No words, no context, just the world’s dumbest fucking symbol, but it makes me laugh, sharp and real.
I open the message, stare at it for a full minute, and then, without thinking, I screenshot it.
The act feels dangerous, illicit, like stealing a page from someone else’s diary.
I should delete it. I know I should. But instead, I pull up the photo, zoom in on the blue thumb, and let myself smile.
Next to me, Nia sighs, stretches, pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. I touch her arm, soft, and for a second she grunts, but doesn’t wake.
I watch her sleep, feel the guilt snake back up my spine, and wonder if this is how it always starts—one bad thought, one mistake, and suddenly you’re someone else entirely.
I roll onto my back, phone balanced on my chest, and stare into the dark.
“What is happening to me?” I whisper.
The room doesn’t answer.
I wait for the sun.
STEAM
Three weeks in and my body has recalibrated around the 6:00 a.m. routin,: wake, dry swallow two Advil, bike to Ballard gym, sweat out the nightmares and the last clinging residue of yesterday.
I time my arrival so that I’m never the first one there, never the last, always exactly on schedule.
I tell myself it’s for discipline, but really it’s so I can slide through the door and clock Darius before he has time to notice me noticing him.
Today, he’s already at the racks, plates on the bar, headphones wedged over his ears like earmuffs against the world.
He wears the same old team-issued t-shirt every time, but this morning he’s cut the sleeves higher, so every motion of his arms is a flex, a threat, a statement I’m not supposed to read.
His shorts are the mesh kind that make his thighs look engineered for violence. He’s already got a sheen of sweat and a laser focus on the rep, as if every deadlift is an enemy and every set is the final round.
I dump my bag, yank on my knee sleeve, and start with a warmup lap.
My leg throbs, a good pain, the kind that tells me I’m not dead yet.
When I circle back, Darius has moved to squats, and the smell of rubber, chalk, and fresh sweat has already made itself at home in the air.
We don't say good morning. We never do.
Instead, he nods at the rack, an invitation or a challenge, and I slide under the bar like it’s the only thing holding up the building. I unrack, go deep, push up, set it down.
Darius stands behind me, hands just outside my hips, not touching but close, so close I can feel the heat of him through the polyester and the infinitesimal hairs on the backs of my arms stand up like they’ve been drafted for service.
“You’re shallow,” he says. “Two more inches.”
I bite back the obvious joke and do as told. The second set, he leans in, and his breath is right behind my ear, not warm or cold, just there.
His hand floats near the small of my back as I dip, and for one vertiginous second, I can’t tell if he’s actually making contact or if my nerves are inventing it out of spite.
By the third set, my legs are vibrating and my thoughts are a slurry of muscle fatigue and something else, something I don’t want to name.
“Rack it,” he says, voice low, and I do, even though my whole body wants to keep moving, keep burning.
We trade, and now I’m the one hovering behind, eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder so I don’t have to stare directly at the line of sweat crawling down the side of his neck.
His form is perfect, textbook, and when he squats deep, his shirt pulls tight over the spread of his back.
