“I think it was my secret person,” I say flatly, lifting the bar with a grunt.
There’s an unwritten rule about lifting: when your partner is lifting, the conversation stops, so Martin says nothing. We let the rep-counting speak for itself. I rack the bar again, standing to help reload the weight.
“You think your secret person paid for your coffee?” Martin asks, starting to load on another plate.
“Sure,” I say, standing. “Had to be.”
He stops moving and smiles an open-mouth smile.
“We were both out paying-it-forward. We were bound to cross paths at some point.” I stop moving, too, my hand resting on the end of the bar. I stare at his smile, trying to fit the joy he has for me and my coffee adventure against the loneliness I felt without him there. How can I possibly explain that to him?
How can I possibly explain that to myself?
“Sounds awesome,” he says, taking his place on the bench, doing the thumb-rub to find the perfect grip location. “I’ve had that happen once, where someone ahead of me in line paid for my order.”
“It’s a pretty great feeling.”
He grunts as he lifts the bar and I’m soothed by the lull in conversation his set brings.
We listen to whatever pop music is playing from the speakers and let the reps count themselves. Martin is wearing a loose tank top and my mind goes blank as I watch the sweat glisten on his shoulders and the back of his neck. His gold chain glimmers along the crease of his neck as he strains under the weight, the pendant adhered askew by the sweat of his clavicle. I feel the weight of coffee and loneliness lift and vaporize as he presses, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I just let it breathe through me.
We spend the rest of our workout chatting mostly about nothing important, and before we know it, we’re on companion treadmills, cooling down on slow inclines, but still huffing a little.
We make eye contact through the mirrored wall before us and smile.
As the sun is almost setting, we make our way across the parking lot toward my truck, and Martin’s car. The glowing sky glistens on the sweat-soaked hairs peeking out from Martin’s ball cap. I can’t seem to pull my eyes away. Arriving at ourvehicles, I throw my bag into the bed of my truck and he pops open the trunk of his car.
I sigh a full-body breath as he chucks in his bag, straightening his sweaty tank top, grabbing his necklace and realigning that tiny puzzle piece. I’ve seen him straighten that pendant a thousand times, but this time I can’t help but ask: “What is the puzzle piece about?”
He grabs the tiny piece, sliding it along the chain, looking at it like his mind has transported elsewhere.
“This?” he says. “I got this from my mom.” There’s a long pause as he studies it, then looks at me unblinking. I’m not sure if I’ve stepped into something raw, so I just wait patiently. “It was a sort of, um, sort of a coming-out gift.” He still hasn’t blinked, nervously sliding the piece along the short distance of the gold chain.
I nod a little, not sure what to say. Martin doesn’t usually like to use titles or categories to describe humanity, so to hear him categorize himself startles me.
He looks down at the shimmery gold piece, scrunching up his face to see over his nose and chin. “It’s a reminder for me…” There’s a long pause like he can’t find the words, or maybe doesn’t want to. “You know, that there’s someone out there in the world who is a perfect fit for me.” He doesn’t look up.
I smile, but still have no words.
“I believe that,” he says, dropping the necklace on his chest, looking up at me, then turning to close his trunk lid. He’s moving slowly toward the driver door, not so much addressing me as he is talking to the space around us. “That somewhere, there’s a guy who’s the perfect fit for me. I believe it,” he repeats, almost as if he’s coaching himself along. His voice is getting louder as the distance between us increases. He smirks and says, “I really do, man.”
The sudden change of tone feels like he’s just slipped into bro-mode. He’s at his door opening it, looking back at me, slapping the roof of his car with an open palm, exhaling sharply.
I’m not sure I can switch modes this quickly, but I try: “You’re one of the good ones, bud.” I’m not sure how I’m doing, but I press on. Bro-mode feels so foreign to me. “You know there’s someone out there just perfect for you.” I’m moving toward the driver door of my truck, too, creating a distance that requires our voices to project.
“Like a perfect fit,” he says, sliding into his car.
“Hey, great workout. I’ll catch you later.” I climb up into my truck, peering at him over the truck bed from where I’m standing in the open door frame.
“Yeah, man,” he says. “Great workout. I’ll see you later.”
I retreat into the cab of my truck and watch as he starts his car and pulls away. The emptiness of my cab feels as heavy as the emptiness of our conversation.
Days later, the notebook is back.
I’ve set it on the island in my kitchen, which strikes me as ironically similar to what I did with the first note. Except this time, it sits there for a different reason. One I can’t even articulate to myself.
It had been waiting for me at the gym when I went to work out this afternoon. The clerk sees my name on the screen when I scan in, tells me to hold up because someone has left a package for me. She retrieves it for me from a drawer, hands it to me, and I force my biggest smile with a “thank you.” But I don’t even consider asking who left it, or let my eyes wander to the ceiling-mounted cameras in the mysterious hope of knowing who my secret person is. I just tuck it under my arm then into the farthest back reaches of my locker for the entire duration of my workout. I try to stow it in the farthest back reaches of my mind,too, so I can focus on my workout, but that is a futile mission. It’s all I can think about.
