“And you had the balls to talk to her yesterday, I am assuming?”
“When you say it like that, you make it sound like a bad thing.”
Destiny lets the weight plates slam down a little too hard. My gym buddy is built like an athlete. She’s got a mix of muscles that genetics and a lifetime of exercise have afforded her and curves that would make any man turn their head to admire with the kind of attitude that would make me think twice about getting in a fight with her.
“You probably tried to flirt with her already.” Destiny props a hand on her hip and tilts the nozzle of her water bottle into her mouth.
“I can’t help myself,” I say with a smirk.
“I know,” Destiny says pointedly.
She waits for me to finish the set and then we swap places. I adjust the weights and do another round of tricep extensions to make up for the ones that I wasn’t paying attention to. She adjusts the weight for her own rows and starts her first set.
The first time I saw Destiny in the gym, I did try to flirt with her, but her vibes were a billboard screaming that she was not interested, so I never tried again. She told me later she “likes her men with feminine energy and her women with masculine energy.” Fortunately for me, she was happy with a gym buddy, and now we work out together a few days a week. I’m here seven; she’s here three, but occasionally sneaks in a fourth.
I usually like to work out alone. I feel more focused, more grounded if I start my day with a workout, and other people can sometimes be too distracting.
After hockey, there wasn’t a lot in my life that felt like mine. I felt scattered; I had no anchor. My therapist at the time recommended a routine, something with a touchpoint that I do every day, and said the gym could be a good place to start.
She was right. Moving my body again got me out of my mind and helped me surface from the dark place I went to for a few years. The gym keeps me out of the dark place. Gray says it’s how I keep my demons at bay.
But Destiny’s company isn’t intrusive. If anything, she pushes me to work harder, and I like that.
She still hasn’t said anything about my flirting with Abby, and I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t have anything else to say or if she’s holding back on chewing my ass out.
Maybe trying to flirt with my ex-girlfriend after seeing her for the first time in over a decade wasn’t my best move, but I don’t know how tonotflirt with Abby. She’s always kept up with me conversationally, matching my wit with hers until I make her blush so hard she can’t continue. It always felt like the best kind of challenge to verbally spar with her, and yesterday gave me a glimpse of that again.
Flirting and charming felt like a better approach than “tail between my legs” penitence. Is that what she would even want after all this time?
“What else was I supposed to do, Destiny? ‘Hey, Abby, great to see you again. Sorry for being an asshole ten years ago, it’s my life’s regret.’”
“That’s a decent place to start,” she says, half scolding me.
I had assumed that Abby would not want to hear from me after we broke up, much less hear an apology. But I thought about calling her all the time, especially after my injury.
My guilt over our breakup intensified after my hockey career got ripped out from under me. When I’d lost everything, including the very thing I’d chosen over her, she was the only person I wanted to talk to and the only one who was entirely out of my reach.
I was plagued for years by thoughts of why I couldn’t have just stuck it out a little longer. Abby is the most patient personI know—have ever known. She would have been understanding beyond what I deserved, but she would have stuck it out with me. Ultimately, it was probably for the best she never saw me like that.
But I’m a different man now. And I am certainly man enough to apologize for the man I used to be. Abby deserved better from me and definitely deserves to hear how deeply I regret the way I ended things.
“You think she’d hear me out? She wasn’t excited to talk to me yesterday. Kept ignoring me to read her book.”
Destiny finishes her last set of rows and leans her arms on her legs, giving me a sour expression. “Probably not. And you probably do not deserve her time, but you could always try. The worst you could do is fuck it up even more.”
“This is quite the pep talk, Destiny. Is this how you lead your Zumba classes?”
“You would know if you came to one,” she says, flashing her pearly white smile at me with a facetious wink.
“Maybe have a class that isn’t in the middle of my workday.”
“You could make it to the yoga class in the morning.”
“I’m bad at yoga. You don’t want me there.”
“You cannot be bad at yoga, Miles.”
“Maybe I’ll come just to prove you wrong.”
