“I thought you were a model?” I dropped the weights and took a quick water break.
“I’m a fitness influencer, actually. Model has a kind of snobby ring to it. I’m just showing off what my momma gave me sprinkled with years of hard work is all. After all, it’s normal for people to have two personalities. You of all people should know.” She wasn’t looking at me anymore, busy typing away on her phone, nails clicking obnoxiously loudly.
I choked on my own laughter because the girl I knew hated—and I mean hated—anything physical. I had to coax this girl to run with me during PE as kids. I’d bribe her with chocolate, and it worked.
“You’re shitting me, right?”
She shook her head and side-eyed me like I had a death wish.
“You still eat chocolate?”
She nodded, furrowing her brows and squinting her eyes like she could send laser beams through my neck.
“What is this? Twenty questions?”
“I’m just trying to understand what happened to the girl who hated PE. I mean, it makes sense. Your body is toned to perfection, but it’s so not you.” I said it like I knew it wasn’t true, but this was the first time a girl ever made me feel the least bit nervous around her. No longer was I more worried about stupid things like whether or not she’d be my next fling, but rather that she had me micro analyzing everything I was saying making sure I wasn’t leading her on.
“People change.” She shrugged, setting up the phone again. “Now get out of my shot.” Her irritation built as the conversation continued. I could tell she wasn’t exactly happy to see me, and I felt powerless. I hated this feeling.
I moved over to the side and watched her do another set of Bulgarian squats.
The silence built as she arranged her next angle to show which glute muscle would be activated at which point of the rep. Damn, the muscle control this woman had was something I’d never been close to. I wondered if she worked harder than me in the gym.
“You sure you don’t want me in there? Might get you more views. You can tell your followers you trained me for the day or something.”
She glared at me.
“I don’t need you to boost my following, Griffin. I’ve got hundreds of famous athletes in my DMs, and you don’t see me talking to them, do you?” She paused, waiting for my response. When I didn’t open my goddamn mouth quickly enough, she kept on talking. “Thought so.”
“Ha.” I blew out a fake laugh as I inhaled a deep breath. The tension was building in my chest.
“Look, Griff, I’ve worked hard to get to this point on my own, without any help. I don’t plan on that changing who I am for anyone anytime soon.”
“Just being friendly.”
“Cool, well guess what? I don’t want to be friends.” She set her dumbbells back on the rack, picked up her things, and moved to the hip thrust machine in the other corner of the room.
Luckily for me, no one seemed to really notice who I was. Not that I thought I’d have a problem in my hometown, but I kept a hat and a black hoodie on to hide myself as much as possible.
After another set of bicep curls, I found their one and only tricep machine, set the weight low, and gradually got heavier, doing my damnedest not to look at the girl in the corner of the room. She was thrusting 180 pounds like it was fucking nothing, and I was beyond impressed.
Unable to help myself, I walked over to her and noticed her form was a little off. She had to be feeling this in her back.
“You need to adjust your form,” I told her when she took her headphones off, and those green eyes roamed my face.
“I’m doing just fine, thank you.”
“Then why haven’t you gone heavier?” I pressed, knowing the reason why.
“Don’t need to.”
“Adjust your position and do smaller thrusts. You’ll get twicethe gains and be able to go heavier. Here, I’ll spot you.” I racked the weight on for her, and with a very giant eye roll, she tried my suggestion and then grinned when she managed to do a set of eight repetitions.
“Holy shit, I felt that so much more,” she said, smiling. “Thank you.”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll see you around. I’ve got dinner with my parents tonight.”
A sadness filled her eyes at my statement, and my heart ached for her.
