by Hazel Jacobs
“What about weekends?” Logan asks, looking slightly worried.
“Weekends are for sleeping,” Harper says.
Slate and Tommy high-five on the treadmill. Tommy has already worked up a sweat and he’s breathing a little harsher than Harper would like for someone who’s been jogging for half a minute. Slate looks perfect. But what else did she expect?
“Bass Note gave me a brief that you guys need to get fit for your tour? Well, fitness will be a part of this, but I’ll also be working through whichever areas that you and I agree need attention.”
She turns her attention to Dash, who’s checking his phone with a thoughtful frown. When she clears her throat, he looks up with a jolt and quickly stuffs it in his pocket.
“Sorry,” he says, sheepishly.
“Why don’t you and Logan do some burpees to get started?” she says.
Both Dash and Logan share a blank look while Slate lets out a bark of laughter.
“Burpees?” Harper says. “You know… you drop down, do a pushup, then jump up into the air, then do it again.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know what a burpee is,” Dash says with some bravado. “But, you know, just in case Logan doesn’t know, you might want to demonstrate.”
Harper sighs at him. She makes her disappointment in him visible. But the gravity that she’s trying to inject into the situation is lost when she starts laughing at his charming smile.
“Slate, come here and demonstrate a burpee.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Slate replies cheerfully.
“Tommy, turn down the treadmill… think power walk.”
“Fuck! Thank you!”
Slate moves into the center of the room. On the way, he brushes against Harper’s side. She doesn’t know whether it’s on purpose or not, but her skin tingles when he touches it.
That could be dangerous, she thinks as Slate executes a perfect burpee, leaving Dash and Logan with horrified expressions on their faces. But she reminds herself, for what seems like the millionth time, that Slate is signing her checks and therefore not interested in sleeping with her.
She watches him go back down and up again, his shirt riding up his torso.
But a girl can still dream.
The men of Black Lilith soon learn that there are two versions of Harper—trainer Harper and normal Harper.
Trainer Harper can get kind of scary. She’ll be the first to admit that. Harper tends to channel Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser when she’s working with a client, pushing them as hard as they’ll go, maintaining an iron discipline. She knows that some clients don’t respond to that, but she can’t help it. Fitness and staying healthy are really important to her, so when she’s working with clients she wants them to understand how important it should be.
She has to ban Dash’s phone from the gym. He’s constantly reaching for it, even when he’s on the treadmill, and staring at the screen whenever she’s giving instructions. At first, she thinks that’s normal, but in the group sessions the other band members keep asking him who he’s texting and making fun of him for it, while he ignores them and hides the screen so that they can’t see. After the first couple of one-on-one sessions with Dash, Harper bans the phone completely.
“You can use it again when you can do fifty suicide runs,” she tells him.
He hasn’t managed it yet, but he made it to twenty on Friday, so she gave him a five-minute phone break as a reward.
Tommy is surprisingly unfit considering his lean toned physique. When she’d asked him what kind of exercise he does, he’d gone bright red while Slate had snickered and muttered something about ‘going beast mode.’ Whatever the hell that means. Harper puts him on mid-intensity cardio and arm workouts in the hopes that they can steadily build up his stamina. When she mentions that is her goal, Slate starts all-out cackling and tells her that he’s sure Sersha will appreciate that.
Mikayla makes sure that Logan shows up on time every morning, but the man is only ever half-awake. He goes through all of the exercises Harper gives him without complaint. Well, without vocal complaint. He does look kind of scared whenever she gives them a new exercise. She introduced the weight sled and rope to the guys on Wednesday, and Logan had looked like he’d swallowed something heavy and salty. But he finished the reps she gave him. The only time he complains is when Mikayla leaves the gym to take a phone call.
“Don’t leave me, you’re a witness,” he’ll shout at her retreating back, his forehead dripping with sweat and his knees trembling with whatever new hell Harper is putting him through. “I could die! Mik, don’t leave me”
“Ten more reps,” Harper tells him. Mikayla just waves at him over her shoulder and sticks out her tongue.
Slate is delighted with the new regime. Trainer Harper seems to delight him as well. He grins from the beginning of each session to the end, and Harper makes it her mission to work him so hard that he doesn’t have the strength to smile. She puts him through his paces whenever she has him in her gym, telling herself over and over again that the sight of him sweaty and breathless is not her primary motivation for being so hard on him. That she’s helping him get fit for the tour and not for any other reason.
Slate’s already so fit and well-muscled that Harper quickly decides to develop her program for maintaining his beautiful body. She adds some extra arm workouts to keep his forearms toned—for drumming, she tells herself—but apart from that, Slate’s exercise ethic is pretty damn good. Some mornings she just has to sit back and watch while he pushes himself to the edge of what he can do.
When he does, she’s there to help push him just that little bit further.
The men of Black Lilith don’t meet normal Harper properly until about two weeks after their first sessions when Harper is invited to a tour meeting at Bass Note headquarters. Black Lilith’s next tour will be in Europe, and Harper soon learns that she’ll be expected to go with them. To Europe. Harper will be traveling Europe as the band’s personal trainer.
Her mom squeals with her when she tells her over the phone.
On Monday morning, two weeks after Harper met the band, she finishes the group training session and then takes a quick shower before meeting the band upstairs in one of the meeting rooms.
“Hide,” Tommy shouts when she comes in.
He and Logan dive under the table. Slate starts laughing at them, while Dash’s reaction is a bit late because he’s tapping at his phone again.
“Ha, ha, very funny guys,” Harper says, but she grins because she gets why they’re being this way. For the two weeks, every time they’ve seen her she’s made them do something terribly difficult.
Slate immediately gets up and pulls a chair out for Harper next to Mikayla. On Mikayla’s other side is a woman with wild blonde hair and a green turtleneck who waves cheerfully at Harper when she sits down.
“You must be Sersha,” Harper states.
The woman nods while they shake hands. She seems to have a permanent smile on her lips, like she’s constantly bubbling over with cheer.
Bass Note executives start trickling into the room, but not before Harper and the guys have the chance to have an actual conversation. It’s the sort of thing that she hasn’t had the time for since she started working with them, and the longer that they talk the more she likes them. She can understand why a guy like Slate, who is universally cheerful but really vulnerable to people criticizing him or dismissing him, adores them.
“Look at this puppy,” Tommy says, climbing out from under the table and showing Harper a picture of a Corgi puppy on his phone. “Do you not think this is the cutest puppy?”
Harper thinks that’s a little out of left field, but she glances over at Slate and he just shrugs. Apparently, she’s expected to go with it. “It’s the cutest puppy,” she agrees.
“For fuck’s sake, Tommy, we are not getting a dog,” Logan says. He’s left his own chair to stand behind Mikayla, rubbing her neck lazily while she’s bent over her iPad and the way that everyone in th
e room is ignoring that fact makes Harper think that this is a pretty normal thing for them to do.
“Dash is on my side. Dash, tell him you’re on my side.”
“I’m on your side.” Dash doesn’t take his eyes off of his phone as he says it.
“And Slate… no. I don’t care how cute your dog is.”
“Hey, I’m not biased Harper, tell him how cute Cooper is.”
“Cooper is pretty cute.”
Tommy makes a frustrated noise. “Cooper’s not here to sit on my lap while I’m reading, is he?”
“You wouldn’t want him to,” Harper tells him. “He’s pretty big.”
“A Corgi is tiny,” Tommy says. “Tiny and easy to clean up after. I’ll walk him, too.”
He sounds like a kid trying to convince his parents. But Logan has put his foot down, apparently.
“We tour too much, Tommy,” he says.
“But they have the cutest butts,” Tommy whispers.
Tommy visibly deflates. Without looking, Dash reaches over to pat his bandmate on the back in sympathy. Harper suddenly feels a soft stabbing in her heart. She doesn’t like the sight of Tommy deflated. It’s a completely different sight to when he’s completely wiped out from training.
“You could always volunteer at a shelter,” she offers. “They always need dog walkers there, don’t they? I bet they’d even let you play with them.”
In an instant, Tommy’s face lights up. He turns to Logan with a pleading look that nearly makes Harper laugh out loud.
Logan seems to give it some thought, though he never pauses in massaging Mikayla’s back. “I don’t see why not,” he says. “But we might have to make the shelter sign something so that they don’t sell the story to E or someone. And we’d need to keep the paparazzi from snooping.”
“Or you could just get one for your mam,” Sersha says, her Irish accent stronger and cleaner when she isn’t half asleep and speaking through a phone. She’s leaning on the table with her elfin chin resting on her hand. “And then we can visit it.”
Tommy seems to think about that for a moment, before shaking his head. “Nah, Mom’s a cat person.”
“And Geoff?”
“Geoff’s an Xbox person.”
Harper figures ‘Geoff’ is a member of Tommy’s family. Maybe when she knows them better, she’ll ask.
Harper is still coming to terms with what a big deal these men are. She’d seen the pap shots in the magazines, she’d read about their steady rise to fame while she’d researched for her role as Slate’s girlfriend. But actually meeting the band had been so different than what she’d thought meeting celebrities would be like that she’s actually having a really hard time reconciling the two images—the world-famous band, and the guys she trains. The world-famous band has screaming hordes of women following them around, they do cover shoots for Rolling Stone and put on charity concerts, always suave and charming. The guys she trains are about as suave as a disabled giraffe by the time she’s put them through their paces.
But then the board meeting starts and Harper doesn’t have time to dwell on the incongruity of it all. Logan finally has to abandon his massage so he can sit on Slate’s other side. The Bass Note execs have a long list of European cities that they want the guys to tour. Harper isn’t called on to make comments, though toward the end of the meeting one of the execs—an older guy with graying hair—asks her if there’s anything special she would like to be included on the bus so she can keep training the band.
“I can probably work around having no equipment,” she tells him. “Will the hotels have gyms?”
“Most will. Let’s make a note to specify that when we’re booking.” He nods to Mikayla, who makes a note on her iPad.
At the end of the meeting, when they’re all filing out of the room, Harper turns to Slate and gasps.
“Slate… you’re bleeding.”
Under his nostril is a thick ooze of blood, creeping slowly toward his lip. Slate frowns when he hears her words, wipes at his nose with his thumb, and then gives her a sheepish grin.
“Oh, shit. Sorry about that.”
Mikayla hands him a tissue. The rest of the band doesn’t seem particularly concerned that their drummer is bleeding, though Logan is frowning disapprovingly. He leans across to speak to Slate without the execs hearing, though most of them have left the room, a few linger at the door talking business.
“I told you not to get high before the meeting.”
“I didn’t. I got high last night.”
“Slate, getting a nosebleed in front of the execs is not okay.”
“All right, all right, I get it. Sorry man.”
Harper turns away from the conversation, her mind busy working over the words. Slate gets high? She wouldn’t have, but it does makes sense now that she thinks about it. He’s a musician, after all. Musicians aren’t exactly known for living healthy, drug-free lifestyles. She remembers what he’d told her at his parent’s house—that sodium wasn’t even in the top ten of worst things he did to his body.
What kind of drugs cause nosebleeds, she wonders. She has to wrack her brain. She’s only dabbled with drugs before, so her knowledge is limited. Cocaine, probably. Yes, cocaine would probably be it. It’s supposed to make people work faster, keep their minds sharper. Maybe musicians need the boost. Or maybe it’s just something Slate does. None of the other band members have bloody noses.
Then a sudden, horrible thought occurs to her. Slate had been sniffing a lot the night of the wedding. Right before he’d pushed her against the wall and ground against her. She hadn’t even thought about it, but now that she remembers she has to wonder, did he get high that night? Did he only come on to her because he’d been high on coke?
There’s a sour look on her face and she knows it. When Slate makes eye contact with her, he seems to hesitate.
“How about we all go for lunch?” he asks, aiming for a cheerful tone. The blood is gone from his nose, but there’s a red tissue in his hand. Looking at it makes Harper pissed.
“I’ve got plans,” she says. His shoulders sink and he glances down at the tissue, following her gaze, before looking back up at her. “But… you guys have fun.”
“I’ll walk you to your car,” Slate offers, standing up.
“It’s broad daylight, Slate. I’m fine.”
And with that, Harper smiles at the rest of the band, waves to Mikayla and Sersha, and leaves the room.
On Sunday, Harper gets a text from Slate.
Slate: Can u meet me at the studio? 2:30?
Harper is surprised. Usually, the band doesn’t even leave their brownstone on Sundays. She’s only known them for a little while, but she’s gotten the impression from Mikayla that Saturday is generally party night, and that the band likes to stay in on Sundays to sleep off the hangover. Harper wonders how many of those hangovers were about drugs as well as alcohol.
It’s none of my business, she tells herself. Though herself is having a hard time listening. She’d tried to focus on her school work—she’s still studying, because she intends to get her degree no matter how lucky she’s gotten—but her eyes would just slide in and out of focus and eventually she’d shut the laptop and nearly thrown it out the window.
She’d asked Mikayla, discreetly, if Slate has a drug problem. Mikayla had assured her that he doesn’t.
“It’s not really a problem. It’s just recreational,” Mikayla had said, talking on the phone to Harper while probably doing a billion other things at the same time. “Usually, he only does it when he’s meeting… well, it’s usually after a show, when he brings a girl home.”
Harper had to pretend that the choking noise she’d made was because she’d swallowed her tea the wrong way.
“So… he’s not an addict?” Harper has asked.
Mikayla had sighed. “No, just a pain in the ass. Does it affect his training?”
Harper had needed to run off a spiel about stimulants messing with the metabolism until she was sure th
at Mikayla wasn’t listening anymore, then said a hasty goodbye and hung up.
She doesn’t want to admit why she was so disappointed to learn that Slate takes drugs. It’s partly her trainer’s pride—no trainer wants to hear that their star client isn’t taking care of themselves. But in her heart of hearts, she knows the truth because he might have been high when he’d hit on her. He might be taking girls into his bed every night, getting high and fucking them, and then going to train with Harper the next morning. She’d told herself over and over again that Slate didn’t want her, that she wasn’t special. And now here was the proof.
She stares at her phone, wondering what to do. Finally, she texts back.
Me: C U there.
But she goes early. Because she doesn’t want him to have the upper hand. Meeting at the studio means meeting on his turf, which feels oddly like a battle metaphor though she’s sure that he doesn’t know why she’s been giving him the cold shoulder. Or maybe he does know, and he wants to meet at the studio to remind her of their relationship—that he’s a drummer with a world of fans at his beck and call, and she’s just one woman who’s been hired to keep him fit.
She arrives at the studio at 2:10. She’s wearing a red, short-sleeved shirt with a lace vest and her hair pinned up on the back of her head. She likes this outfit because it shows off her toned arms, implies a toned body, and draws attention to her long neck and collarbones. She wants to look good.
On her way into the studio, a security guard scans her pass. Mikayla had made her sign a waiver promising not to go to the press about the band before Harper was allowed to have it.
“Just a precaution,” Mikayla had said.
After a few days, Harper had understood why. Between paparazzi and fans, there are only a few places where the band can be free to act like themselves—the studio and her gym being among them.
Walking down the corridor toward Black Lilith’s studio room, Harper can hear the faint sound of heavy drumming and loud, rhythmic guitar. Most of the time, these rooms are sound proofed, but there’s always a little bit of music to be heard in the halls, right outside of the doors.