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I didn't want to finish anything outside. I wanted to stay there and stare at the girl more. Her face, while indescribably beautiful, was also strangely familiar. I couldn't help gawking at her as her slender fingers brushed her long dark curls behind her ear, which were reddening from my unsolicited scrutiny.
"Emery, Celia took a job at the gym this past week," Lou said. “She’s new here, so it’d be nice if you could help show her the ropes, seeing as this place has been your home away from home for decades.” Then, out the side of his mouth, he added: "Behave," to me alone.
I barked out a laugh, decades, huh? Lou was trying to make sure I didn’t get any ideas. Little did he know, I had more control in that aspect of my life than he could ever imagine. I was a professor for crying out loud. I understood profoundly who was off limits. Besides, I didn’t even date. It messed with the strict discipline I applied to all aspects of my life.
Lou was like that, always taking in random strays, cheering the underdog—a veritable old gym rat Robin Hood-type. Most of them didn’t last, but that didn’t stop Lou from doling out second chances. I didn’t like to see the guy hurt, so I had some of his new recruits looked into. I knew he never would. If he didn’t protect himself, well, someone else had to. But this Celia was the first woman he’d hired in a long time.
I smiled at her and stretched out my hand. "Nice to meet you, Celia. Lou will take good care of you here." I scanned her arm for track marks, checked out her jewelry to see if it looked stolen. Lou wasn’t a terrible judge of character…okay, the guy was a terrible judge of character, after all, he’d hired me when I came in to case the place.
"You too," she said. The girl barely made eye contact with me. Red flag number one. She quickly turned her attention back to old Robin Hood in boxing shorts instead of tights. "Lou, it's seriously not a big deal, I can come back. Let's say twenty minutes?"
"You sure, Darling?" Lou asked. Why the fuck did he have a pet name for her already? Lou was soft, but not that soft. He wasn’t going to see this one coming even if she was pointing a gun in his face. Lou was hypnotized by her beauty, her tight little waist, curvy butt, her big brown eyes that were somehow innocent and a little sad. Christ, make that two of us. I very deliberately forced my gaze away from the plump little peach and rummaged through my gym bag. Nothing like a sweaty jock strap to kill the libido buzz. That girl was intoxicating.
"Of course, Louie. It's the least I can do for everything you've done for me!"
Louie? What the fuck had Lou done for her?
This was worse than I thought. We were obviously defenseless against this tiny sorceress.
"Thanks, Celia," Lou called. His eyes were milky as he waved in her direction.
She smiled sweetly at him and walked out briskly, leaving us both staring at her amazing ass, alone in the locker room again.
"She your granddaughter or something?" Those were the first words that shot out of my mouth as soon as she was gone. I knew Lou didn’t have any kids, I was just being a dick to remind him of the age difference.
"You know I don’t have any kids, Boss. That girl is on the run from something. She won’t stick around here long."
"Well, did you give her the keys to your office? Still keeping cash around in the box?"
"She's a sweet kid, and she's had a rough time of it from what I can tell. I'm just nice.”
“Too nice, Louie,” I said. Nobody called Lou Rivera Louie.
“What the fuck do you care anyway, Boss?"
When I didn't answer right away, Lou stepped right up to my face. “I know you’re not interested in her that way because you aren’t interested in women—or even men for that matter. You like science and experiments and going to lectures, writing papers and doing Ted talks and secretly beating people to a bloody pulp on the weekends. I got your number, Boss. Can’t tell me nothing about you that I don’t already know. Leave my new-hire alone—she’s got enough to deal with without professor pugilist running her out of town.”
"What the fuck, Lou? You know I'm not like the other creeps you got loitering on the free weights." I felt insulted by his accusation. I wasn't the kind of guy that hit on every woman I saw. The truth of the matter was, I barely looked at women. Since Me Too happened, I tiptoed around faculty and students, my every word calculated. I didn’t want to lose an entire illustrious career to a one-night stand, no matter how hot it might be. I was better than that, my Nana, God rest her soul, taught me better than that. She taught me to respect women, it was a value she deeply instilled in me. She told me never to mess with a woman’s heart. And I never forgot those words despite all the years of university garbage I’d crammed into my brain, my grandmother's aphorisms lived vibrantly in my mind alongside calculus equations and theorems, useless lists of particles and atoms. Her words were the fundamental structure of my early universe and I referenced them daily. I’d loved my Nana more than I’d ever loved anyone and when she passed, it truly broke my heart.
