“You do that, honey. Build those muscles.” She winks at me. “He’s single, you know. Well, not single. Engaged. To that lovely Jo woman. But if you have any single friends who like firefighters?—”
“Mom, oh my word, we’re leaving.” Brittany physically steers her mother toward the locker room. “I’m so sorry. She’s like this with everyone famous. She once followed the guy who played a background extra in a Hallmark movie around Costco for twenty minutes.”
“He was very tall!” her mother calls back. “It might have been someone important!”
Brittany returns to the front desk, shaking her head but smiling. “I apologize for her. Andfor pimping out your brother. She’s convinced everyone needs to be married because she’s been with my dad for forty-five years and doesn’t understand that some of us are happier without—” She stops, laughs. “Sorry. Oversharing. Occupational hazard of running a gym. People tell me things while they’re stretching, and now I just assume everyone wants to hear my life story.”
“It’s fine,” I say, and I mean it. There’s something likeable about her—the kind of open, honest energy that feels rare.
“I teach the six am yoga class if you ever want to try it,” she offers. “Very low-key. No chanting. I save the spiritual stuff for the evening sessions when people have already had wine.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Dean steers me toward the weight room. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. It was...memorable.”
“She’s going to post those pictures online within the hour. Her mom, I mean. Brittany would never—she’s good people.”
“I figured.”
“Diane’s going to see them.”
I hadn’tthought about that. “Oh no.”
“The alpaca farm theory is about to be debunked.”
“I don’t want an alpaca farm.”
“I know. But now everyone’s going to know you’re in Twin Waves.”
“I’ll deal with it.” Somehow. Probably. “Let’s just work out.”
The weight room is half-full. A few guys I don’t recognize on the bench press. An older man doing something questionable with a resistance band that looks medically inadvisable. A teenage boy curling five-pound dumbbells while staring at himself in the mirror with frightening intensity.
And on the row of treadmills against the far wall?—
Delilah.
She’s running at a steady pace, earbuds in, ponytail swinging. There’s a sheen of sweat on her forehead and her hair is damp at the temples. She’s wearing black leggings and a faded t-shirt with a cartoon flower on it.
She hasn’t seen me yet.
Dean follows my gaze and says nothing, because Dean is annoyingly perceptive and also enjoys watchingme suffer.
“Bench press?” he offers, with the casual tone of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing.
“Sure.”
We set up at the bench closest to the treadmills. This is strategic. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not going to pretend it’s accidental either.
“You’re transparent,” Dean mutters.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You picked this bench because it has the best sightline to the treadmills.”
“I picked this bench because it was available.”
