Dan’s jaw flexes, but I just smile wider. Archer’s good looking, but his oppressive big brother energy is the cold shower I need right now.
“Yeah, absolutely. The more the merrier,” I say with a wild grin.
Dan’s face shutters.
The rest of the workout is filled with Archer’s loud, happy chatter, which I work to keep up with as Dan quietly explains and demonstrates different movements and machines.
He doesn’t touch me again.
For the next forty-five minutes, we visit different stations around the gym. I learn about leg extensions and calf raises and glute bridges, Dan and Archer and I taking turns on each machine just like I teach my kindergarteners to do on the playground. We end up in an area filled with rows padded benches and several racks of dumbbells lining the wall in front of a bank of mirrors.
“Let’s finish with a single leg movement,” Dan says. “Curtsy lunges.”
“Do Bulgarians,” Archer says with a devious grin.
“Curtsy lunges, because I’m not trying to kill her on her first day,” Dan replies with just a hint of venom.
And as he’s done at every other station, Dan calmly and quietly explains both the movement and the mechanics. He demonstrates, and just like at every other station, I try to watch him without ogling him. Because as I’ve learned today, nearly every movement a person makes in the gym is damn near pornographic.
I’m going to need a cold shower when I get home.
Dan has me try the lunges without weight, and when I earn his delicious approval—the smallest nod of his head, which hits me like the sexiest praise I’ve ever received—he brings me a set of ten-pound dumbbells and sets them on the floor in front of me. I reach for them, but Dan shakes his head.
“Rest,” he says.
“But I didn’t do anything,” I say. “That was just practice.”
“Listen to the boy,” Norm says, ambling over to an empty bench beside us. He drops his little shaker cup that all the men in this gym seem to carry around, then pulls a pair of fifty-pounddumbbells from the rack. My back hurts just from watching him pick them up, but Norm, despite his advanced age, seems to find their weight a mere annoyance. “Rest is just as important as the work. Rushing through is how you get injured.”
Dan gives me a look that says,See?I roll my eyes in response and sit down on my bench just as my phone emits the weird little ding that indicates I have a new match on Hinge.
“What the hell was that?” Norm grunts, the dumbbells over his head.
“Sounds like I might have a date.” I unlock my phone and swipe to the app. I avoided it for a couple of days post-Gabe, but then my lust for Dan coupled with our agreement to be friends drove me back into the arms of digital dating. For the last day or so I’ve been chatting with an MBA student at IU who doesn’t seem like he’ll murder and/or abandon me.
“You’re on the apps?” Archer asks. He drops his weights with a thud so loud that I jump.
“Dude, it’s more impressive if you control them all the way to the floor,” Dan grumbles, but Archer isn’t listening. He’s too busy trying to peer over my shoulder at my phone screen.
I shrug. “To quote our savior Sabrina Carpenter, ‘since the Lord forgot my gay awakening,’ I’m not going to meet anyone playing roller derby. So it looks like it’s the apps for me.”
“In my day, we just met women in the wild and asked them out on dates,” Norm says. He cuts a look at Dan, who drops his eyes to the floor.
“Surely there’s got to be a better way,” Archer says.
“When you find it, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to meet, uh”—I squint down at the screen, reading the name of my newest love connection—“Jacktomorrow night at Hoosier Brews in Bloomington.”
“Please tell me you’re driving yourself this time,” Dan says.
I give him a saucy smile. “Yes, I am. I learned my lesson.”
“Good girl,” Dan says. His voice is low, and I don’t thinkNorm and Archer hear him, since they’re both mid-lift. But I do, and the blood in my veins goes molten. Our eyes meet in the mirror, that spark from earlier returning.
But then Archer’s weights hit the floor again, and my stomach leaps into my throat, my eyes tearing away from Dan’s gaze.
“What do you know about this guy?” Archer asks, because apparently he’severyone’sbig brother.
I roll my eyes but scroll through the profile anyway. “According to his profile, he’s six feet tall?—”
