Page 12 of Back for Seconds

We needed to just be strangers. She knew that, so she’d just given my message a thumbs-up and told me she’d be by at seven.

Then, I’d met June.

Chapter 4 Joey

Six days until Christmas

“You gave her a business card, bro?” Isaac laughed heartily at me, straight white smile on display. For the last decade I’d relished my place as the most handsome Pagano brother, but Isaac was quickly coming for my ass. He’d started college, gotten a fuckboy haircut, and started using some conditioner on his curls.

I gritted my teeth. “Yeah, bro. I sure did.”

“Man, she might take that shit the wrong way. Think you’re saying like, drop a few pounds—”

My stomach lurched. I clenched my jaw and steadied the barbells over Isaac’s head. “I need you to focus on your form. You’re going to hurt your fucking back again. And I would never do that. Ever. Plus…” I hesitated for a nanosecond. Did I really trust Isaac with this information? He’d stopped his set, arms extended over his head, face turning red while he waited for the rest of the story. Who says men don’t like gossip? “I gave her my business card for all my…my uh, food stuff.”

Isaac dropped the weights to his chest before rocketing his arms back out again at a problematic pace, and I instinctively held my hands out to steady his shoulders. With some guidance, he slowly lowered the dumb bells back into his chest, then to the floor.

“You actually did it?” Isaac asked when all the blood finally redistributed out of his face and into the rest of his body. “You finally made an LLC?”

I handed him his towel and water bottle. “No LLC.” I shrugged. “I just made some business cards, a website, some merch…” Then I handed Isaac his half-crutches. “Let’s do some legs.”

“Damn, there you go, bro!” Isaac slipped his arms into the crutches before pulling himself up and clapping me on the back with a big, sweaty palm. “Proud of you, big guy.”

I hoped he wasn’t being a facetious little asshole. My videos had started off as a goofy side project to better document my grandmother’s recipes and to hopefully grow my personal training clientele. In the beginning, I’d made everything exactly as she had—all the pork, veal, cubed lard, full-fat ricotta, extra-large eggs, buttery breadcrumbs, and whole milk her Neapolitan cooking required. And in the process, I’d watched my cholesterol almost double. It was pretty impressive, actually—to be both yoked and one fried meatball away from a massive heart attack.

Transforming my grandmother’s recipes to be fully vegan had been the most creative and rewarding work I’d done in years. My brain felt alive with the challenge of trying to get the flavors and textures to match all the memories I had of her cooking, memories that seemed to be fading at an ever-increasing speed.

“I’m not quitting my day job,” I assured Isaac, who rested on the bench by the weights while I yanked a sled over. Our gym was a converted warehouse on the far end of the island with no frills and very little charm. Just a handful of treadmills, some free weights, and a bunch of men who seriously needed to reconsider their deodorant brand allegiance.

“So, then what’re you doing?” he asked, mopping his brow with the hem of his T-shirt.

“What?” I didn’t mean to sound so shocked. I tried to play it off as if I were just breathless from moving the heavy metal gear stacked with extra weight.

“If you’re not turning your account into an online business or becoming a content creator, but you’ve got almost a million followers…” Isaac shrugged. “I don’t get it. Do you, like, wanna open a restaurant?”

“No, I…” It was getting harder to hide how thrown off I was. First and foremost because I wasn’t sure when Isaac had become so thoughtful. And also because…

Well, we were a survival-mode family. A paycheck-to-paycheck household. Generationally, we’d all been focused on just getting by. We didn’t make goals, achieve dreams. Fuck, I hadn’t even really thought about what I was doing when I made my account beyond hopefully making a few extra bucks and getting to stretch my brain. Every decision I’d made up until now had been emotional—or because of Isaac. Who was now watching me, waiting for an answer. I knew he didn’t give a shit about me being a good role model, but I’d never stop feeling like I owed it to my brother, ten years my junior, to make good choices. “I think I need to figure that out.”

“Yo, you should get a sponcon deal with those applesauce squeezy pouch people. Those things rip.”

Great. Back to normal.

“Sure, dude. I’ll look into it.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Ready for your burnout? You’re going to push this thing back and forth as many times as you can. Last exercise of the day, I promise.” Isaac’s specific experience with cerebral palsy plus his endurance and ability to maximize movement had made him one of the toughest athletes I’d ever trained. There was no physical exercise that, with a little modification or assistance, the kid couldn’t do. Any time he’d “failed,” it hadn’t been because of his physical differences—it was because some asshole adult hadn’t even given him a chance.

Isaac groaned, shaking his floppy curls. “Not the sled, bro.”

“It’s Christmas, baby.” I grinned. “You gotta push the sled.”

Chapter 5 June

There was no Christmas joy to be had in 319 Venus Avenue. No stocking hung, no twinkle lights flickering. No Christmas tree tinseled. No wrapped presents arranged lovingly around the hearth. There was a sink full of dirty dishes and a note from my roommate affixed to the fridge.

Junie—Had to take off sooner than I thought. Grandmom not doing great and flights to FL are sooo booked. I love you & Im sorry I didnt clean up also rent will be late, long story. Merry Christmas please try to smile and maybe buy a tree??? Xoxo Mimi

I ripped the note off the fridge, crumbled it up, and tossed it into the corner along with the growing pile of mail I needed to sort. To think I once proudly identified as a “neat freak.” To think I once picked fights with my ex over shoes left in the middle of the living room rug, abandoned for me to trip over. To think I once had been oblivious enough to worry about his shoes.

I stared around at my life—harsh white winter light cutting in through my curtainless picture-frame windows, falling over the bare floor in big white stripes, dust swimming through the light.