I was shirtless.
Right. The shirt had been a casualty.
I needed water and my phone and probably my entire dignity back, none of which were immediately visible.
I followed the sound.
It was coming from somewhere down the hall, past the bathroom I hadn't made it to last night, past the room I had not investigated, and through a door that was open about eight inches.
Rhythmic. Heavy. The clean metal shift of weights being moved by someone who knew what they were doing. I pushed the door open.
The room was small and spare and fit for the purpose: rubber flooring, a rack of weights that were organized by size because of course they were, a bench, a pull-up bar mounted in the corner. Mirrors on one wall. Utilitarian light. Everything a person needed and nothing extra.
Cross had his back to me.
No shirt.
I had approximately one second before my brain caught up with what I was seeing and another second before my body caught up with my brain. Both of those seconds were extremely inconvenient and not something I had budgeted for this morning.
Cross was at least ten years older than me, but the guy wasbuilt. He was built the way people get when exercise is a practice rather than a performance—functional and serious and genuinely unfair—and he was sweating, which I had never once considered as a possibility.
Cross existed at a controlled temperature of his own manufacturing, yet there was sweat tracking down his spine. His shoulder muscles were doing something through the rep that I watched happen and then looked immediately at the wall.
This was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake while I was doing it. His back was—the word I kept landing on wasarchitectural, which was the least incriminating word I had available, and I was going to stay with architectural and not examine what was happening south of my waist, which was—that was —
That was a problem.
Getting hard was an inconvenient problem that had arrived without my permission, and I needed it to not be happening. It was happening anyway, because apparently my body had opinions about shirtless, weight lifting, sweating Nathan Cross that it had been keeping to itself and had chosen this moment to table for discussion.
Not now,I told my body.
My body did not care.
Cross set the weights down. Didn't startle. Just put them in their place and looked at me in the mirror, and I had approximately zero seconds to solve the problem before he turned around.
The cat appeared from nowhere.
I grabbed him.
The orange cat expressed his feelings about this immediately and comprehensively. Both front paws, claws deployed, latching onto my forearm with the grip of a cat who had decided this was a personal attack and was responding in kind.
I made a noise. The cat made a noise. I did not let go, because the cat was currently the only thing standing between me and a situation I was not going to be able to explain professionally. I held him in front of me at my waist like a small furious orange shield.
"You're awake," Cross said, from the mirror.
"Good morning," I said. My voice was admirably normal. The cat was trying to remove my hand from my wrist. "You have a cat."
"I'm aware."
"He was on my chest this morning." I adjusted my grip. The cat adjusted his. We were locked in a mutual hostage situation. "Very forward. No respect for personal space."
Cross looked at me in the mirror. Then at the cat. Then back at me with the expression of a man doing a rapid assessment and arriving at questions he hadn't expected to have this early.
"His name is Leo," he said.
"Great name," I said. "Love that name. Normal name."
Leo got his back legs involved.
