tish’s big announcement was temporarily clogging her creative juices.

Misty didn’t have to dwell on it for long.

The buzzer sounded less than ten minutes later, and she rushed to answer it before a jet-lagged roommate could get bent out of shape.

She waited by the door and opened it to find Tish standing there with her curls pulled back and a burnt orange tank top that matched her patterned leggings.

The color always made her skin glow, and her big brown eyes had an extra sparkle today.

“I got an email from Coach Brynn,” she said as they headed to Misty’s room at the back of the apartment.

“Okay.” That couldn’t have been the big news. Tish and her college track coach had been on good terms for all four years, and they were still on each other’s holiday card lists.

“She got an email from World Winter Games officials saying they’re going to introduce a four-woman bobsled event at this coming event.”

Misty was intrigued, if a little confused about where this conversation was going. “Is she going to be a part of it?”

“Sort of. They reached out to her to help with recruitment. Most of the current two-woman and monobob athletes have track backgrounds, and she thought of me because of that.”

“That’s awesome!”

“That’s what I thought.” Tish paused before looking Misty full in the face. “She also said to spread the word if I knew of anyone else who’d be a good fit. I’ve sent some messages to former teammates, but there was one friend I wanted to ask in person.”

“Me?” Not the most original response, but it was all Misty could come up with.

It was like she’d fallen into a parallel universe where their positions had flipped.

Throughout school, Misty had been the one who’d suggested running the Disney Princess 5K, pranking the boys’ team, and other fun ideas.

Tish, on the other hand, had always had her eye on beating her times in the next event and staying hyper-focused on training.

“You, the one who can keep up with me on all my runs. You, who just led her kickball team to victory between running and kicking—that takes speed and lower-body strength, and that’s what you need for this.”

“Me who spent that ski trip alternating between the lodge and the hot tub,” Misty reminded her.

She’d tagged along on the trip for the camaraderie but hadn’t been able to get behind the idea of going out in the cold for fun.

Despite the heat of this day, the very thought of being out on an icy track made her want to grab a blanket or run a hot bath.

Tish paused. “I really did forget about that. All I thought was that you’re more than good enough for this and that you’re my best friend. We’ve known each other forever, done so much in that time, and how amazing would it be for us to go to the World Winter Games together?”

Misty softened at Tish’s words and the picture they painted. “What would I have to do?”

Tish pulled the desk chair up to the armchair, then found the email from her coach.

“We’ll have to submit a video. The ones with the best times and results for these exercises will be chosen for this combine upstate where we get to drive a bobsled, do the workouts, and see how well everyone works together. They’ll choose the team from there.”

Misty looked over the list of requirements.

She fell within the height and weight parameters.

..she could get the recommendations easily enough.

..the speed requirement looked easy enough.

..but what was this? She’d never even attempted a vertical jump in her life.

Not to mention the heaviest thing she lifted was her grocery bags on the walk home, and she put them down at every red light.

She looked up. “I don’t know if I can do some of these.”

“You don’t know if you can now,” Tish corrected her in the same tone her Olympic medalist dad had used on her growing up. “If you’re not sure, there’s time to get a personal trainer.”

“Is your dad taking on any others?” Misty asked. Tish’s father had been training her practically since she’d learned how to walk, and it showed in Tish’s record-breaking times.

“No, but there’s no shortage of trainers at my gym. Some of whom are kind of hot, I might add.” Here Tish went again, the sales pitch Misty had been hearing for years.

“I have a gym in my building and yours costs a fortune.”

“You have a windowless prison with a treadmill and a single rack of weights,” Tish countered.

“This place is so much nicer, so much bigger, and it costs that much because there’s so much to do and so many people who can help you do it.

And because they have hot tubs, saunas, and fancy bath and hair products in the locker room. ”

Misty had no choice but to concede. “Nice.”

“Not to mention, if you tell them I referred you, we both get a credit for a massage.”

Misty thought it over. “A tempting offer.”

Tish took out her phone and scrolled through her emails. “And today’s the last day of a promo where you can sign up without an initiation fee.”

Tish’s gym was still ridiculously expensive, but no initiation fee was one big problem sorted. “Well, I’m dressed for it” — Misty gestured to her leggings and kickball team t-shirt — “and I was wondering what to do now that kickball season’s over...”

The two women walked past the partitioned living room, into the hall for the elevator, and then the few blocks to the gym. The space was the size of two or three floors in Misty’s apartment building and flooded with light, and she had to admit this was nicer than her building’s amenity space.

At the front desk, Tish scanned her phone. A guy with heavily teased brown hair and a t-shirt with the gym’s logo smiled at her. “Welcome back, Tish.”

“Hi, Kurt.” Tish beamed at him.

He peered at Misty. “You here on a guest pass?”

“Actually, I’d like to join.”

“Great! You’ll need to fill this out.” He handed her a tablet with the application.

While Misty typed in her information, Tish was all but bouncing on her toes in anticipation of her workout or the thought of them training for the World Winter Games. Either way, it was obvious that she had energy to burn.

“Go on. I’ve got this,” Misty urged her.

“Yeah, you do.” Tish gave her an encouraging look and a squeeze to her shoulder before disappearing into the gym.

As Misty completed the form, she made sure to mention who’d referred her. At the bottom, she clicked a box requesting a personal trainer.

Kurt looked over the tablet. “I see you checked ‘Specific Goal’ for why you joined the gym. Can you tell me more about what that is so I can assign you the right personal trainer? I should warn you that we don’t have a ton of availability right now.”

“That’s fine, as long as I get someone,” Misty said. “I need to get in shape to try out for the first four-woman bobsled team at the World Winter Games.”

Instead of assigning her someone right away, the guy’s eyes widened, and a laugh flew out. He quickly clenched his lips and looked around. “No, wait, I’m sorry. Is this for a reality show? Am I on camera now?”

“No and no.” Misty clenched her jaw against a twinge of irritation. She was under no illusion that training for this would be easy, but she had hoped not to experience that until after she’d found a trainer.

****

“Good job, Ty.” Spencer Whitford looked at the app where he kept track of his clients’ progress. “That’s the most reps you’ve done this month.”

Ty eased the weights back onto the rack before accepting a towel and a fist bump from Spencer. “Thanks a lot, man.”

“Keep up the good work, and I’ll see you on Friday.”

“Sounds good.” Ty headed for the locker room, and Spencer went into the office to load the latest progress from the session into the computer. That took all of five minutes, and it would be an hour before his next client was due.

He looked around the room. The desks were set up in a way that wouldn’t look out of place in any office, but this couldn’t have been less like the insurance agency where he’d worked if the gym executives had tried.

Instead of everyone being chained to their desks all day, trainers came in to log their clients’ progress on the nearest computer before going out again. He breathed much easier for it.