“Jamie and I used to dress him up for holidays. One of my exes thought he was creepy, though, so he’s been packed up for a long time.” Suddenly, his cheeks go red, and he clears his throat. Rubbing the back of his neck, he starts toward his patio door. “Anyway, I thought it was cruel to make him live in a box any longer, so I dug him out.”
Following him, I’m glad he can’t see my frown. My sister, Alice, says it looks like I’m always brooding. I don’t understand, though, how anyone couldn’t appreciate his nerdiness. Is dragging Norman out of storage one of the everyday decisions he said he stresses over? Whoever this ex was that turned their nose up at his love for his skeleton needs a good kick in the balls.
“Good decision.” The smile he flashes me over that morsel of solidarity warms the center of my chest, so I go for more compliments. “It’s a nice place you’ve got here.”
“It’s not the Monte Vista neighborhood, and I’ve still got a little work to do, but I like it.”
“If it makes you feel better, I couldn’t afford what the houses over there go for now. It seemed like a good investment with what I had left from my contract when I bought it. And it was my escape plan to get far enough away from my parents that they wouldn’t hover after my recovery.”
I’m not sure why I admitted all of that, but when he turns to me on his lawn, his face doesn’t hold any judgment. I’ve been geared to be on the defensive for so long, I don’t think I gave him the benefit of the doubt when we first reconnected. Remy doesn’t judge, though, does he? I don’t think he ever did.
“Well, as you know, my yard certainly doesn’t compare to yours,” he rambles, wincing at our surroundings and looking adorably self-conscious. “I was actually going to work on pulling weeds later.”
“It doesn’t bother me. I used to go to the junkyard in my hometown to work out when I was in high school. The owner let me borrow an old tractor tire. I’d tie it to my waist and run with it to do some resistance drills during the off-season.” I chuckle at the memory, surprised to have a good one for a change. “I must have looked like a psychopath.”
“Or a roadside assistance worker,” he suggests, making me snicker unexpectedly.
The mirth in his eyes suddenly makes me sad. Was he always this funny, and I never took the time to find out? I’m not going to delude myself that we’re compatible, because what the hell do I know about relationships except for the girls I pretended to be into in high school? But…it would have been nice to have someone like Remy to talk to over the years.
We end up hanging onto his deck railing again, doing more planks and then some hamstring stretches. They’re all things I could have easily been doing at home, and I kind of want tokick myself for not being more diligent. I woke up with soreness in new places this morning. It was enlightening just how much grandma stretches can make you remember muscles you haven’t used in over a decade. The dull ache in my joints that’s always there, however, was at a lower roar than usual.
At one point, Remy disappears into his house and returns with some ankle weights. Dropping them down on the deck, he descends the stairs again and comes over to stand by me as he reaches for one.
“A big part of hip and back stability is in the core and the glutes. With your broken hardware, working your core will be difficult, so we can focus on your glutes for now.”
Great. My giant ass. The price of companionship officially sucks.
I watch in wonder as he drops to a knee and fastens a set of weights to my ankles. Trying to ignore how I look like my mother when she does her aerobic videos is made easy by how sexy Remy looks in the zone. I can see that he truly enjoys his work. The squirmy sensation of defeat I carried up his steps is replaced with pride in him for having the desire to help injured people. Not me, butotherpeople. Helping me still feels like winning last place.
I opted for shorts today, as the weather’s warmer than yesterday. San Antonio in the fall is still like summer to most places, so I wasn’t about to take my chances by sweating in front of him. When his fingers brush against the bare skin above my feet, it’s pitiful how good the innocent touch feels.
“If you pull that poison ivy on your fence off with your bare hands later, do me a favor and don’t be touching my ankles in the near future,” I deadpan, worried he’ll somehow sense my reaction.
His head whips around in the direction of his fence. “That’s poison ivy?”
Wow. I guess my deflection may have just saved a life. “Aren’t you from Kansas or something?” I laugh.
“Yeah.” He smiles, sounding surprised that I remembered. Rattling his head, he straps a set of weights to his own ankles. “But I lived in town, not out in the country, and my dad was pretty picky about the lawn.”
Funny. Vince Mightener parked our riding mower for good and bought a push mower so I could work on my tackle strength. He was always coming up with shit like that; a modern-day Mr. Miyagi.
We knock out several repetitions of calf lifts and then go really wild, doing some backward leg lifts. Grudgingly, I feel the burn from the baby weights in my ass and hip flexors in less than two minutes. I don’t want to think about how that means my senior citizen mother probably has more leg stamina than I do.
“Any pain?” Remy asks, his worried expression fixed on my grimace.
“No.”
I spend the next few minutes trying not to let my brooding show on my face. The flash of new movement to my right snags my attention, though. I watch Remy bending his arms, doing push-ups against the railing while he does his leg lifts.
“Upper body combo now, huh?” I ask, joining in. My right elbow joint makes a cracking sound on the first iteration, which does nothing for my ego.
“Oh, you don’t have to. I just don’t do much upper body, so I thought I’d work on my arms a little.”
“It’s fine,” I assure him, and it is, despite that first cracking sound. “I can’t believe I haven’t done a push-up in a decade, though.”
“You can still probably do more than I can. Paver stones are pretty much weights.”
That he remembers a single recently learned factoid about me or my house dances a comforting wisp of glee through me. I guess I technically wasn’t lying when I said my landscaping was my workout. My arms are still in decent shape, unlike the rest of me.
