Gym Junkie

I get an image of those big pouty lips and I feel my cock harden. I catch my bottom lip under my front teeth as I remember what she looked like on top of me last night. Damn.

The girls and Adrian—or Murph, as we call him—drop into conversation. I’m sitting in between Joshua and Ben and my eyes go to find Tully again.

“So?” Ben murmurs so that nobody else can hear us. “How did it go from you checking that girl out in the gym last night to you kissing her on the lips at the bar just now?”

Joshua leans in to join in the conversation. He runs his pointer finger back and forth over his lip as he listens.

I scratch my head and shrug. “We kind of got busy.”

Bens glances up at the girls to make sure they can’t hear us. “Where?”

“In the gym bathroom, after you left,” I whisper.

Joshua laughs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Un-fucking-believable.”

“Fuck off,” Ben whispers, taking a quick look back at Tully. “How do you get busy in a gym?”

My eyes float back to the girls who are still deep in conversation. “I broke the rowing machine and tripped her over.”

The boys both lean in as they listen. “And?” Ben asks.

I hold my hands up in defeat. “I did what any gentleman would do.” I pick up a sweet potato wedge from the plate in the middle of the table and throw it into my mouth.

They both frown.

I chew it and swallow. “I took her into the bathroom to clean her up.”

Joshua rolls his lips, amused. “The old ‘pretend to be a doctor’ trick.” He shakes his head and sips his beer. “It’s been working for Cam for years.”

“Right?” Ben mutters, unimpressed. Cameron is Joshua’s brother. He’s a doctor and does ridiculously well with the ladies.

Joshua picks up a fry and bites it, speaking around it. “Did you close?”

I sip my beer and shake my head. “Nope.” I then glance over to see Tully and her friend leave through the front doors. “Although, it’s very fucking high on my priorities list.”

“What’s high on your priorities list?” Bridget interrupts.

“Going to the gym, Bridget,” I reply flatly. “Stop eavesdropping.”

Natasha and Bridget roll their eyes and go back to their conversation while the boys’ attention drifts back to me. “So, what now?” Ben asks.

I sip my beer. “Tomorrow night, I close the deal.”

Tully

I roll the pen to me on the desk with my fingertips, and then I roll it away. I’ve been doing this for an hour now, staring into space at my desk.

“You okay?” Rourke asks from his desk beside me.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re off today.”

I turn my attention his way and give him a sad smile. “I am.”

“Anything I can do?”

I exhale heavily and take my hair out of the ponytail it was in, quickly redoing it into the elastic. “You can take me out to lunch, if you want.”

“Sure thing. What do you want to eat?”

I shrug, uninterested in the world. “Anything fattening.”

He bends and gets his keys from his briefcase. “Anything fattening, here we come.”

We leave our office and get into the elevator. I stay silent and, thankfully, he lets me. That’s the beauty of Rourke. He’s the perfect work colleague, somehow knowing when I need to talk and when I just need the silence. He knows everything about me and yet never asks a single question. Like a healing balm, he slowly draws anything toxic out of me without me realising it.

Simon, my ex, is weighing heavily on my mind. I know that I was the one who gave us a forced break but it still hurt to see him laughing with someone else last night. I get a vision of him with her in a headlock and my stomach clenches. We used to laugh around town like that together.

Are they sleeping together? Of course they are, you idiot.

I taste bile in my mouth and I run my hand through my hair in total dismay. I can’t take this. I feel suffocated, unhinged and crazy. At this rate an unplanned trip to Borneo may be exactly what I need to clear my head.

I take out my phone and click into my travel app. What flights are on sale this week?

I’ve been on four overseas trips this year, but suddenly, I need to get out of here as quickly as possible again. What’s Simon even doing in Sydney, anyway? He's been living in Melbourne since we broke up. I had no idea he was even here.

Rourke glances down at my phone and sees the app I’m scrolling through. He raises an eyebrow and then returns to stare at the back of the double doors, acting as if he doesn’t know what I’m doing.

What am I doing? I don’t even know anymore.

The elevator doors open and we walk out into the parking lot.