“Fucker,” he says, clicking the button on his machine. Ethan can’t back away from a challenge.
“Come on. After this, we’ll do weights so you don’t turn into a pansy-ass who can’t lift his fiancée to fuck her against the wall.”
An older woman with a displeased expression stops in front of my treadmill. I’m about to apologize before a smile forms on her lips and she looks Ethan up and down. “I bet he has no problem with it.”
Winnie, my foster mom, taught me to respect my elders, so I swallow my amusement and watch Ethan smile nicely to avoid offending the woman.
She slowly walks over to the bikes and spends five minutes finding the television show she wants to watch before pedaling. Even then, she has no headphones.
I turn off my treadmill, sliding back until I can hop off.
“What the hell? We can’t just stop,” Ethan says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Sir! Wipe your machine,” the man who works here—and wears his shorts too tight—calls to me.
I put up my hand and grab a pair of the cheap earbuds the gym offers for free. I wink at the girl behind the counter. She’s been trying to flirt with me for the last two weeks, but she’s got to be only twenty-one or something. The younger they are, the more attached they become.
“Dylan!” Ethan calls, his hands up in the air, his eyes tracking my movements toward the elderly lady.
I take the headphones out of the plastic disposable bag and hand them to her, plugging the cord into the television portion of the bike. She gives me a thumbs-up and a smile.
“Sir!” the guy says again.
“Relax there. Are your shorts so tight they’re cutting circulation off to your brain?” I pull a sanitary wipe from the container and head over to my machine.
Tight shorts guy huffs and stalks off.
“You left me hanging?” Ethan says, shutting off his treadmill.
“You telling me you didn’t want that over with?”
Ethan says nothing. Yeah, he’s happy as shit I turned off my treadmill.
“Weights then.” I hold up my wipe so moose-knuckle can see me dispose of it in the trash can.
He rolls his eyes and shifts his vision away.
“What’s with you today?” Ethan asks, throwing his wipe away right after and grabbing a towel.
“Nothing.”
“Really? Because you’re being an ass to everyone but that old lady over there. Since when are you responsible for handing out earbuds? Did you get a job here I don’t know about?”
I grab two dumbbells and stand in front of the mirror as Ethan follows suit. I’m not even sure if I can trust Ethan with what’s bothering me, nor do I know if I want anyone to know. It’s ridiculous anyway. I do a bicep curl with one arm, then the other.
“So?” Ethan asks.
“So nothing. We don’t have to be like chicks and talk while we work out.”
“There’s a reason you’re being a dick.” He does a bicep curl, his eyes boring into mine in the mirror.
Ethan knows me well. I went through a lot of phases of independence in college, especially when the guilt that Winnie was wasting her savings on me made me try to sabotage my future, and Ethan was the one who set me straight.
I sit on the bench while Ethan continues pumping his arms. “I’m pissed that Knox brought Jax back here. He knows how things are between us.”
He puts the dumbbells back and stacks some weights onto the bar on the bench. “What’s the deal with the two of you? You’re so much alike.”
From the outside, Jax and I are similar. Both wounded foster kids who opted to ink their bodies with symbols and memories of harder times.
I went to college to study art and Jax headed to Los Angeles. I sold a painting out of college that earned me enough money to start Ink Envy two years after graduation. Last I heard, Jax trained under Alex Choi, a guy who’d earned his credentials on the street. Our training and paths were different, but we’re still in the same fucking spot. We’re both in-demand tattoo artists. The only difference now is I’m planted in Cliffton Heights and Jax just happened to follow a wind that blew him here.
“The asshole probably expects me to give him a job.” I lower my back to the bench and Ethan stands above to spot me.
“Is he that kind of guy?”
No, he’s not. Jax doesn’t take handouts, just like me. But why is he here in Cliffton Heights? This town is too small for a personality like his.
“He’s like us. You earn it yourself or it means shit.”
Ethan nods, his hands hovering under the pole just in case. He’s on crack. I’d need a lot more weight than this to make me struggle. I rack the weights, sit up, and wipe the sweat off my face.
“Hey, assholes, I thought we were in this together!” Seth yells from the other side of the room.
“No yelling in the facility,” moose-knuckle says.
Seth looks him up and down, concentrating on his obvious package. “I think you took your ten-year-old brother’s shorts this morning.”
The girl at the desk cracks up and Seth winks at her. The guy’s face turns red, but he continues folding the towels. Usually we’re not this big of jerks to people, so I wonder if something is bothering Seth like it is me.
Seth lays his towel on the bench and Ethan acts offended, but we both know bench pressing isn’t really Ethan’s thing.
“So after you dickheads deserted me—”
“We knocked five times,” Ethan says.
“You have a key,” Seth says, looking at me over his chest.
Ethan gets back into spotter position like he did for me.
“I overslept. It’s been a shit morning all around,” Seth says. “Guess who was standing on the other side of the road when I left our building?”
Neither of us answers.
“Her.”
“Her who?” Ethan asks.
Seth mocks offense and stares at me like what’s with this guy, but I’m not sure who he’s talking about either. “Evan Erickson. I think she’s stalking me.”
Ethan smirks at me over the weight bar. “Why would she stalk you?”
“Because a few months ago, we had that altercation outside her bagel shop. Remember when Adrian worked there?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“She must’ve liked it because after years of never running into her, she’s been popping up everywhere. I found her in the gazebo with some guy last week. I mean, what would she be doing outside our apartment building that early in the morning?”
“Did you ask her?” Ethan asks.
“No!” His voice cracks like a thirteen-year-old boy’s. “Why would I do that?”
Ethan shrugs. “Why wouldn’t you?”
Seth pushes up his last rep and sits up, wiping his head with a towel before standing for me to take his place.
“Hello?” Ethan gives me an exasperated look and holds his hands out to the side.
“Oh, you want a piece of this?” I ask, pointing at the bench.
Ethan narrows his eyes, and Seth and I burst out laughing.
Ignoring us, Ethan lies on the bench. “Since I’m the only one who isn’t hashing out imaginary problems, I think it’s only fair.”