I got to the gym early, around five thirty, thinking that I might be able to get in a quick workout of my own before my first client came in. I still wasn’t eating any solid food—the thought of chewing anything made me nauseous—but I’d managed to sip down half of a protein shake my dad made for me in the kitchen before I left, the same kind of shake he’d been bringing to my room for several days.
“You sure you feel up to this?” he asked, looking at me with an equal mix of fear and sorrow in his blue eyes. He was up earlier than usual, too, unable to sleep, he said—too many thoughts spinning in his head. He was still in his pajamas.
I bobbed my head and glanced at his right hand. His knuckles weren’t swollen anymore, but his skin held hints of black and blue. “Do they hurt?” I asked.
He flexed his fingers, and then curled them back into a fist. “Nah,” he said. “And it would be worth it, even if they did.”
I managed a small smile, and then hugged him. “I love you, Pops.”
“Love you, too, baby girl,” he said, and I knew he was fighting back tears.
Now, as I exited the locker room and went out onto the gym floor, I took several deep breaths, in and out, trying to steady my pulse. I felt shaky and a little weak, like I was recovering from the flu. That’s all it was, I told myself again. An illness. And now you’re going to get over it by focusing on what you do best.
I stepped onto the elliptical machine and started it up, setting a sixty-minute program for interval mountain climbing. My heartbeat began to pulse inside my head, and little by little, some of the tension inside me relaxed, which just confirmed that coming back to work was the right thing for me to do. I needed to bathe my brain in slippery gushes of serotonin. I needed to pretend that nothing had changed. I was still Amber, the girl who would soon sit for the certification test that would be the liftoff point for her career. I’d been foolish to get involved with Daniel, stupid to get sucked in by the false security of romance. I needed to focus on me and what I wanted for my life. Nothing else mattered. Not even what Tyler had done.
A few hours later, I was just finishing up my session with Doris when the front desk announced over the loudspeaker that I had a visitor. I felt myself go pale as I considered who it might be. Would Tyler really come here? After what happened at my house with my dad, would he take that risk?
“You all right, honey?” Doris asked with concern. She was lying on her back on one of the gym mats, going through a series of cooldown stretches I’d taught her. “Are you feeling sick again?”
“A little,” I said, thinking this would explain why I’d broken out in a cold sweat. I gently helped pull her to a sitting position.
“Maybe you came back too soon,” she said, grabbing a white towel from the floor and patting her face with it.
“Maybe.” I kept my eyes on the doorway that led to the reception area, posed to sprint into the ladies’ locker room if Tyler appeared. He wouldn’t follow me in there, would he? I wondered, and then remembered that I had no idea what Tyler was capable of. What sins he would be willing to commit.
I stood up and held out my left hand, encouraging Doris to do the same. “Where’s your ring?” she asked as she gripped my fingers with her knobbed joints and crepey, tissue-paper-like skin. I carefully assisted her up to her feet.
I didn’t answer right away, because I hadn’t thought about what to tell people about me and Daniel. I didn’t have a lie ready. “We broke up,” I said, deciding that I should keep to the simple truth. No one needed to know the details.
“Anything to do with that handsome best friend of yours?” Doris raised her white brows and gave me a knowing look.
“No,” I said, practically choking on the word. Tears sprang to my eyes and I had to fight hard to keep them from falling.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s fine,” I said. But it wasn’t. Nothing would ever be fine again.
Doris put her hand on my forearm and squeezed. “It’ll take some time to heal, but I promise, you will get over it. You’re a strong young woman. You have your whole life ahead of you.”
“Thank you,” I said, forcing a smile. I glanced at the clock, and saw that I wouldn’t have another client until noon, so that left me no excuse but to head up front and see who was waiting for me. “I’ll see you Friday?” I asked Doris, and she nodded, then headed across the floor.
Just then, another gym employee, Tucker, walked by me. “Hey, Tuck,” I said. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” he said. He was in his early thirties, and his wife worked at the gym as a trainer, too. They both competed as professional bodybuilders, and Tuck had recently reached a national level.
“Will you go look up front and tell me if a tall blond guy is standing there?” Please God, don’t let it be him.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Just someone I really don’t want to see right now.” Or ever, actually. I couldn’t believe I was thinking these things about Tyler. I’d thought we’d be friends forever. I’d thought he’d be the one person outside of my parents who I could always trust. Now, I worried if I saw him, I’d start screaming the way I did when he walked into my bedroom.
“Gotcha,” Tuck said, and then he made his way toward the entrance to the building. He was back less than a minute later. “No blond guy. Just a long-legged, pretty girl sitting on the bench, looking at her phone.”
“Thanks,” I said, and felt a shiver of relief.
“No problem. If that guy you don’t want to see shows up, you just let me know, and I’ll boot his ass out.”
I managed a smile, and then wove my way through the equipment toward the reception area. The girl’s head was down, intent on whatever she was looking at on her phone, and the sheet of her blond long hair covered her face. But when she looked up, I knew exactly who it was.
“Amber!” Heather exclaimed as she shoved her phone in her purse and leapt to her feet. She trotted over to me and we hugged.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, shocked to see my childhood friend standing in front of me. We had emailed a little after she moved to California, but as time went on, our communication lessened, until it ceased altogether.
“Seeing family,” she said. “My grandparents moved back here in January, but this is the first time I’ve been able to visit.” She pulled back and looked me over. I did the same to her, not surprised to see that she hadn’t changed much. She was still several inches taller than me, ballerina thin, and the angles of her bone structure still made it impossible to look anywhere but her sky-blue eyes. She wore a simple white sundress and tan, thin-strapped sandals. Her skin was golden, and her eyelashes were unnaturally long and black.
“Are those real?” I asked, before I could stop myself.
“My lashes or my tits?” she asked, and I laughed, something I hadn’t done since the night of the party. I looked at her chest, and noticed that her breasts did seem larger than I remembered. For a dancer, a flat chest was the norm—even the goal.