“Have you changed your mind?” John’s voice stops me in my tracks, and I turn back to face him.
“No?”
“Are you sure about that?” John’s dark eyes twinkle a little, and the effect is startling. Immediately, his grumpy, tough demeanour transforms, and I can see he’s perhaps not as stand-offish as he initially appears.
“Yes. No.” Jesus Christ, make sense, Corey. “I mean, yes, I’m sure. No, I haven’t changed my mind.” John nods curtly and heads back to his office, calling instructions over his shoulder as he goes.
“Give him some uniform, please, Emma, and get him sorted with a key card and a locker. Then bring him to my office.”
I turn to Emma, her whole body practically vibrating as she tries and fails to suppress her huge grin.
“I got the job?” I ask. Her smile gets even wider.
“You got the job, babe.”
After a lengthy tour of the gym, including the weight room, cardio suite, class studio, sauna, and steam room, Emma takes me into the men’s locker room, pointing out the women’s locker room behind me.
“You’ll have to clean the women’s after we close so there’s nobody in there, but if it’s quiet, I’ll always help out so you get done quicker.”
I nod at the instruction, happy to work as many hours as I can if it means more time inside the warm, friendly space.
“Feel free to use any of the facilities you want while you’re here. John doesn’t charge staff for membership, so go wild. Oh!” She literally jumps in front of me until she’s so close our toes are touching. “Gimme your phone,” shedemands.
I pull it out, unsure how to say no to this whirling dervish of a woman. I enter my lock code and hand it over. She immediately gets to work, and a second later, I hear her phone buzz from inside her pocket. “Cool beans, now you can text me if you need anything. Or just, you know, to chat. If you want.”
She hands me my phone back, and I take it, a little gobsmacked. Does she want to be friends with me? The concept is so alien.
I never really got to explore the friendship I had with Rain as much as I would’ve liked, despite how well we got on. The idea that Emma is so quickly and easily trying to form a tentative friendship with me makes me feel warm inside, something I will not take for granted. I need all the friends I can get at this point in my life. I won’t tell her about my living situation – I don’t want her pity – but other than that, I’m an open book. I lift my eyes from my phone, and the corners of my mouth tilt up in a small smile.
“I’d love that.”
She grins. “Me too.”
She links her arm through mine and starts to steer me towards John’s office. A few people in the main gym space look up at mecuriously, but nobody seems judgy and nobody says anything. Only one man’s stare lingers, a massive guy with arms like boulders and thighs like tree trunks. He looks fierce, like some Viking brought forth from a historical romance book. Despite his fearsome appearance, he’s very definitely staring at Emma, and I can practically see the hearts popping in front of his face as he watches her. I suspect this guy is a bit of a gentle giant, if his smitten expression is anything to go by. Emma seriously has no idea how beautiful and captivating she is as she swans through the space, seemingly without even noticing.
“Who’s your admirer?” She almost trips over the feet of one of the weight benches as she spins to face me.
“What? Who?” I think Emma may have learnt to whisper in a Chinook helicopter, because she is not quiet, and the man in question definitely hears her. He looks away, his cheeks reddening as he gets back to his workout, and I wince for him in solidarity.
“The cute Viking over by the cable machine,” I whisper back at a far more appropriate volume, our heads pressing together conspiratorially while I steer her back in our previous direction. “He had heart eyes all over the placeas you walked past.”
She looks back over her shoulder to see who I mean. She’s about as subtle as a brick to the face, this one. She hurriedly turns back and, pointedly not looking at him again, ushers me out of the room.
“That’s Rob. He’s a regular, and aye, he’s lush, but come on. He’s like a lawyer or an accountant or something. He’d never want to go out with some tattooed, pierced, ADHD nightmare whose main goal each day is not to get fired by her uncle for, like, forgetting to lock the gym at night or something.” She eyes me meaningfully as she says this, and I laugh as I realise she has, in fact, forgotten to lock the gym at night before. “Besides, I’m aro, so I’m only up for the sexy stuff, and that guy has hopeless romantic written all over him.”
“He definitely wants you, but I get what you mean. He looks a bit of a smitten kitten. Anyway, don’t worry about forgetting to lock up. I’ll happily work close every night, so I’ll always help you remember.”
“Don’t be daft, you’ve got your own life to live.” I don’t correct her assumption. Little does she know how wrong she is. She’ll soon see when I’m here from open til close every single day, whether I’m working or not. I’m about tobecome part of the furniture here at Fitness for All.
I knock tentatively on John’s door when Emma drops me off outside his office with a quick peck on my cheek. If nothing else positive happens today, at least I met her. We giggled a lot as she was showing me around and getting me sorted with all my uniform and stuff, now waiting in a pile behind reception for me. Sometimes you meet people, and you just know without even trying they’re going to be a good friend. It’s how it was with Rain, and now it’s happening with Emma, too.
“Come,” John’s gravelly voice calls, slightly muffled by the closed door. He’s sitting behind his desk, an ancient computer monitor illuminating his face while the winter sun, rapidly lowering in the sky outside, sends rays through the slightly grubby glass of the arched, lead-paned windows. This space may be a repurposed mill, but the character of the building has been sympathetically protected during its renovation. I can’t help but think that fact alone tells me a lot about the man in front of me.
He could easily have covered every original feature of this building with plasterboard and turned it into a boring white box with God-awful strip lighting and rubber mats on the floor. Don’t get me wrong, there are rubber mats on the floors, but only where there’s gym equipment in place. The rest of the floors are restored wooden floorboards. The stone walls are exposed, and the lighting is industrial in style and creates a warm, cosy environment that respects the soul of this building and its previous life.
John’s shrewd gaze follows me as I make my way to the empty chair in front of his desk, his appraisal continuing as I sit.
“Emma got you squared away?”
