Is it painful?
What a stupid question. Of course, it’s painful.
Is water wet?
I smile wide, feeling my dimple pop. If he is cracking jokes, then he forgives me.
I really am sorry.
I know you are.
Do you offer rehabilitation services at the gym?
I think Henry is trained in rehab. I can ask???
I don’t want Henry.
My stomach dips.
I’ve heard he is very good with his hands. They call them healing hands.
Are you not goodwith your hands?
Is he flirting with me?
What is it you do exactly?
Linger, pretend I know what the hell I’m doing. It’s been a day!
I PT.
So you could help me.
No.
Why?
Because I’d end up a puddle on the floor, or there would be a literal puddle on the floor if watching him today is anything to go by.
I don’t want to mix my homelife with work.
I don’t expect the words he sends back, and they gut me.
I’m not your home anymore. So that’s not a problem.
My smile drops and the force of it falling snaps me out of my bubble. Holding in the side button, I shut off my phone and slide it onto my bedside table. It probably wasn’t meant as a jab, but it sure feels like a punch to the gut. In just afew short minutes he had me eating out the palm of his hand, waiting on the edge for the next text.
My heart seems to want something that’s obtainable, and for me to give in to that need for him, I’d have to knock through the walls I’ve built solidly around it.
The trouble is, I’m learning that Mason has built his just as high.
If there is anything I love more than my son, and maybe dancing—although I’m so off dancing right now—it’s the buzz that lives in the four walls of the gym. It vibrates within me and follows me around like a hand to the back, propelling me to keep going.
I love it here. Although my studio was more sacred to me after months of building it up alone, L&M is everything I need right now. To think I worked somewhere as stuffy as The Earl Marks, blows my mind. It just wasn’t me.
My only concern right now is the man-child who has just walked up the steps and into the gym. His eyes scan the room until they find me. I wonder if I will ever tire of looking at him. He is the picture of perfection—in my eyes anyway.
Is that what love truly is?
