Page 49 of Things We Hide from the Light
Lina
Knockemout’s gym was like the rest of town: a little rough around the edges and a lot interesting. It was a long, low metal building with a gravel parking lot. At 7:00 a.m., it was respectably full of motorcycles, minivans, and luxury SUVs.
I’d spent a good portion of the night tossing and turning, thinking about Nash’s proposition. I wasn’t used to a man getting under my skin or into my head like that. I hoped a good workout would help me shake out the obsessive rumination about exactly how close Nash wanted to get to me. Or how close I was willing to let him.
I was tempted.Verytempted. It was exactly the kind of rush the old me would have jumped at. But wasn’t it time to break old patterns? To learn to make better choices?
Besides, if I let the man into my bed, he’d want to get close. And close meant I’d run the risk of Nash discovering my practically insignificant omission of the truth, which he woulddefinitely view as an act of war. And this was why I didn’t do things that remotely resembled relationships.
So what if his hands on me made me feel melty and decadent like a gourmet grilled cheese? This was one challenge I didn’t need to meet. One mystery that didn’t need solving. The smart thing would be to avoid him. Just stay out of his way, get the job done, and be on my way.
Inside, the music was hard-driving classic rock instead of the usual peppy pop mix most gyms preferred. There were no tanning beds or massage chairs, just rows of machines, free weights, and sweaty people.
“You new?” The girl behind the corrugated metal front desk had a nose piercing, a neck tattoo, and the body of a yoga goddess.
“Yeah. I’m meeting Mrs. Tweedy and her friends.”
She flashed a quick grin. “Have fun with that. And definitely sign this.” She slid a clipboard with a waiver toward me.
Wondering just how bad a workout with septuagenarians could possibly be, I scrawled my name at the bottom and handed it back.
“Try not to hurt yourself keeping up,” she warned. “Locker rooms are behind me. Your crew is down there.” She pointed toward the far end of the gym.
“Thanks,” I said and headed in that direction.
The center of the space was occupied by a few dozen cardio machines. Treadmills, ellipticals, rowing machines, bikes. There was a large studio in the back where some kind of boot camp class was in progress. Someone was throwing up in a trash can and another person was lying flat on their back with a towel over their face while the instructor led the rest of the class through an excessive number of burpees.
The crowd was a melting pot of horse people in their Lululemon and high-tech gadget watches mixed with the bikercrowd flexing their tattoos in ripped tank tops and bandannas. Running full out on neighboring treadmills were a lean twentysomething white guy in head-to-toe Under Armour and a Black woman with silver box braids and a Harley tank top that had seen its own mileage. His face was contorted from effort. She was grinning.
Agatha and Blaze, middle-aged biker babe lesbians who frequented Knox’s Honky Tonk, threw me a salute from their side-by-side stair-climbers.
“Lina!”
Mrs. Tweedy waved from the free weights section. The half dozen elderly folks in matching track suits behind her eyed me as I approached.
“Morning,” I said.
“Gang, this is my new neighbor and bestie, Lina. Lina, this is the gang,” she said.
“Hi, Lina,” they said as one.
“Hi, gang.” They were a motley crew if I’d ever seen one. Best guess, their ages ranged from midsixties to eighties. There were wrinkles and gray hair but also muscles and top-of-the-line athletic shoes.
“You ready to work?” Mrs. Tweedy twanged.
“Sure.” I’d stuck mostly to running since arriving in town. A nice, easy weight workout would be a good way to ease back into strength training.
“Don’t start without me!” Stef jogged up in designer gym threads.
“We meet again,” I said to him.
“About time, Steffy,” the woman on Mrs. Tweedy’s right said. Her jet-black hair was streaked with silver, and her T-shirt saidMy Warm-Up Is Your Workout.
“I was in the parking lot giving myself a pep talk,” he said. He looked at me. “You sure you’re up for this?”
I scoffed. “I run five miles a day. I think I can keep up.”
Mrs. Tweedy clapped her hands. “Let’s get these old bones warmed up, y’all.”
