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I stand and begin organizing the gym’s brochures and various personal trainer business cards into neat stacks. “I could care less what the new boss does,” I say. “I’m happy with him gone. I don’t need someone coming in and turning everything around. I like things the way they are.”
“I don’t believe that for one second,” Susan says, tapping her acrylic nails on the counter. “I’ve been around a lot longer than you have my dear, and I know a look of pure lust if I’ve ever seen one.”
I give her a questioning glance, curious as to what the hell she’s talking about. She continues, “That is the look you gave him when he walked in orientation the other day. You should have seen your face, girl. It almost made me blush. No wonder you ran out of here so fast. You want that man and his rock hard abs pressed against you.”
Normally her perverted language makes me laugh but today it’s all I can do not to bitch slap her. “First of all, he was wearing a shirt so you have no idea what his abs look like,” I say, pointing to my index finger. “And secondly, no. Just no.” I point to my middle finger, then my ring finger then my pinky, counting off all of my answers. “No, no, and fuck no.”
She holds up her hands as if surrendering to the police. “Damn girl, chill.”
The door swings open, letting in the sound of traffic driving by outside. I turn to greet the customer, thankful for the interruption to Susan’s ironically accurate accusations. “Welcome to—” I begin, my heart stopping as I notice that the customer wears black sweatpants and no shirt. I swallow, my eyes lingering on the outline of his defined abs as I finish my sentence, “Carson’s Gym.”
“I thought about renaming it Payne’s Gym,” Kris begins, throwing the towel in his hand around the back of his neck. “But the word pain may scare off the guests.”
Susan lets out a giggle as if his play on words was the funniest damn thing she’s heard all week. I’m grateful for her though, because my stopped heart has jumped into my throat, blocking my ability to speak. The only thing worse than Susan’s awful laugh is my awkward silence. Why the hell did he have to walk in shirtless? And why was Susan’s assumption of his perfect abs one hundred percent correct? He sure as hell didn’t have those bad boys in high school.
Involuntary breathing takes over as my brain goes into survival mode, having lost my consciousness to tell it what to do. My eyes follow Kris as he walks around the front counter, leaning over it to toss his car keys on the shelf where we keep random junk like extra flyers and lost and found items. His keys drop to the wood with a clink, and he leans back into a standing position, his hands grabbing the edge of the counter.
Somehow, the weightlifting gods shine down on me and make me move my eyes from his rounded pecks to the computer screen. I should so not be thinking about his rounded pecks. But I’m only thinking about them because the counter blocks his abs and oh my god, I shouldn’t be thinking of his abs either! Get it together, Delaney, shit.
“Looks like business is slow,” he says, glancing around the nearly empty gym. Susan assures him that it picks up around ten and then again when the night shift workers get off. I stand as still as a dumbbell while they talk about business.
Susan jabs me with her long sparkly fingernail. “Huh?” I say, making the first audible sound since my ex-boyfriend walked in the gym. “Earth to Delaney,” she says, twirling her finger near the side of her head with a smile at Kris. “You’re gonna get yourself fired by ignoring the boss like that.”
“Huh?” I say again, this time looking from her to him. The look on his face is just as uncomfortable as I imagine mine is.
“I asked what’s been up,” he says, making eye contact with me for the briefest of all moments before glancing down at the worn countertop.
“Nothing,” I blurt out, a little too eager and entirely too quickly to pass off as a normal line of conversation. God, why are my legs jelly and vision blurry and my throat dry? He is the one who is guilty here. He should be nervous, not me. I should stand boldly and make him quiver at the remembrance of what he’s done to me.
“Have you been…good?” he asks after a momentary pause. He plays it off well, like he’s cool and collected, but I remember the Kris who refused to give a speech in freshman health class because he was terrified of speaking to crowds. His nervousness doesn’t escape me.
“I’ve been great, thanks,” I say. Against all the angry emotions and lustful thoughts (that only make me more angry) rushing through my mind, I manage to smile with that southern girl charm that comes with being raised in Texas. “I assume you’ve been good as well?”
He nods, staring straight into my eyes with his auburn ones. Though his jaw is chiseled and his neck is thicker, and his hair is no longer cut as if it had a bowl on top of it, he looks the same. I hate that he got hot as hell with age and I got, well, plain and average.
“Your parents good?” he asks with a slight break in his voice as his nervousness threatens to crack his calm exterior. He has some nerve to ask about my parents. He could have asked them himself if he’d bothered to go to Tyler’s funeral.
“They’re good. They’re back in college.” I could kick myself for giving him that extra bit of information. He doesn’t need to know that. He doesn’t deserve to know anything about my parents. Or my life. All he needs to know is where to deposit my paychecks. I should tell him that, too. I should walk around the counter, shove him against the wall and beat the shit out of him. I should tell him exactly how much I hate him for what he did, and how many nights I cried myself to sleep over the loss of my brother and the hurt that comes with being ignored by the boy you loved. I should throw every fucking heavy object in this gym at his face. Maybe then he would understand just a fraction of how much I hate him.
Unfortunately, all I do is slouch behind the counter and pretend to check the gym’s email account on the computer in front of me.
“Well,” Kris says, releasing the counter and stretching his fingers out in front of him. “Don’t mind me, ladies. I’m just here to work out.”
I want to ask him about the boy he was with at I Scream for Ice Cream. I want to ask why he didn’t acknowledge me that night, but he can ask me casual questions today, as if he didn’t kill my brother and then disappear all those years ago. That boy had to be at least thirteen years old—there’s no way he could be Kris’s son. Maybe it’s his stepson?
My wild assumptions make a knot form in my stomach at the realization that I don’t know anything about Kris anymore. He’s twenty-eight years old which is old enough to have done a million things that I don’t know about. The thought of Kris having children…or a wife…sends an angry chill down my spine. Tyler doesn’t get to do any of that and Kris is free to live his life however he wants. It isn’t fair.
Susan pushes herself behind the counter the second he leaves to workout. “You didn’t tell me you knew him!” she hisses in my ear, giving me a playful slap on the ass.
“You didn’t ask,” I whisper back.
“Girl, there’s some history there. I could sense it. I need every single detail, right this instant.” She runs her tongue over her bottom lip, almost foaming at the mouth at whatever naughty thoughts run across her mind. I swear the woman’s appetite for gossip is insatiable. Normally it’s funny but right now is not the time for her real-life Housewives from Hell obsession.
I glance toward Kris, somewhat relieved to find out that he’s not within earshot of us, and he’s not even looking our way. “It’s nothing and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Susan’s bottom lip pops out in a pout of toddler-like proportions. “Delaney!” she whines. “You have to tell me. Did ya’ll two…” She makes a motion with her fingers that could make even a sailor blush.
“Jesus no,” I hiss, turning on my heel and heading for the cooler full of protein shakes and Gatorade. She scampers along behind me, ignorant to how much she’s crossing the line with the subject of Kris Payne. I yank open the cooler door and begin restocking the chocolate Muscle Milk while she hovers over me, an expectant look on her face. “I knew him ten fucking years ago and I haven’t seen or spoken to him since. There is nothing else for you to know, so quit fucking asking.”
