“One more rep, E! Smash it, come on!” Chris growled at me.
I grunted under the bar as I pushed with all my might against the unrelenting weight. My arms felt like jelly and a fiery pain blasted through them as if my blood had been replaced with molten lava. Still, I delved deeper into the final reserves of strength I had left and extended my arms up until they locked, completing the rep. With a sigh of relief, I lowered the bar onto its supports and closed my eyes.
“Yeah, bro! Yeah!” Chris whooped. “New record, yo! Two hundred and eighty pounds! High five!”
With my eyes still closed, I extended a trembling hand, which he slapped enthusiastically.
“Of course,” he added, “if you would just try out a lil', you know, juice you'd be pushing three hundred and eighty pounds instead and you’d be doin’ it with ease, like me.”
“Not gonna happen,” I replied. “That stuff… I know you say it's safe, but you gotta think long term. It does a lotta damage to your body. No thanks, man; I'm just lifting to stay strong and healthy.”
“It is safe if you inject it and cycle it correctly, like I do. And, look at the results, bro! I'm ripped, dude! Bitches can't get enough of me. Yo, especially those two little hotties who just moved in next door! What did you think, man? Did they live up to old Wally's description or what? Don’t you remember last time we went down there to sort out the rent, he told us there was gonna be two smokin’ hot chicks moving in next to us? As old as he is, he sure ain't blind. They are fine. Especially the quiet one, what was her name?”
“Brooke,” I replied as I sat up from the bench and dabbed the sweat from my forehead with a gym towel.
Chris punched me playfully in the shoulder.
“I saw you checking her out, bro. Don't deny it.”
I shrugged. “I admit, she’s gorgeous. But man, she's got a bit of an attitude, don't ya think? I mean, we hauled that heavy sofa up three flights of stairs for her and she could barely find it in her to mutter a thank you? Yeah, she may be hot, but with a personality like that, I can't say I'm all that interested in getting to know her much.”
Chris scoffed. “Why you gotta get to know her, bro? I didn't say you should date her or make her your girlfriend or nothing. Shit, just get in there, have some fun, and then move on to the next one, before things get 'complicated' as chicks always like to say.”
Because I'm not like you, Chris is what I wanted to say, but didn't. Instead, I merely shrugged. “She's just not my type, man,” I replied. “I don't wanna waste time with a chick that I would just never be compatible with in a million years. And besides, you heard her–she's gonna have her nose stuck in books the whole semester, anyway. She sounds like an overachiever. Nah man, seriously, just forget about it. And what about you, huh? Why don't you see if you can pull something off with her roommate, Leslie? She seemed like a lot more fun-loving than Brooke. A little more your speed.”
“I dunno, bro,” he said with a shit-eating grin pasted across his unnaturally tanned face. “If you're not gonna go for Brooke, I think I just might get in there myself, know what I mean?”
A sudden flicker of jealousy flared up inside me—as much as I wanted to deny it. Stay the hell away from her is what I wanted to say, but I didn't. I took a moment to try to suppress the unwarranted reaction and then replied in a tone as calm and unemotional as I could muster, “Yeah, sure, whatever. Go ahead, if you wanna waste your time on a bore like her.”
“Maybe I will,” he grinned, apparently completely oblivious to the rage bubbling just beneath my skin.
“Hey, check it out,” he said, changing the topic and pointing across the gym. “Melissa.”
I looked up and my heart sank. It was definitely Melissa—and she had seen us.
“Here she comes, bro,” Chris whispered as Melissa stepped off of her exercise bike and headed over to where we stood in the free weights section.
Melissa had a crush on me for, well, I don't know how long. As long as I could remember. We'd had one or two moments together, but they'd always been when I was drunk. It wasn't that I wasn't physically attracted to her. I mean, any guy would be. She had a killer body and was a beautiful girl, but something about the kind of person she was not only put me off, it kind of repulsed me.
Chris, though, was super into her. It was pretty obvious to everyone but him that those feelings weren’t reciprocal. For whatever reason, it was me she was into. And the more I tried to push her away, the harder she tried to get into the zone. To make it worse, Chris would encourage it because whenever Melissa would want to hang out with us, she'd bring along a bevy of hot friends, most of whom were airheads who fell head over heels for his ripped body and lame jokes. It was easy pickings for him.
I admit, they were fun to be around for a while, fun to drink with, but I didn't care for the pressure Melissa always put on me. And, it would always end up like that when we had parties at our place. Chris and the other guys would be chatting merrily away with Melissa's friends, while she would manage to maneuver me away from the crowd and get me alone.
Time to put my powers of resistance to the test again—not that it would be an issue since I hadn’t been drinking.
“Well, hey there, guys,” she said as she walked toward us, exaggerating the swaying of her hips as she did. It looked like she'd just had a session in the spray tan booth. Her entire body was an even, honey-toned hue. It was hard to not to notice since most of her tanned skin was revealed in her skimpy gym outfit. It also looked like she'd just been to the cosmetic dentist; her teeth seemed impossibly white against her skin. I suddenly found myself wondering if anything on her was real. I knew her chest was fake—I won’t go into details about how I knew—and as she turned around (on purpose, I'm sure) I had to wonder if there were implants in the back, too. Such a perfectly round, firm rear just didn't seem like it was, well, real.
“Hi, Mel,” Chris said. “Working hard over there?”
“You bet. I'm a certified personal trainer now. Did you know that?” She was speaking to Chris, but her eyes were on me.
Chris replied anyway. “No way! Nice, girl, nice! So you're gonna be in the gym all day, every day now, huh?” he asked.
“That's right.”
“Damn, girl, I wish I could spend that much time in here.”
She turned to me. “And what about you, Emerson? Do you wish you could spend all day every day in here, too? With me?”