Chapter Fifteen
Spencer caught himself humming as he logged the results of his latest client’s session.
Sam was coming along well, but not quite enough to warrant his good mood.
Sometimes he and Misty had been so slammed these days that they could only steal a kiss down the street from the gym, but sometimes they could hook up at each other’s apartments.
Either way, it had turned into the highlight of his days over the past few weeks.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and the thought that it could be her perked him up. Instead, it was a text from one of his colleagues.
Spencer’s own stomach clenched in sympathy.
Spencer: Yikes.
Hector: Hope it’ll pass soon, doing everything CityMD said to do for this, but know there’s no way I can do HIIT tonight. Can you cover for me?
Hector: I tried Kurt and Emily, and they’re already booked.
If he’d texted a few minutes later, Spencer might have been busy too. Or would he have been? Misty had said something about a commission to wind up before she left next week. The exact details were a little hazy in light of everything that had followed, but the point was he was free tonight.
Spencer: I’ll do it.
Hector: Thanks. I’ll owe you one.
The next text was a link to a playlist, followed by a picture of a handwritten list of planned exercises for the class. Spencer found the latter to be the trickiest part of setting up a group fitness class, and having that already arranged made the evening easier.
Two hours later, he made his way to the oversized Studio A at the center of the gym. As he set it up with weights, mats, medicine balls, bands, cones, and TRX straps, the room filled in around him. He’d seen some of the students around the gym, but others were completely new faces.
“Checking in,” someone with a familiar voice said at the entrance.
Spencer turned around so quickly he almost tripped over a step. “What are you doing here?”
“Tish’s idea to do this instead of the machines.” Misty gestured to her friend, stretching in the center of the room. “What are you doing here?”
“Hector got food poisoning, so I’m filling in for him.”
It was a testament to the size of the gym that he hadn’t run into her at work since they’d started hooking up.
She looked no different than this time last month—same long ponytail, same t-shirt bearing a slogan he didn’t recognize but avid book, movie, or TV fans might, same long legs covered in leggings and ending in sneakers—but now he knew what was underneath.
“Excuse me.” A group of other attendees filed into the room, putting some distance between them.
“That’s everyone,” the guest services assistant at the entrance said. It was a full house that night, and yet not crowded enough to distract from her.
He stepped to the front of the room. “Everybody ready?”
A lackluster round of assent went up.
“Didn’t quite catch that.” He raised his voice. “Everybody ready?”
This time, the room erupted in a round of loud cheers. “All right! You all know the drill—we’ll start with a warm-up.”
They started out slowly, making their way from one end of the studio to another in stretches, then progressing to sprints. Everyone flew past him by the end.
As the class broke up into three separate teams to go through the circuit, Spencer took another look at Hector’s plan for the session.
So far, so good...except for the part that called for burpees.
He remembered the look on Misty’s face as she’d called them her least favorite exercise early in their session, and he couldn’t have said he blamed her.
He assigned the first two groups their instructions for the next two minutes, his mind racing in search of a substitute.
“And group three! You’re gonna spend the first thirty seconds doing ten jumping jacks followed by ten sumo squats, starting over again if you still have time. For the next thirty seconds, you’ll get on the ground for...shoulder taps. Repeat the set again after the first minute.”
His eyes held Misty’s as he gave the instructions.
She wouldn’t know the gift he’d given her by cutting burpees out of the class, and yet he felt oddly gratified for having been able to do that for her.
He also knew people would wonder if he indicated too much familiarity with her.
On the other hand, wouldn’t ignoring her for the rest of the class also attract attention?
The longest increments of the HIIT class only lasted two minutes, and yet they seemed interminable.
****
Misty’s heart was pounding, and she couldn’t entirely blame it on the frog jumps and twisting side planks of earlier, nor the toe taps she was currently doing.
She hadn’t expected to see Spencer in any context tonight, and now here he was teaching her class.
Would she have signed up if she’d known he’d be there, close enough to touch but as unreachable as in their early days?
She had no way of knowing and couldn’t leave now. Not without drawing attention to herself, not at the risk of looking like she couldn’t hack the class, and certainly not when Tish had commandeered her for the partner exercises they were doing to wind down the class.
“Eight,” Tish announced, rising from her spot on the mat.
Misty switched places with her, going into a set of push-ups as Tish started the toe taps. This time last year, she would have spent the entire set on her knees, but now, she was fully extended. She supposed she had Spencer to thank for that.
Speak of the devil... He walked past and crouched next to one of her classmates. Of course it was a form correction, the position of his arms couldn’t mean anything else, but she still fought a twinge of jealousy.
“Forty-five more seconds!” His voice cut into her thoughts.
Misty rose from the ground. “That was eight.”
“Now we’re down to six.” Tish dropped to the ground, and Misty tried to keep her spirits and stamina up for the last stretch.
It would be nice to have fewer reps of push-ups to do, but that also meant less time to recover from the toe taps.
Her upcoming time at the combine had given her a reputation to live up to, and she didn’t want to look bad in front of Spencer.
“Thirty!” Spencer called, moving from group to group. “Great job, Callie! You got it, Misty!”
Misty’s heart leaped at the shout-out. It gave her the extra burst of energy she needed to make it through the set of four push-ups, then to jump to her feet for more toe taps.
“Time!” Spencer’s voice rang out as Tish started the last set of two push-ups. He led them in a round of highly welcome cool-down stretches. She craved his hands on her to help her stretch a little deeper.
As Misty wiped the sweat of the hour away, the sound of slaps echoed through the room. She removed the towel from her face to see Spencer giving high-fives to everyone as they left the studio.
“Good job,” he said, smacking his palm to hers.
Was it her imagination, or was his hand lingering? She couldn’t have said, but she knew that even the tamest of touches, being this close to him again, was driving up the endorphins in a way the class couldn’t have.
Tish was waiting for her outside the studio. “So that was him?” she asked as they headed to the locker room.
“That was my guy.” Misty couldn’t help smiling.
Something about the way it came out must have given her away, because Tish’s eyes widened. “The way you said that makes it sound like he’s your guy, your boyfriend. What’s going on there?”
“Nothing while we were working together. Things didn’t take off until after our contract was up.”
Tish looked at her with her eyebrows nearly at her hairline. “And why didn’t I hear about this sooner?”
“You were busy with the new school year, and we were both scrambling like crazy to get our tryout packages ready.” Not to mention, it was all so new that she wouldn’t have known how to explain it.
She hadn’t meant to keep it a secret from Tish.
They weren’t doing anything wrong, and yet, she had intentionally never brought it up to her best friend until now.
Was that allowed? Had Spencer told any friends about what had happened between them? How or when could she ask about this?
Tish’s face hardened. “Did he take advantage of you?”
“God, no! The whole time we were training, he only touched me to make form corrections. But then, after I sent my video, we started hanging out outside the gym. We first kissed after I found out I made the combine, and one thing led to another.”
Understatement of the century.
Tish frowned. “I don’t know about this. Something about the power imbalance isn’t sitting right.”
“We’re both civilians now, and it’s no big deal. It’s just until I leave for the combine.” Even as she said it to Tish, it struck Misty that it was a reminder to herself.
By now, they’d made it to their lockers. Misty unlocked hers and got her bag out to see a text notification on her phone.
Spencer: You did great in class, but it drove me crazy to have you so close.
Misty: So it wasn’t just me.
She smiled as she sent the text. It didn’t fade when his reply came quickly.
Spencer: Almost done here. My place, 20 minutes?
Misty: See you there.
Tish turned away from her locker, her hair tied back and a fresh shirt on. “Ready?”
“You go on without me. I’ve got...” Her voice trailed off as she tried to figure out how to put it.
Tish sighed as she reached for her phone, presumably to get an Uber uptown. “Just be careful.”
“This area’s fine at this time of night.” Misty hoisted her gym bag over her shoulder.
“Not what I mean.”
Misty barely heard her as she headed out with an extra spring in her step. It was getting dark earlier these days, but the sky looked like the sun had only just disappeared and hadn’t given way to full darkness yet.
Spencer reached the pre-war building around the same time she did. “You crushed it today,” he said as he approached.
She smiled. “You said so at the gym.”
He stepped closer. “True, but there were things I couldn’t have done there.”
She stepped further to close the space between them. “Like what?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his waist.
He bent his head to whisper in her ear. “Like, why don’t I start by giving you post-class head for a job well done, and we’ll see where that goes?”
She grinned, took his hand, and let him lead her inside.