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five
Tabitha woke to a chilly room, her blankets up to her neck and the smell of bacon thick and rich on the cold air. She lingered, motionless, enjoying the warmth of her bed amid the cold front that had moved in overnight. It was officially November, her birthday was over and the rest of the year lay ahead with possibilities that seemed more promising while tucked safely away from the world.
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go. ~Rumi
Tabitha had peeked at today’s Journal of Invincibility quote last night, and the words now rolled around in her sleepy mind. Trinity, sensing Tabitha’s wakefulness, started to whap her tail against the comforter from her spot at the foot of the bed. Tabitha stretched, allowing her arms to briefly slide out of the covers before she buried them again. Auntie El set the thermometer low in the winter and high in the summer. You had to be either freezing or dying from heatstroke to get the furnace or the air conditioner to kick on.
“People are spoiled these days,” she was fond of saying. “Why, when I was growing up, we didn’t even have air-conditioning. And when I was a little girl we had to warm ourselves by the coal stove. Sleep with heated bricks at our feet. Y’all don’t even know.”
“Okay, Auntie El.” Tabitha never argued. Today, she was actually glad for the coolness of the room, which made the warm bed seem that much more decadent. She could use some decadence after yesterday. As she lay there, petting Trinity’s head—who’d managed to crawl up next to her and plant her snuggly body right against Tabitha’s side—she thought back to the bad run at massage school and the motorcycle shop. The kiss with Hobbs could’ve been counted as a win if Tabitha hadn’t been left wondering how he’d felt about it. His response had been confusing, to say the least.
Rather than dwell, Tabitha reluctantly threw back the covers and stepped onto the cold wood floor. Auntie El polished the floors weekly, so even though they were old, they were beautiful. Typical Auntie El—throw out nothing, but you best keep it shining.
In the kitchen, she sat at the table, dressed in a bright yellow Sunday dress, just finishing up her crossword puzzle. “Somebody’s a sleepyhead this morning.” Auntie El peered over the top of her glasses, her eyes like a hawk’s as she took in Tabitha’s pajama bottoms and sleep shirt.
“Long week.” Tabitha was glad to see Auntie El up and at it like her normal self. Maybe she’d just been battling a long, silent cold. She searched the cupboard for her favorite coffee mug—’50s sea-glass green, so old it sported veins of coffee stains in the micro-cracks of its interior. She filled it to the brim with the dark, silky brew and buried her nose in the steam.
“I assume you won’t be coming to church again.” Auntie El shifted in her seat, pen poised above her newspaper. “Eleven-letter word forfriendship.”
“Not this week.” Tabitha had been saying that every week for ages now. Auntie El had let it slide with little comment due to Tabitha’s anxiety, the time she spent training Trinity, the general idea of letting her get her life back in order. Lately, though, Auntie El had been pulling out the stern looks. “Maybe next Sunday. I’m going to get in a workout this morning.” Tabitha busied herself fixing Trinity’s food and eyed the assortment of covered dishes on the countertops. She went straight to the brownies, now cooled, cut and tucked inside Auntie El’s Tupperware, and snagged one.
“On a Sunday?”
“It’s called Open Hour, Auntie El.” Tabitha spoke with a mouthful of brownie. Auntie El’s were the best—both cakeyandgooey. “You can go and do whatever you want, like work on things you’re not good at. Since I’m not good at anything, I have lots to work on.” Tabitha had never gone to the gym on Sunday, but she was running out of excuses to miss church. Besides, if she really wanted to be as strong as her girlfriends, Open Hour was a good start.
“Well, you’re in luck. I’ll be having some folks back here for brunch after service, including Reverend Stokes. Maybe a conversation with him will get you motivated. Plus, you can eat something more appropriate for breakfast than chocolate.”
Tabitha ignored the comment about the brownie and mentally calculated the time church ran versus the time Open Hour ran at the gym. They were concurrent, but that didn’t mean Tabitha couldn’t hang out a bit later, if whoever was coaching wasn’t eager to get home. The sound of Trinity’s dog-door flap and the rush of her paws over the floor signaled she was ready for her breakfast.
“You’ll be back from that gym of yours in plenty of time.”
Semper Fit was never justthe gym. It was alwaysthat gym of yours, like Tabitha harbored a bad vice. She’d never be able to make Auntie El, who considered parking far away from the grocery store a form of exercise, understand that Semper Fit was so much more than a gym. It was a place that, even if she typically did lift the least amount of weight or take the longest to finish the cardio portion, Tabitha could disappear for an hour, not just from the house but from herself.“Camaraderie,”she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Eleven-letter word forfriendship.”
Auntie El immediately filled in the squares. “Mmm-hmm. Fits.”
“I’ll see you after the gym, then.” Tabitha set Trinity’s food dish down in front of her and headed for the stairs. If she quickly got ready she’d get to Semper Fit just in time, and she could decide from there whether or not she’d risk Auntie El’s wrath by not making it home in time for brunch. No matter how good that bacon smelled, mingling with the church crowd made Tabitha want to crawl back under the covers and stay there.
Open Hour was typically filled with the serious lifters, the people who either hated anything considered “cardio” or the ones who knew that the stronger they got, the easier the “cardio” became. Open Hour used to be Rhett’s baby, until Red came along, and now Hobbs always coached Sunday while those two spent the day together. Hobbs didn’t mind. He could use the money, and other than being a little hungover sometimes, it was no skin off his nose to come unlock the gym and keep an eye on Tatiana, Duke and Zoe, who were the Sunday regulars. Truth was, those three could probably teach Hobbs a thing or two about lifting, so the hour usually consisted of him holing up in the office on the internet while they snatched and benched to their hearts’ content.
This morning, Hobbs was more than happy to have an excuse to leave the house when he found Victor still sacked out in the armchair. He’d opened up the flat sheet and the old blanket and buried himself up to his chin, but otherwise Victor hadn’t moved. He still had his boots on. Hobbs thought about shaking him awake, but found himself standing there, studying his brother’s face. If he narrowed his eyes, he could still see the teenager hiding beneath the stubble. Victor seemed less intimidating while he was asleep. That jaw that was chronically clenched was relaxed and his lips were parted just slightly, like a baby’s. Hobbs sighed and moved off to the kitchen to make coffee. When even that didn’t make Victor stir, Hobbs let his brother be and found himself shutting the front door gently behind him.
Now fully awake and jazzed up on caffeine, Hobbs’s mind ran amok during the drive to the gym. Pops was dying. And Hannah wanted him to come home. So why hadn’t she told him herself? Unlike Victor, Hannah texted regularly. Or she used to. Ever since spring, she’d got quieter and quieter, and it wasn’t until this moment that he realized he hadn’t heard from Hannah since August. They were close, and they used to text each other at least a couple of times a week. They saw each other at Thanksgiving and Christmas when Hobbs went home to Omaha to visit and they called each other on their birthdays, though Hannah’s wouldn’t be until January. Hannah was going to be twenty-six and probably didn’t even remember. She was a free spirit who cared little about numbers, a sweet girl who liked being home, liked cutting hair for a living, liked rom-coms and putting on pretty dresses in the summer. Her favorite thing growing up had been 4-H club, where she learned to bake brownies and help save the frog population at Lake Manawa. She was a parent’s dream come true.
If only she’d had the sort of parents who deserved her.
Hobbs pulled into the parking lot ten minutes late, but Zoe had obviously let everyone in. He paused, hands on the steering wheel, and tried one of those deep yoga breaths again. His nerves settled a little. Then he pulled out the happy face. It was easy. Just paint it on and go. He could wash it off later.
The music was blaring and bars already clanking by the time Hobbs pushed through the front door. Zoe and Duke were spotting each other on bench and Tatiana was setting her phone against her water bottle so she could record herself and post it on Insta later. One story was just like the next, always Tatiana lifting something, her muscles gleaming with sweat, hashtags all over the place: #gainz #getit #swolesistah.
The only surprise in the room was Tabitha. Hobbs was certain he’d never seen her at Open Hour, even though she probably needed it more than most. She was set up in the far corner, away from the beasts, with a training bar, a kettlebell, a wooden box, an assortment of bands, grips and a water bottle. Trinity, the tiniest pit bull in the universe, sat nearby. The idea of Open Hour was to do your own thing. Though a coach was present, coaching did not happen. The coach was there only to open and close and supervise in general. But Tabitha’s pile looked, for lack of a plan, like she’d decided to grab one of everything. Even Trinity had her head cocked to the side, the sight of her owner’s fitness gear a puzzle. Hobbs knew that after last night he should just say hi, be polite and move on. Tabitha would not fit well into his plan to keep his life perennially superficial.
He ducked into the office, sat down to the computer and mindlessly surfed the internet for a while, his decision to be a fly on the wall going exactly as planned until he heard a crash echoing beneath the strains of gangsta rap.
Hobbs rushed out to the floor and spied Tabitha, one foot hooked in a resistance band looped around the rig bar she clung to. She dangled there, her body swinging as her slender leg did a full split. Nearby was an overturned box, which Tabitha had obviously used to climb into the band because she’d chosen a bar that was too high. Because of her flexibility, she wasn’t in danger of anything but humiliation as everyone watched her try to grab the ground with her free foot.
