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She might be a perfectly nice woman, and another man would probably jump at the chance to date her because she was very pretty. Another man who wasn’t dealing with a hurting heart and questioning how to be what a woman needed in a relationship.
“Don’t give up on finding someone else,” Jay said, interrupting his thoughts. “But also give yourself time.”
Jay didn’t have to worry about Will rushing into anything. That wasn’t going to happen. Even if he wasn’t smarting from the breakup, he’d never been someone who rushed into much of anything. Whether it was buying a car or renting an apartment, he always took the time to analyze the situation before making a decision.
“No worries,” Will said. “Time is something I’m willing to give myself plenty of.”
Jay grinned. “Just make sure it’s a reasonable amount of time and not forever.”
Now that, Will couldn’t promise him. He still wasn’t sure that he needed a relationship in his life. Sure, it had been nice to be with Daphne—especially in the first year or so of their relationship—but when the really rough points had hit, it hadn’t been fun at all. Maybe if she’d been willing to work with him through those patches, it might have been different.
He needed someone interested in the long haul, and who was willing to fight for the relationship when things got tough. But how on earth was he supposed to know that about a person?
Ugh. “Let’s go work out.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Janessa glared at the clock on the wall opposite the treadmill. Every minute felt like it was taking ten to pass. If she was reading her book, that would be absolutely glorious. But working out? No. Totally unacceptable.
“Are we done yet?” she asked, well aware that she sounded like a five-year-old on a trip with their parents, wanting to know when they were going to arrive at their destination.
“Five more minutes,” Jay said from the treadmill next to hers.
Janessa glanced at Will, who was on her other side. “See, Will. I told you that’s what he does. Kills us five minutes at a time.”
“You can’t be working too hard,” Jay interjected. “After all, you’re still able to talk. Maybe we should go ten more minutes.”
That shut Janessa up. There was no way she wanted to push Jay into adding even more time to the torture he was already inflicting on her.
Honestly, it hadn’t been all that bad. She just couldn’t make it seem like she was enjoying the workout. She’d come there that night as a show of support for Will, and though she’d been tempted to leave once Marissa had come and gone, she’d still stuck around.
Maybe… hopefully… this would be just one more step in getting her relationships with Jay and Will back to what they’d once been. She really wanted that, as long as it didn’t require any big discussions. If going to the gym helped accomplish that, she’d go every day, though realistically, she hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.
“You can do it, Nessa,” Will said. “I know you’re tired and sore, but keep pushing through.”
Janessa wanted to snipe back at him, but she didn’t. She knew that he spoke from a place of wanting to encourage her and not to egg her on like Jay often did.
It wasn’t the first time she’d experienced Will’s encouragement. When he’d tutored her, he’d always told her that she could do it, no matter how much she’d struggled to understand the concepts. And he’d be the first person to ask her how her tests had gone, and if she hadn’t gotten a good grade, he’d insist on meeting with her and going over the parts she’d had a difficult time with.
It was like he’d felt it was his personal mission in life to make sure she excelled at math, and Janessa knew she had him to thank for doing well in any class since then that involved math. And if she’d “struggled” with some concepts so much that she’d needed even more help, well, no one would ever know.
So instead of snarking back at Will, Janessa just nodded and kept putting one foot in front of the other on the treadmill. Her speed was the slowest of the four, but her calf muscles were still on fire, and she felt like her legs were cooked spaghetti.
The other three chatted easily, even though Jay was flat out running, and Misha was jogging. Will was walking, but it was definitely at a faster pace than Janessa was able to maintain. Some might use that as inspiration to keep working out, but Janessa wasn’t looking to be inspired to work out more.
The more she ached, the later Janessa decided she’d sleep in the next day. When she got home, she was going to take an extra long soak in her big tub, then crawl into bed and continue to read her book. She was going to stay up until she finished it, or until her tablet hit her face when she fell asleep while holding it.
When ten minutes had passed, Janessa didn’t even say anything to Jay before she punched the button to slow the treadmill to a stop. She stepped off of it, then headed toward the changing room.
“You need to stretch, Janessa,” Jay called out.
Janessa didn’t particularly care about stretching, but as she sat on a bench in the changing room with her phone opened to her ebook app, she did do some gentle stretches on her legs. She doubted anything could stave off the pain her leg muscles were going to be in the next day.
It was about fifteen minutes before Misha appeared. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Janessa told her, putting her phone down on the bench beside her. “Just not a fan of having things dragged out. Five minutes means five minutes. Not five minutes, then five more minutes, then five more minutes. And Jay should know me well enough by now to know I wouldn’t respond positively to that.”
“I think it’s something that works with his basketball players, so he uses it with everyone.”
