And just like that, I was warmed up.
“We’ll be doing High Impact Interval Training today, to intensify calorie burning.”
“Okie dokie.”
He looked down at my newly-bought-from-Target running shoes and made a face. “Are those shoes comfortable for you?”
“These aren’t my regular workout shoes. I didn’t have time to go home to get my cross-trainers today, so I picked these up at lunch.”
“Okay. So we’ll do reps of individual exercises to check out your form, then twenty minutes of HIIT this time, followed by stretching. Next session we’ll do strength and resistance training, to build up your muscle mass and turn you into a fat-burning machine. Sound good?”
I might not have the strength to resist your masses of muscle. “Sounds good.”
When he told me to assume a squat position, he held his hand on my shoulder two seconds longer than necessary after correcting my posture, but when he pulled it away, it somehow felt even more electric. The space he was keeping between us was intentional, but it only made me more aware of him, and more aware of my own body.
When it came time for the dreaded sit-ups, I groaned as I got down on the floor. When I realized he was going to kneel on my feet to ensure that they stayed anchored on the ground, I could see myself finally learning to love crunches. Every time I raised myself upwards, I stared directly into his face.
“Keep your eyes on the ceiling,” he said, flatly. “Don’t bend your neck. Chin up. Otherwise you’ll strain your neck.”
After ten sit-ups I wanted to die.
“Thirty more,” he said. “You can do it.”
I tried to be cool. “Are you in touch with anyone from high school?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not really. Go back to Seattle much?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not lately.” Because my terrible ex-boyfriend is there with Slutface.
He didn’t initiate asking me any personal questions, and I wouldn’t have been able to answer them anyway, because I could barely breathe.
“Don’t forget to breathe,” he said. “Your muscles need oxygen.”
He kept his eyes fixed on my body and what I was doing with it most of the time—which, I do realize, was his job.
But at one point, I looked over at him, caught him looking at my mouth with those beautiful green eyes. I stared at his lips and thought about how I used to kiss those lips, and lost my balance when I was in a lunge position.
He caught me and held me to him. “You okay?”
I had momentarily forgotten how to stand, how to breathe, how to not think about kissing him. “Nope. I mean, yes. I’m good.” I got my shit together and straightened up.
Then it was time for the HIIT. Two minutes in I wanted to kill him. Five minutes in I wanted to kill both of us. After enduring twenty minutes of cycling through push-ups, lunges, planks, jumping jacks, burpees, mountain climbers, high knee jumping and squats with short periods of rest in between—I felt like Wonder Woman. I felt so alive.
He high-fived me, told me I did great, gave me a fresh bottle of water and watched me guzzle it down.
Then he looked at the wall clock and said it was time for me to cool down and stretch. He told me I did well today and that he looked forward to seeing how I’d perform with free weights tomorrow.
“You live in Alberta Arts District?”
“Yeah. Where do you live?”
He ignored my question completely. “A lot of great restaurants around there.”
“Tell me about it.”
“A lot of great ice cream.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Here’s my card.” He slid a business card out from one of the pockets of his sweat pants and handed it to me. “My personal cell phone is on there, please don’t share it with anyone. I want you to use it to keep in touch with me about your eating habits. You’re going to need to change that too, in order to reach your goal, and I’ll help you with that. Take a picture of your meals before you eat them—snacks included—so you’re accountable to me any time you put something in your mouth.”
I bit my lower lip and tried not to look down at his crotch.
He smirked and held my gaze, and it seemed like forever before he said: “You’re allowed one cheat day a week, which should be planned beforehand so it becomes part of your workout goal.”
“Okay. Really?”
“Just don’t overdo it.”
“Okay.”
“Any questions for me? About what we’ll be doing together?”
Literally thousands.
He waited for me to say something, but my brain had frozen, then suddenly I realized something. “Shit what time is it? I have to go home and change the cat litter or Justin Timberlake will pee on my bed.”
He looked at me like I was insane.
“Oh my God, I probably sound like a crazy person,” I laughed. “Justin Timberlake is my cat.”
And then I realized that I had just said three sentences that pretty much guaranteed this Brad would never want to kiss me again.
Chapter Three
BRAD
I had spent my dinner break reliving my senior year of high school, in order to get myself into revenge mode, so I could keep my eye on the prize and treat Vivian Sparks with the ice-cold demeanor of a fat kid who had become a fitness god.
When I saw her walking towards me at the gym, before she’d recognized me, when she was smiling at me with those warm eyes the color of brown sugar, it took everything within my power to stop myself from hugging her. The truth was, I had always missed having her as a friend, no matter how much I’d hated her for rejecting me as anything more. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed her until I saw her, or that even though I had tried so hard not to think about her over the years—I still judged every woman I met against her. No one compared to her.
She was even more beautiful than I’d imagined she would be as a grown woman—I had never Googled her and I’d unfriended her on Facebook before we graduated. I saw all the guys at the gym checking her out, and more than one gym rat had asked me what her deal was. Those extra pounds she’d put on had blessed her with sexy curves and made her look as vivacious and down to earth as her personality (as I remembered it). I loved helping people to get into shape and feel great about themselves, but part of me did regret the fact that my industry, my gym and I were responsible for shrinking the size of women’s breasts, hips and booties. Now it was my job to diminish Vivian’s luscious bosom. Such is life.
As much as I had enjoyed torturing her by making her do forty sit-ups in a row, I had found her undeniable hotness distracting and was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep my cool every time we had a session. I’d lost count while staring at her ass while she was doing leg lifts, so I made her start over, claiming that she was arching her back too much. But really, her form was perfect. She executed her jumping jacks exquisitely. She almost always inhaled and exhaled at the right time when straining and relaxing her muscles. She responded to my every touch when I guided her to make adjustments to her stance or the bend of her arms. All that made it impossible for me to keep from thinking about what she’d be like in bed.
I wanted her to get all hot and bothered about me, to be consumed with regret about all the wasted years when she could have had my body all to herself, but she was beating me at my own game and she wasn’t even trying.
There’s a reason why my industry has an unofficial policy against personal trainers dating clients. I had a code of ethics that I lived and worked by, and I’d broken most of my rules in just one session with Vivian.
I hadn’t had enough time to plan for it. In the back of my mind, I’d always envisioned myself going to our ten-year high school reunion with my new body and hot wife and rubbing it in everyone’s faces—especially Vivian’s. Hard to believe, but I’d never visualized a scenario involving the grown-up version of the girl I’d adored in high school on her hands and kne
es in front of me while I barked at her to kick her leg up higher and pulse.
After she left the gym, I seriously considered having one of my employees take over her private sessions. I knew that it was wrong for me to let our history, my personal feelings and my own private motivations affect her experience of getting into shape. It was unprofessional to say the least. But I convinced myself that they were just feelings—it’s not like I was going to actually get involved with her in a sexual way while she was my client. If she were to fall for me, then that would be her own personal emotional journey. I couldn’t help it if she found me attractive. All I had to do was refrain from engaging in any level of sexual behavior with her while I was training her at the gym.
When I got back to my place that night—after jerking off in the shower while fantasizing about fucking her and driving her wild while she begged me for forgiveness—I once again reminded myself of how Vivian Sparks had chosen popularity over me and broke my heart.
I had lived in the same Mercer Island neighborhood my whole life, and I had never lost my baby fat. Ever since kindergarten, there was always another Brad in my class. Brad Turner. A natural born dickhead. His parents were both high-powered attorneys and he was mostly raised by a series of nannies—none of them lasted more than a year because he was such a little turd. Instead of referring to him as Brad T and to me as Brad M, the other kids started calling him Cute Brad and me Fat Brad. After puberty, he became Hot Brad and I was still Fat Brad. Brad Turner heartily encouraged the distinction. He was into branding. Every year he both carved and wrote the words Fat Brad onto my locker, and every year on my birthday he publically presented me with either a T-shirt or a baseball cap that said Fat Brad.
At one point, around puberty, I had started to exercise and eat better. As soon as Brad Turner noticed that I was starting to slim down, he shoved me into a ditch and told me to remember who I was. I hated him, but I gave up on exercising and eating better. It wasn’t worth it.
I always had a few nerd friends, but it wasn’t easy to find my people, because I wasn’t a prep or a geek, I wasn’t a gamer, I wasn’t a stoner or a slacker or a skater, I wasn’t a rocker or a metal head, a goth, punk or emo, I wasn’t a hippie or a hipster, I wasn’t a radical environmentalist (yes that was a thing in Washington state), I wasn’t in any arty clubs, I wasn’t a band geek, and I certainly wasn’t a jock. I was funny but I wasn’t a class clown. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I got older, I just knew that I wanted to be somewhere else. I was a book nerd and I liked to watch TV, and I had resigned myself to the life of a loner until I graduated, but I was secretly glad that I wasn’t one of those people who peaked in high school.
But then I was walking to school, first day of Junior year, and a girl with long chocolate brown hair was heading towards me from the side street one block over from my house. She smiled at me. I literally stopped in my tracks. Pretty girls didn’t usually smile at me, and this girl was beautiful. She didn’t wear make-up like most of the girls in Mercer Island, and she dressed fairly plainly. But there was something about her that I immediately found stunning. She caught up with me and asked me how far I’d gotten in A Game of Thrones. It was the book that I was reading while I walked. That’s right—I read paperbacks while I walked instead of my phone. She said she was already onto the second book in the series. That’s right—we had both read A Game Thrones long before it became an HBO series and everyone else jumped on the bandwagon.
We talked about the book all the way to school, and she thanked me for taking her mind off of the fact that it was her first day. They had just moved to the neighborhood a few days earlier, from another suburb of Seattle. I showed her around the building, and she asked if we could have lunch together. I thought she was joking. But she didn’t know that I was Fat Brad yet, and of course I said yes. I’m pretty sure the fact that everyone saw her eating lunch with me on her first day had sealed her fate for the rest of that year. If she regretted it, she never said so. We spent most of our lunch breaks in the library after wolfing down food at our lockers. I realized later it was because she knew none of the cool kids would see us together there.
Her older sister Aubrey had just started college, and Vivian’s parents were usually too busy to drive her to Kirkland to see the friends she’d grown up with (traffic in Seattle was unbelievable even then), so Vivian had loads of time to hang out with me after class and on the weekends. I was an only child and the basement of our house was my domain. We did homework and read and watched TV. We didn’t talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up, or who we were before we met each other. We just hung out together, the way guys hang out with each other. It was immediate acceptance. It was comfortable and fun. She was the best friend I had ever had—and she had boobs! I couldn’t believe my luck.
Just when I thought I couldn’t get any luckier—I got so lucky I nearly ruined all of my underpants. It turned out Vivian Sparks was not merely a book nerd who liked to watch all the same shows that I did—she was also a closet horny little minx. One day after school, when my parents were both at work, we were reading in my basement and listening to Coldplay and I guess she had been reading something spicy, because she asked me if I’d ever kissed a girl. I had not. She asked if I wanted to. I did. She suggested, quite seriously, that we practice kissing on each other. It would just be practicing—she insisted—we wouldn’t be going out with each other and no one could ever know. But it might be fun, she said. I agreed that it did sound fun.
We kissed. And kissed and kissed and kissed. First we did it like actors, then we did it with tongue. No exploring hands (her rule, not mine). I can still remember exactly what it felt like, what she tasted like, the way she smelled. I went to bed every single night thinking about her, about kissing her everywhere and fantasizing about doing so much more to her. We kissed like that regularly for the rest of junior year. It was fun for her, and pure torture for me.
It never went much further than that, although once, she moved my hand to her boob. She asked me if it felt like what I thought a boob should feel like. I immediately jizzed in my pants and acted weird afterwards. She wanted me to explain what had happened, but I didn’t want to tell her. She wasn’t teasing me, I knew that. She was naïve, testing the waters. She didn’t understand boners and blue balls (she said her sister and parents refused to tell her about sex stuff), and I never complained or explained any of that to her because I didn’t ever want her to stop making out with me.
But she did anyway.
She went to Orcas Island that summer between junior and senior year, and we didn’t see each other for two weeks. Not seeing her for that length of time was agony for me. It felt like forever and it may as well have been. One day I went to the drugstore and opened up every bottle of shampoo to smell the contents, and pick out which one matched the fragrance of Vivian’s hair. I purchased a bottle of Pantene and told the cashier it was for my Mom, then went home and opened up the bottle and just inhaled it while beating off in my bathroom. It would have made either the worst or best ad for a hair product ever. When Vivian came back from Orcas Island she had suddenly blossomed into this beautiful stylish young woman who wore makeup and giggled. I guess she started buying her shampoos at Sephora after that, because she smelled different. She smelled like betrayal.
She didn’t call or text me when she’d returned. She walked to school with me, but then she’d disappear to the girls bathroom and she started sitting with the popular kids at lunch and talking about reality TV shows like an idiot. Eventually she didn’t walk home with me anymore because she would hang out with her new friends after school. She would still text me and hang out with me sometimes at night and on the weekends. She was always nice to me. We did homework together and read and watched good TV when she wanted to be mellow. But we never kissed again.
I later found out from one of my friends who’d overheard in English Lit class that she “went to third base with Hot Brad on Orcas.” She let him finger her. All that kis
sing and fondling we had done had ultimately benefited Brad Turner instead of me. Brad fucking Turner. The guy who had been the bane of my existence since kindergarten.
It nearly killed me.
But I didn’t tell her that.
She and Hot Brad weren’t dating, because he was a douchebag dickhead who fooled around with a lot of girls, but she was into him. I didn’t get it, but it was clear that she was.
I started hanging out with my other nerdy guy friends more. By the end of April, they all bet me that I couldn’t get a date to senior prom. They all had dates—cousins and geek girls and were going as a group. I would have been welcome to go with them, but they knew how I felt about Vivian and were trying to get me to make a move. I didn’t want to go to prom at all unless I could go with her.
So I worked up the nerve. I truly believed that she was in love with me but wasn’t admitting it to herself. I invited her over to my house one Sunday and gave her a hardcover copy of The Hunger Games, because I couldn’t believe she hadn’t read it yet. I pictured her as Katniss when I read it, and I was Peeta. I had placed a red rose inside the cover of the book, and on the accompanying card I wrote: I would rather be selected to fight to the death on live television than go to prom without you. You’ll have to read the book to know what I mean.
All the color drained from her face and she looked truly sad. She told me that someone else had already asked her and that she’d said ‘yes.’ She was very sweet about it, but she wouldn’t tell me who she was going with when I asked her.
I could have told her that I loved her right then.
But I didn’t.
I suppose that was the very beginning of my transformation into Mitch.
I told her not to tell anyone, and that technically I never really asked her to go with me—I just told her I didn’t want to go without her. She promised she wouldn’t tell, thanked me for sort of asking her, and left with the book and the rose.
Every Inch of You Page 3