Page 85 of For a Goode Time Call…
I nodded. “I have to go talk to Ink.”
He lifted his chin, hands behind his head, a knowing grin on his face. “About fuckin’ time, sweetheart.”
I frowned. “I haven’t talked to you about him, like, at all. I don’t let myself think about him during the day. I focus on me during the day.”
He rolled his eyes. “I hope you don’t think you’re good at hiding your feelings, Cassie-Lassie, cuz you ain’t.” He just laughed. “I’ve watched you shake him out of your head at least once an hour every single day for the last month.”
I laughed. “You are far too observant for a barely sentient gorilla.”
He snorted. “You just wear your entire self on your sleeve.” A gentle smile. “It’s a good thing.”
I let silence wreathe between us—he had quickly become one of my best friends, which was weird because I’d always thought it was impossible to have a real and truly platonic friendship with a heterosexual member of the opposite sex. But then I’d met his wife, and I understood. Not only was she one of the most ridiculously, extravagantly, absurdly voluptuous women I’d ever seen in person in my life, she was breathtakingly beautiful in a classic, early Hollywood sort of way, and was also the sweetest and most genuinely kind person I’d ever met.
I simply understood that I could never hold a candle to her, and I understood that that was okay, that I didn’t have to feel like less of a woman because of that. He loved her absolutely, and she him, and she trusted him. Of course, she still made a point to come by the gym a few times a day to say hi and kiss him and let him rub her round pregnant belly, and to chat with me.
So we were friends, Bax and I.
It was a friendship I valued, and appreciated. He’d helped me find myself again. Helped me center my life. I was running again, slow and not far, but running. Dancing, gently and carefully.
He’d helped me, but I’d done the work.
Now it was time to put Ink back into my life.
Bax was eyeing me, and I recognized the thoughtful look on his face. “Uh-oh,” I said. “You’re thinking.”
He shrugged. “Been thinking.”
“About what?”
He set his feet on the floor, waved at the plate glass window and the gym on the other side. “Expansion. Adding another trainer.” A glance at me. “Adding classes.”
“Classes?” I asked, a pit opening in my stomach, one filled with butterflies and possibilities.
“Yeah. There’s a market for…” he paused, chewing on the right phrasing. “A certain kind of fitness instructor. Which I am not. Lots of tourists around here, lots of younger women and certain kinds of men, too.”
“Quit waffling and say it, bonehead.”
He grinned; he truly did respond best to good-natured but brutal teasing. “Dance classes.”
I sighed. “You’re creating something to throw me a bone.”
He ignored that, rifling in a drawer and coming up with a notebook, battered, dog-eared, filled with Post-It Notes and folded down page corners. He opened it, flipped toward the front. “This is my ideas book. Like a journal sort of, but for shit I want to do and how to get there.”
“Okay.”
“I date each page, each entry. So I can refer to when I had the idea, because usually there’s other shit I’m thinking about related to it, and I need to reference it.”
I nodded. “Following you so far. What’s your point?”
He rotated the book and slid it to me. “Look at the date.”
I did—it was dated six months before I ever met him. “Okay.”
He tapped a line item, scrawled in messy, barely legible handwriting that was a mix of all-caps and cursive:Expansion ideas—classes. Boxing? MMA? Self-defense martial arts. Anti-rape defense skills for women. Dance fitness? Find dance instructor, I don’t fucking dance. Zumba or some shit. Women love that shit.
I laughed. “Okay, okay. You were thinking about it before you met me.” I rolled my eyes at him. “What’s your point?”
A shrug. “I’m just laying out a possibility. I’ve not found the right person, someone who I get along with, who represents the mentality my gym is built around. Someone who can dance, and who understands fitness. My thought was, the classes would use dance to teach flexibility, movement, whole-body understanding, provide aerobic conditioning, strength. But it has to be the right person teaching.”
