The skinny guy is still grunting at his machine. He finishes his last rep, then picks up his bottle of water and chugs, exhausted. He probably just got here, and already he’s ready to call it quits. Just in time, he glances up as a pair of ripped studs strut past him on their way to the free weights. The poor guy’s eyes say it all: he watches the ripped studs with envy, as if privately concluding he will never look like them, never be as strong or built as them, never look good in a tight shirt, never be rid of the puny, skinny build he’s been cursed with. Then he glances down at his feet for some reason, and there is something in his eyes that tells me he’s about to quit—even after just being here for three minutes—and head back home to pet his cat Friscuit and watch Netflix with a bowl of kettle corn.
I don’t know what it is. Maybe in this strange set of circumstances and the emotions my chat with Leobardo has dug up, I feel a connection with that skinny, dejected, discouraged guy.
I rise from the weight bench and put myself in front of him.
His tiny eyes go wide as he glances up at me, stunned and uncertain.
“The hell you stop for?” I grunt at him.
“I …” He swallows. His face goes red. “I … I was just taking a break. A little rest.”
“Good. Just a break.” I stare at him. “Then you’re gonna get back to pumping that iron, right?”
He wasn’t going to. He wasn’t planning to.
I know for a fact he was getting ready to give up and head home. I could read it in his eyes.
But suddenly his whole demeanor changes. Just like another model in front of my lens, I focused the spotlight right onto him, made him stare into the abyss of his own dreams, and reevaluate every damned thing in his life in the space of a second.
“Yeah,” he says suddenly, his eyes alight. “Yes, I’m getting right back to it. After my … my break.” He smiles suddenly.
Something clicks in me right then. “Good. And that’s all I was doing, too. Just a …” My eyes go off somewhere else suddenly. “Just a little break.”
The guy continues staring at me, not following.
I peer back at his machine. “Maybe try a touch less weight,” I suggest. “Not that you asked for my advice, but … start small. Work your way up. Do it right, eat right, and someday, your middle name is gonna be Jacked, bro.”
Bro.
That’s a Brett word. And I just used it.
Weirdly, it does the trick. “Thanks!” The guy wears a smile now—a real one. “Hey, uh … are you a trainer, by chance? I could really use one.”
I nod toward the front desk. “Ask for Caysen.”
“I, uh … well …” He grimaces. “His rates are a little high, and I kinda—”
“Alright. You keep pumping that muscle. Don’t give me that give-up face again.”
He blinks. “Uh … ‘G-Give-up face’ …?”
I leave the guy there and head for the front desk. After Caysen, the head trainer of Weights & Mates, finishes with a customer, he breaks a smile at seeing me and gives me a half handshake, half high-five. “What’s up, my man?” he says. “Do we have a session today? I thought it wasn’t until—”
“Nah, but I got you a new client.” I point out the skinny guy, who is staring our way, appearing alarmed. “That guy. Can you fit that guy into your schedule for the next couple of months? Charge him to my tab.”
“Tab?” Caysen runs a hand through his short, messy hair, then laughs. “I’m not a bar, dude. But yeah, I got you. You wanna pay for his—?”
“I got a feeling he’s gonna be one of your most dedicated clients. Just a hunch.”
“Who is he? A friend?”
“Don’t know him. Just met him.”
Caysen looks doubly confused. He leans over the counter, making his biceps bulge and his pecs nearly fall out of his tight tank top. “What is this? Some kinda feel-good muscle charity thing? Or … Oh! Is he a potential model contact? Hmm … his face looks kinda plain, if you ask me.”
I shake my head. “Just doing a nice deed.”
Caysen gives me a worried look. “You only do that when you’re raging about something. Did some guy piss you off? Need me to kick someone’s ass?”
“Yeah. My own. Go chat with him, alright?”
“You bet.” With that, trainer Caysen rounds the counter and heads over to the guy, who is back to doing presses at the machine, but having a much easier time with it since he took my advice.
In just that quick a time, the anger in my heart that Leo planted there is gone.
And something else has taken its place.