My arms give way. The bar comes crashing down. It hits my chest and then rolls down to my neck.
Oh, fuck.
I open my mouth to tell Marcello I need his help but nothing comes out. No words. No air. The bar is squashing my throat so perfectly, everything is restricted.
After cursing loudly in Italian, Marcello leans over me and grips the bar. I feel it lift a little, enough to get some air in my lungs, but it doesn’t move off me completely.
“It's too heavy!” Marcello declares and then he moves closer. His thighs practically wrap around my head, but I don’t care. He can sit on my face as long as this fucking bar moves off my neck.
Oh, God, it’s happening.The thought slams into me almost as heavily as the bar landed on my chest. It’s actually happening. I wasn’t able to stop it with my counting and my cleaning and my constant obsessing. And it’s going to happen in the gym of all places. The space I made sacred,sacrosanct, special for so many years, is the place I am going to meet my end.
I am going to complete the triangle, the hat-trick, thethreeby dying. I couldn't stop it.
In the milliseconds that feel like minutes as they pass, I consider not pushing up. I close my eyes and think about just letting it happen because then it will all stop: the constant counting, the continuous division and multiplication, and the uncontrollable catastrophising. I could make it all go away if I just stop pushing up on this bar.
But then I open my eyes and they lock in with Marcello’s. His expression is all determination and focus and power. He has never looked more beautiful and I don’t want to give up. I don’t want to disappear with my counting. I want to live.
With an almighty grunt, Marcello pulls up and I have enough space to get my hands under the bar and push up with him. The bar, finally, finally, lifts off me and I hear the metallic clank of it getting re-racked. It’s the sweetest sound I think I’ve ever heard and I close my eyes again as I try to get more oxygen back in my lungs.
“Merda! Did I kill you? Are you dead?
When I open my eyes I see Marcello looking down at me, worry furrowing his brow deeply.
“I’m not dead,” I say and I force a smile. “Just a little winded. And embarrassed.”
“You’reembarrassed?” Marcello declares, shocked. “I’m the one who couldn’t lift it off you. Who couldn’t do the one thing I was supposed to do.”
I slowly push up to a sitting position. “I was showing off,” I say over my shoulder back to him. “I was being a dick.”
I turn my head back so I can’t see Marcello as he replies.
“You were trying to impress me?” His voice is slow, thoughtful.
Finally feeling like my lungs are functioning normally, and I know the pain in my neck will pass soon, I swing my legs around so I’m sitting on one side of the bench and I’m able to look up at Marcello.
“Did it work?” I joke.
“Why were you trying to impress me?” he asks, his tone still low and deliberate and I feel like the background noise of clanging weights, dull chatter and the pounding of treadmills all fades away.
I shrug. I don’t have an answer. Or rather, not one I’m willing to share.
Nor do I feel like I can share with him what other thoughts crossed my mind when that bar was pressing down on my throat.
“You didn’t have to do that to impress me,” Marcello says and there’s a lightness in his voice now, and he straightens up with a small smile on his face. “You’ve always impressed me, Giles. From the first moment I saw you in one of your suits. And the first time I saw you demolish a chocolate croissant in three bites. And pretty much anytime you wear clothes,anyclothes, because I’m convinced nothing will ever look bad on you. I mean, with that body…”
I watch his eyes roll from my face down my torso and along the length of my legs. I watch them come back up and linger somewhere near my groin. He swallows.
And then it’s not just the noise that seems to disappear. It’s like the air in the room vanishes too, leaving a thick, charged atmosphere.
“I should go,” he mumbles and half-turns. “I need to go.”
“Wait, Marcello!” I say, standing up in a rush. I don’t really know what just happened. I can’t really make sense of the thoughts I had or the way looking at Marcello pulled me back from the edge of something I know I’m very relieved to be away from right now. But I do know that I can’t just let this end like this.
“Yeah?” He turns back, already a few steps away.
“I’m going to lift a bit more but would you like to go for a drink after I’m showered? In like half an hour?”
“A drink?” He blinks, eyes wide.
