Page 45 of Spiced!

Gerald looked good. His soil was fine, and his rotation wasn’t due until the first.

Children settled, I made coffee, ate scrambled eggs standing at the island, and looked at the sun glinting off the trees through the kitchen window. The light came in low and unhurried. Tampa in September was a beautiful thing. It was the kind of Sunday that wanted you enjoying it outside.

I put my plate in the sink, changed into running clothes, and found my earbuds on the counter where I always left them and never remembered leaving them. Thankfully, Puck hadn’t discovered them, so all was right in the world.

I was pressing the left one into my ear when my phone chimed.

Adrian: Currently dying on the flat bench. Chest day. Thought you should know.

I stood in my kitchen with one earbud in and read that twice.

Me: Why would I need to know that?

Adrian: Call it a community service. I’m sharing important local news.

Me: That you’re dying?

Adrian: That I’m committed, and that my boobs are growing.

Me: Oh, boobs, how we love you. How many sets in?

Adrian: Three. Four to go. My chest is complaining vigorously.

Me: To whom?

Adrian: To me, obvi. I’m the presiding authority. I’m also the defendant. It’s a whole conflict of interest thing.

I shoved in my second earbud and then took it back out.

Me: I was about to go for a run.

Adrian: Good. Running is good. Very healthy. Good for the cardiovascular system.

Me: You sound like a pamphlet.

Adrian: I’m delirious from exertion. Cut me some slack.

Me: How much are you benching?

A pause.

Adrian: Enough.

Me: That’s not a number.

Adrian: It’s a sufficient number. It’s a professional worker-outer number, a number that would impress you.

Me: Worker-outer isn’t a word. And I’m a scientist, remember? I need an actual number.

Adrian: You’re a DVM, not Dr. Evil. One eighty-five.

Me: That’s good.

Adrian: My chest disagrees, but my ego is pleased.

I picked up my water and thought, not for the first time, about the specific machine that was Adrian’s life. He’d been at the gym since—I did the math—probably six, because he’d have been at the panadería by four and out by the time most people’s alarms went off. This meant he was benching one eighty-five on maybe five hours of sleep. He’d spent his night dancing on a bar in a Speedo while strangers tucked money against his leg. I was surprised at the sudden realization that I had opinions about all this. Several of them, in fact. They arranged themselves in my head with the tidy confidence of a treatment plan: he should sleep more, he should pick fewer shifts, he should let the dancing be a phase he’d aged out of by now instead of a—

I stopped.