Page 11 of Not That Ridiculous

I obediently lifted my bottle and took a swig.

I was sloshing at this point.

To be fair, I was also sweating like a bastard. Jasper might be right about me not constantly needing the loo. Maybe I’d get that uninterrupted nap after all.

“Right.” Jasper clapped his hands briskly. “Ready to move on to the free weights?”

He was giving me the full induction experience today, and he’d refused to let me pay for it. I’d definitely have to slip him extra pastries after all of this.

We’d started out stretching on a mat, moved onto the treadmill to warm up, and segued from there into a hideous circuit of various resistance machines.

I’d had no idea that so many different kinds had even been invented.

I followed him across the huge room towards the mirrored back wall where they kept the racks of weights.

Jasper fiddled about selecting a pair of dumbbells for me, then made me turn and face the mirror to check my form as I worked through a set of bicep curls.

“Stop looking away,” Jasper said. “Watch your reflection. It helps to make sure you’re doing it right. Don’t be shy.”

“I am not shy,” I growled. “And I don’t have to watch to do it right. It’s not that hard. Bend arm. Straighten arm. Bend it. Straighten it.” I cranked the dumbbells up and down a few times.

Jasper gave me an unimpressed look. “Well, if you want asymmetrical biceps,” he said, “that’s your call. Keep doing it your way.”

I stopped. “Asymmetrical biceps?” I didn’t want those.

“If you build the muscle in the wrong way, they’ll end up looking weird.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re making that up.” Biceps were biceps, surely?

He narrowed his eyes back. “Am I?”

I glanced at my arms. I barely had any biceps in the first place. He was definitely making that asymmetrical nonsense up, but I supposed that if I was going to do this, I may as well do it right. “Ugh,” I said, and squared up to my reflection.

He made me work through a few more curls, lightly touching my arm every now and then, or adjusting my wrist, as he counted out the reps for me.

“The point of a curl isn’t to bend and straighten your arm like a hinge,” he said. “That movement happens as a by-product of engaging and firing this muscle here. Do you see what I mean?” He rested his fingertips on my upper arm and pressed lightly as I curled it.

I shrugged. “Kind of? I think I can feel the difference, but I’m not as attuned to my body as you probably are to yours. The nuance may be beyond me.”

He considered me. “I get that. Okay. Oh, perfect. Kevin, can I borrow you a mo?”

I froze.

“Sure,” Kevin said, to the left and a little behind us.

I’d heard someone grunting and puffing away but I hadn’t registered it was him, what with directing all of my focus towards avoiding asymmetrical biceps.

I’d found it annoying. They were being unnecessarily loud about it, I’d thought.

Now that I knew it had been Kevin making those noises, it was…no.

No.

It wasn’t intriguing. It was still annoying.

As Kevin wandered over, Jasper leaned closer and said to me in a low voice, “I want to use him to demonstrate. Are you cool?”

“I’m so cool.”

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