I had a really great time last night. Don’t make it one and done.
See you at seven tonight? We’ll try and beat last night’s record of seventeen Skittles caught in a row.
Have a great day at work. I won’t even stop by all random and shit just for the sake of checking in.
Your BFF – Luke
PS: Tell Sonia to stop being mad about the statue thing. We got him home safely, and now the world is back on its axis.
Shaking my head, I step forward when Darcy the Server’s eyes meet mine, and sliding my phone into my pocket, I ask for my usual iced coffee, and minutes after that, I step out again and head a few streets over toward Sonia’s practice.
Luke
You Will Not Be A Prick
I have a to-do list for today, when I so rarely do. My life, I pride myself on this fact, is usually exceptionally uncomplicated. That’s not to say I live a boring life, nor is it unfulfilling. Just… I tend to keep it pretty straight-line and basic.
At work, clients come to me. At home, Mom finds me no matter where I am. At my apartment, Rob and Emma tend to just be around, and in the gym, anyone who needs to speak with me – usually a cousin who wants to talk technique – comes to me, and we do whatever we have to do.
Now I have a list that includes work, with each of today’s clients listed out in order, then I have lunch with Mom, since she demanded it, then I have to work on the pier at the lake, because if I don’t slowly chip away at it and put in an hour a day, I’m going to run out of time. After the lake, I have to prepare for my date… My first date. Ever. And that thought is terrifying.
Why the fuck am I changing the rules now? Why am I asking to date someone when I’ve spent the last several years floating on a permanently casual basis?
And why, I have to ask myself, am I a little disappointed that ‘court-appointed therapy’ isn’t on my schedule for today?
Because I’m a mess. That’s why. A woman with dark red hair came to town, she said those magical words about love, and though of course everyone knows she wasn’t talking to me, my heart still did a little jump.
Because, what if? What if I was the recipient of such a declaration? What if she smiled when she thought of me, the way she smiles when she speaks of her mother? What if she longed for me the way she has no clue she longs for her great-grandmother’s approval?
I have no clue the answers to most of my questions, but I know that I’m not going to throw away something that might be special. I’m going to do what I’ve always done: throw myself in head-first, and see how it works out. Shit will probably explode – it often does – but not all explosions are bad.
So I get started on my day, and I try my damnedest to push external thoughts away. Not Ally; I keep her right up front and smile while I work. But I push Jason away, along with the half a dozen texts I have sitting unread on my phone. Girls I’ve spent time with in the past. The girl I was with when I got my ass into this court-appointed mess in the first place. I open the texts I need and want – family – but I ignore the rest.
All but one.
Ally: Dinner at 7. See you when you get here.
I work through client after client, and revel in the way each hour is different to the one before. Sometimes, I’m working with a guy who has a chance of becoming a Stacked Deck champion, and other times, I’m working with a young mom whose abdominal muscles separated during pregnancy. One hour a couple days a week, I work with a guy who weighs five hundred pounds – literally. He was heavier when he began, and when he goes in for surgery to remove excess skin, he’ll weigh less again.
He won’t ever be a contender for competition… but here’s hoping he remains a contender for life. Here’s hoping he stays with us for decades to come, and the medications he takes for high blood pressure, among other things, are eventually nixed and replaced with a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Warren might be my biggest achievement inside this gym, which is funny in its own way, considering most of the trainers in here race to get the fittest, baddest, best fighters that walk through the door.
If I can save this thirty-nine-year-old’s life simply by existing and working out with him a few days a week, then I can probably live my life knowing I’ve done something real, something good and special.
“Luke?”
I’m spotting a client – he’s neither young nor old, neither a contender nor is he overweight. He’s just… an average Joe. But while he slowly brings a bar down over his chest, I glance across to my right, to my dad, and smile. “Hey. I feel like I never see you lately.”
Dad is the original traumatized boy. Abused in all the worst ways, and starved, beaten, and homeless. He had no choice but to grow the fuck up by the time he was in first grade, so when his sister – my Aunt Izzy – arrived, he became father, protector, and provider in one… he was seven or so.
Later, he would meet my mom, and for years, he ruined their relationship because he was scared. Which, I guess, is similar to why I’ve been casual with girls up until this point. I was yet to meet the one that scared me. And now…
“Wanna talk girls?”
Taken aback at my request, Dad sits on a bench just a few feet away and smirks. “Sure. Did you knock one up?”
“No! What the hell is wrong with you?”
He chuckles and picks up a single free weight my client and I haven’t yet put away. He curls it without thinking, sends his bicep firing up, and when his ink – the original inspiration for mine – ripples over muscle, he grins and meets my eyes. “Talk to me about girls.”
“I think I found one that means something.”
“Ally?” He continues to curl, while my client continues to bench press. “The one you brought home yesterday?”
“Yeah. She’s kinda, like…” I place my hands under my client’s bar when he grunts and works to push it up. I don’t touch, but I wait, I prepare. “She’s kinda special, I think. She scares me.”
Dad’s brows wing up as my client drops his bar on the rack. “Chicks who scare us are… well… special.”
“Right.” Chuckling, I pass a bottle of water when my client sits upright. “You married the original scary chick, so I know what it looks like. Now I met one, and I showed my ass this morning.”
Dad stops curling, holds the weight mid-rep, and meets my eyes. “Literally, or figuratively?”
I snort. “Well, both. But for the purposes of this discussion, I mean figuratively. We were having a great time, we parted on good terms, I went for a run, and I just so happened to see her talking to another guy, and bam!” I bite off a swear. “It scared me, Dad, because he wasn’t ugly. He was smiling at her, he was making her smile. So I did what I do—”
“You showed your ass.”
“Yeah. I pissed on her leg, made the world aware I was here and wasn’t going anywhere.”
“She didn’t like that, did she?”
I breathe out a soft laugh. “Not even a little bit. But see,” I glance back up, “she told me off for it. She has a spine of steel, and that’s really cool in itself. She told me off, told me to smarten the fuck up, and stop with that bullshit. I’m not stupid, Dad, so I know that if I don’t do better, she’ll walk. And the thought that she might walk scared me a million times more than the thought of her talking to a dude.”