I regretted it instantly.
I walked into the warehouse-converted gym and was greeted by blaring rock music and twenty people dripping sweat everywhere, while about fifteen more watched and waited for their class to start. We stood there for a couple of minutes while the previous class ended and the drenched exercisers limped toward their belongings. I saw Shane walking toward us and plastered a smile on my face.
“Hey, guys,” he greeted us as he stretched his hand out toward me. “You ready for this?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Shane, I swear to God, I'm going to kill you for the mess you've made in that office. Lily, Adam, is it six already?”
We all spun toward Amanda as she walked up to us and gave us each a quick hug.
“Yeah, it’s six. I didn’t think you were going to be here tonight?” Lily inquired.
“Me neither, but I’m still trying to get this doofus’s books in order. Did you know he has all of his accounting in ledgers?” She uttered the last word as though it were dirty. “Ledgers, Lily. It’s going to take me weeks to get that shit all sorted out.”
“Oh stop,” Shane admonished. “It’s not that bad. And you offered to do it.”
“Not that bad? Have you been huffing your creatine? It’s a trainwreck in there.” Her voice elevated as she thrust an arm toward the office. “And excuse me for wanting to get our finances in order before we get married. I should’ve never encouraged you to take over partial ownership of the gym. ‘Go for your dream,’ I told him. Well this shit is no dream; it’s a fucking nightmare. I don’t even know how you can be sure these people are paying you every month for their memberships.” Amanda was ranting a mile a minute. I actually found it hard to keep up.
“They’re probably not,” Shane smirked.
I couldn’t understand what he got out of goading her all of the time, but it seemed to work for them. . . if fighting all of the time really worked for anybody. Lily tried explaining it to me once how this banter was fun for them, but I couldn't understand how that was possible. To each his own, I guess.
“Oh, so this is like a charity, then? Kind of like what you are to me.” Amanda's lips quirked up at the corners.
These two are so fucking weird.
“Exactly like that,” Shane replied, moving toward Amanda and wrapping his arms around her. He leaned down and pecked a kiss to her cheek. Then to her nose, then her other cheek.
“Stop pecking me. You know I hate chickens.” But she couldn’t hold in her laugh as he kept up his assault.
“Okay, dirty birds, can we get class started? Some of us would like to exercise.” Lily started pulling on Shane’s T-shirt.
“Really? Who? Surely you aren’t talking about yourself because I don’t think anyone would consider what you do here exercising.”
“Fuck you, Shane. Come on,” Lily whined. “I wanna see Adam cry.”
Everyone thought that was hysterical. Everyone except me. “Very funny, Lily. It can’t be that bad. You act like I don’t work out regularly.”
“Aww, did I hurt your feelings,” she said as she put her arms around my waist and looked up at me with pouting eyes. “Well, get used to it, Carter. It’s not the only thing that’s going to be hurting today.” She placed a quick kiss on my lips and darted toward the mats to join the stretching that Kate, Shane’s co-worker, was leading.
What followed was the longest hour of my life. The workout really hadn’t seemed so bad when Shane had previewed it for us, but hearing about it and enduring it were two different things. After finding my back squat max, Shane informed us that the WOD was about to begin. I turned to Lily. “That wasn’t the workout?”
She laughed. “No. We always start with muscle building and then we move into the actual WOD.”
“Shit,” I muttered. I had felt good on the back squats, managing to build up to three hundred and thirty-three lbs. But if I had known that there was still more to come, I may have taken it down a notch.
The WOD consisted of three power cleans, six push-ups, and nine air squats. We had to cycle through this as many times as possible in three minutes. Then, we would rest for a minute and repeat. Five times!
What made it even worse was that Amanda had taken a break from bookkeeping to elect herself my own personal cheerleader. "Come on, Adam, dig deep. Deeper," she grunted animalistically during my squats. This was followed by her yelling "Up, down, up, down. Faster, Adam. Oh yes, faster," while I did the push-ups. Thankfully, she evidently had a difficult time thinking of any sexually charged comments to accompany the cleans. Until the fourth round when she commented, "Wow, you must be really used to bringing things up to your face," and winked suggestively at Lily.