Chapter 1
Hudson
“We think you’d be a really great fit here, Mr Millen. We’d love for you to join our personal training team here at our gym.”
I think about the job offer in front of me for a split second and then I stand to my full height, the chair beneath me creaking, and stick out my right hand. “Thank you very much for the opportunity. I’m excited to get started.”
My new boss, Michael, stands too, slipping his palm against mine and pumping firmly. “We’re very pleased to have you on board, Hudson. We’ll get the papers printed and signed and then I can give you a tour of the place?”
I nod, fingers reaching upwards to reposition my snapback cap to face backwards on my head.
I’ve worked as a personal trainer for three different gyms in the past seven months, so I kinda have this whole signing my name on the dotted line, figuring out the logistics and then getting a tour of the place, thing down pat.
I’m not going to tell this place that though. I don’t want them getting the wrong idea and thinking there’s something up with me, because I can’t seem to be able to stay at the same gym for more than a couple of months. There’s nothing wrong with meor my work ethic, it’s just… those places never seemed to fit me right.
I fumble with the set of keys in my gym shorts pocket while I wait for Michael to return with the papers I need to date and sign; my body full of pent-up energy I’m just dying to release. I can’t sit still for more than a few minutes. It takes that long for the energy inside of me to be full to bursting before I need to move my body – either by spending my time in the gym until the sweat is pouring out of me or fucking somebody until neither of us can feel our legs.
If I’m feeling particularly restless that day, I might do both.
It calms the restless devil inside of me… but only for a little while before I have the urge to do the whole thing again.
“Okay, so I have your contract.” Michael returns with a bundle of papers, handing over the stack and a pen with hardly any ink left in the cartridge. I have to scribble in the top right-hand corner to get the ink to even flow before I can sign my name. “If you could just take a few minutes to read through the terms and conditions there, double check you’re happy with the number of hours we’re employing you for, your monthly salary, that sort of thing.”
I vaguely skim read through the wordy jargon staring back at me, ignoring the large words I don’t understand and simply scour the paragraphs and subsections for the highlighted parts – thank fuck for whoever did that – which include my hours per week and the amount I’ll be paid.
Happy with the conditions, I print and sign my full name on the dotted line, glancing up only to ask for the date; January something or other.
“Brilliant,” my new boss praises, signing off his own portion of the document when I hand the pen to him. “I’ll get these sent off to HR straight away ready for you to start on Monday morning. Any questions?”
I shake my head.
“Okay then, if you’d like to follow me and I’ll show you around.”
Michael locks his office door behind him with a jangly set of keys, leading me along the office corridor and down a set of stairs.
I’m glad to leave behind the stuffy confines of an office, filled with the permanent strong smell of coffee and the click clack of a keyboard, only to replace it with the muffled sounds of grunts and typical pop music emanating from the gym.
“So, this…” Michael swipes the pass wrapped around his wrist against a small black box just off to the side of two double doors. When the light flashes a startling green, Michael pushes through the doors with ease, allowing the sights, smells and sounds of the gym to become more pronounced. “Is the main floor.”
I breathe in the smell of sweat mixed with something distinctly lemony and antibacterial and stare out at the sea of familiar gym equipment, each of which is grouped together. The treadmills line the long wall of windows, allowing you to look outside at London beyond as you walk or jog or sprint. A young man uses one already, his arms pumping to match the speed of his feet hitting the moving conveyer belt beneath him.
The rowing machines sit together, the same for the ellipticals and the stationary bicycles; all of which are occupied by at least one person, if not more.
I glance at the time on my touchscreen watch. For a Thursday afternoon, just before 5 p.m., when most of the standard office workers finish for the day, the gym is surprisingly busy.
“We get a nice steady flow of people,” Michael remarks with a proud nod when I tell him what I’m thinking. “Of course, we get our usual peak times, usually in the morning just before 10 a.m. and again in the evenings from five onwards, just like anyother gym. But there’s always someone using the equipment, we chalk it up to less and less people working a standard nine to five now, plus students and the working from home type crowd. It’s a bonus for us. It means you should have a continuous flow of clients throughout the week and sometimes on the weekend when you begin working here. Now, over here is the weightlifting area.” My eyes slide to the section of the gym Michael is pointing at, finding more people mulling about.
Two women stand beside each other, a kettlebell in their grasps, bending at their knees into a squat, while swinging the kettlebell out in front of them. A man lays down upon the leather material of the bench press, positioning his hands on the barbell above him and then releasing the long pole from its hooks. He lowers the weight down to his chest, allowing his pectoral muscles to flex under the strain, before raising the weight above his head in a single rep.
His form isn’tbad,but still, my fingers itch to go over there and correct him. His hands need to be a little bit further apart for a start and he needs a spotter above him lest he become stuck under the weight.
When I can’t take watching him another second, I allow my feet to carry me to the bench press, hovering my open palms beneath the strangers’ pulsing biceps.
“Thanks, mate,” he utters on a groan, sending me a tight-lipped smile while he does a further ten repetitions. Once he’s finished, the vein in the middle of his forehead is standing up and flicking with the pulse of fresh blood. If he were my client, I’d remind him not to push himselftoohard; there’s working towards your goals and smashing them, and then there’s just pushing yourself to overwork and harm from straining.
But he’s not my client. He’s just someone who has come for a workout session in the gym, maybe to work off some of the stressfrom the week and my god do I know how that feels, so I keep my unsolicited advice to myself for the time being.
“I can see we’ve made the right choice in hiring you, Hudson.” Michael slaps me on the back when I return to his side, the two of us gazing out at the muscular man grabbing another metal weight round from the weight rack to add to the power rack. “I’m glad to have you on the team.”
