For a moment, she’s beautiful.
“¿Cual es son tu pasatiempos?” a voice rings in my ears.
I startle, realizing the earbuds have kicked back on and my tutorial has continued. The pain in my arms blares, and I still have the barbell suspended above me, and I don’t know how long it’s been there.
I clear my throat, swallow, and bring the weights down and then quickly push back up as a cool sweat covers my back.
“¿…cual es son tu pasa… tiempos?” I mutter, trying to get my head back on track. “Ti-emp-os.”
“What are you doing?”
I look up, pausing only a moment when I see it’s Megan Martelle. She smiles down at me, a clipboard in one hand and her blonde ponytail more white than Clay’s golden. She assists in the P.E. department, having graduated last year; but for some reason, she remains part of the eighteen percent of Marymount graduates who don’t advance to the Ivy League.
She still has time, though. Only nineteen and lots of people take a gap year.
I continue my rep, blowing out my mouth. “Trying to learn Spanish.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yeah, why not?”
She cocks her head, studying me, and I don’t know if it’s the way her eyes linger or the smile she tries to hold back, but I drop my gaze, awareness prickling my skin.
“Yeah,” she finally says. “Why not, I guess?”
Setting her clipboard down, she moves around behind me, placing an underhanded grip on the bar for support. “Can I offer a suggestion?”
I meet her eyes, still aware of Clay’s presence ten feet away.
“Widen your grip,” she tells me, holding the bar as I push my fists out until they touch the weights. “And straighten out your wrists. You’re putting too much pressure on them.”
I do as she says, conversations going off around the room as I lower the bar again and raise it back up.
“Hurt a little more now?” she teases, looking down at me.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Good.”
I keep going as she walks around me again, and then I feel her palm on my stomach. I warm under my skin.
“Press the small of your back into the bench, Liv,” she instructs.
Her gentle hand makes my breath hitch.
“Feel that?” she asks, pressing harder as my back hits the bench. “It’ll work your abs while you work your chest.”
“Thanks.”
And sure enough, I start to feel the burn in my tummy as I continue my reps.
Taking up position behind me again, she spots me as I lower the bar and push it back up, her perfume tickling my nose, and it’s not at all unpleasant.
Footsteps still pound the treadmills, a constant thrumming in the background, and I suck in air, filling my stomach, before exhaling nice and slow. My body burns, my stomach cools with sweat, and I can feel a trickle between my breasts in my sports bra.
“I think it’s great you’re learning a new language,” she says.
I look up at her, not stopping. “My brother’s ex likes to yell at me in Spanish. I want to know what the bitch is saying.”
She smiles, breathing out a laugh, and I drop my gaze to her plump, pink lips. They look like gum.
Her arms lower with me, and she presses down, holding me there. “Keep it down.”
I hover the bar a couple inches above my chest, my elbows locked at a ninety-degree angle.
“Is that okay?” She raises her eyebrows in concern.
I nod, my muscles screaming a little. “Yeah.”
Finally, she releases me, and I continue, raising the bar again.
“So many people our age don’t have any ambition to grow,” she says in a low voice, her eyes on my movements. “To keep learning.”
She cocks her head again, meeting my eyes with a smile in hers, and there’s something too soft in the way she gazes at me and I’m pretty sure she wants my phone number.
The idea might be worth entertaining. She’s pretty, and maybe I’m attracted to her.
I study her face, taking a moment. Yeah. I’m attracted.
But I’m also graduating in a few months. The last thing I need is to form an attachment. I’ve gotten through almost four years here without finding a reason to stay, even if I am somewhat intrigued by her.
I knew her when she was a student, after all. She was popular. Kind. Quiet. We spoke rarely, but things changed this year when she took the job here. All her friends are gone to college, and she seems to be looking for new ones. Without her comfortable alliances around, she’s started to show other sides of herself. She’s nice.
But there’s something missing inside of her. I don’t know what it is.
Or maybe there’s everything right about her, and something missing inside of me. I can’t help it. I like crazy. She can be fire or ice, I don’t care, I just need her to be one of them. And even better if it’s both.