Ready for what?
For lifting. For sweating. For my body to remember it belongs to me.
For my brain to stop replaying the last text I sent him like a loop:
Love you. See you in the morning.
For the world to stop making “mornings” show up anyway.
I swallow, tie my laces tighter, and nod. “Yeah.”
The gym smells like rubber mats and disinfectant and that faint metallic tang of effort. It’s a different kind of sterile than the hospital. This one doesn’t make me want to crawl out of my skin.
We start slow—dynamic stretches, resistance bands, mobility work. Jade hums under her breath like she’s trying to fill the silence for me. Blakely cracks jokes at my expense, which is her love language.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she says when I half-glare at her during leg extensions.
“You’re counting wrong,” I mutter.
She grins. “I’m counting how I see fit.”
“That’s not how numbers work.”
“Watch me.”
It should be annoying.
It is annoying.
But it’s also, God help me, nice.
Because for ten minutes, my brain is focused on something as dumb as Blakely’s inability to count reps like a normal person and not on the fact that my entire life has a Pops-shaped crater in it.
When we move to cardio, Jade slows her treadmill to match mine.
“You’ve been eating?” she asks casually, eyes on the numbers, like she isn’t watching me from the corner of her vision.
I hate that my chest tightens at the question anyway. I hate that eating feels like an act of courage now.
“Yeah,” I say. “More than I was, at least. Probably not the best choices, but hey, calories are calories right now.”
Jade nods once, satisfied. “Good.”
Blakely looks over from her bike. “And sleeping?”
I snort. “Define sleeping.”
“Unconscious,” she says, deadpan.
I exhale a laugh. “Sometimes.”
It’s true, in the smallest way. I’m not waking up every hour anymore. I’m not flinching awake, convinced that I heard a thump down the hall. Not sitting straight up in my bed, dripping with sweat, imagining that I can hear a phone ringing.
The shower is still where I fall apart, but even that has started to change.
I only do it when I let myself.
That’s progress, right?
