We just met and already I hate answering to him. For starters, he doesn’t look any older than me. And who tied a leadership title to someone with such a shitty attitude?
I’m your squad leader not your roommate.
Real motivating.
He’s reporting all of this back to Jack, and if there is one person I need to impress here, it’s him. So, I drop to the cement pad and pump out fifty push-ups before the timer goes off.
If he’s impressed, he doesn’t make a show of it. Just jots down my number on his palm-sized pad of lined paper and moves on.
He presses the same button on his device a few more times and barks, “Forty sit-ups. One minute. Go.”
Instead of the fancy gym on the west end of the building, we’re using a makeshift basketball court out back, where the cement feels like it dried before it got smoothed over. Every time I lift my back off the ground, my shirt catches on the jagged texture and chafes against my skin. It’s a grueling sixty seconds, but by the time the stopwatch sounds, I’ve got him recording fifty-eight sit-ups on my behalf. Which is a far cry past forty.
He scribbles down my number and walks away—my ever-constant signal to follow him. Add poor communication to the list of things this guy is lacking.
He points to the back of the building where a pull-up bar has been installed.
“Chin-ups ’til failure.”
I grip the metal with my fists and work up anddown the wall.
Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, I count as the timer sounds.
I jump down and wipe my palms together.
He turns to the side, revealing a two-inch scar splitting his eyebrow. I’d ask him about it if he had any interest in becoming friends. But considering he’s sighing and looking bored out of his skull at my presence, I think I’d rather badger him instead.
“You can hold your applause.”
“Is it praise you want, rookie? Well, not bad. But let’s see if those boots were made for walking as much as that mouth of yours was made for yapping.”
He approaches a wall lined with black canvas sacks. Lifts the closest one with ease and dumps it in my arms. They bow under the forty-five-pound weight, but I thread them through the padded straps until the ruck distributes evenly across my upper back. I wait for him to do the same, but he doesn’t.
“Too heavy for you?”
Like a red-tailed hawk over an exposed field, his eyes narrow. “Excuse me?”
“No, it’s just, you’re the squad leader right? Aren’t guys in your position supposed to motivate pawns like me.”
“I didn’t know you needed a hand hold,” he mocks.
“I mean, if you’re offering…” I reach out like I’m going to grab his hand, and it does exactly what I was hoping it would.
His cheeks flush and he swats it away. “We’re going three miles round trip down that trail. You have forty-five minutes.”
I can’t hold back a chuckle.
“Oh,weare?”
“Yes,weare.”
It’s getting annoying that he feels the need to state my target goals like I haven’t already passed all of them before this. What’s supposed to make me believe it’s somethinghecan do? This guy isn’t even carrying a weighted rucksack.
Regardless, I do what I’m told.Morethan I’m told, in fact. The first two miles I complete at a jog, making it to the halfway spot on the trail and turning back around. I came here to impress. To stand out. Not to be mediocre.
“You’re gonna burn out,” he warns me from behind.
His comment only fuels me, pushes me harder. I ignore the rubbing of my heels and the heavy clunk of my boots. I’m determined to make him regret underestimating me. He hasn’t seen anything yet.
