Worth the Fall

by Caitie Quinn

  He rolled his mat up and stuck it in the corner while I gave the treadmill a once over. It was just walking, right? How hard could walking be?

  “Come on, Kasey. It’s going to be fine.” I had resorted to self-pep talks. “Easiest piece of equipment in the gym next to the badge scanner.”

  Right. Walking. I totally had this.

  After a moment, I found the right combination of buttons and started moving. Piece of cake. I was born to walk. I’d been walking almost my whole life. Heck! I walked here.

  I waited two minutes, then got bored with the initial speed so I bumped it and the incline up. Seriously? I couldn’t even feel the slant change even though I heard the little motor doing something to adjust my machine.

  After two more minutes I was feeling pretty good and bumped both up a couple more pushes of the button. Seriously, what was so difficult about the treadmill? I walked along, just starting to get a little warm as I pumped my arm to head up the tiny hill I’d created. I was still nowhere near running like the woman two over, so maybe I could bump it up a bit more and still just be walking fast.

  It was amazing what a small hill and a brisk pace could do. I found myself jogging every couple steps to get back to the front of the little belt before I might slip off the end. I was definitely kicking treadmill butt.

  This was great practice if I was going to be walking more since my new place wasn’t right on the train line.

  I stared at the little buttons wondering if I should push them again, wondering where the line between walk and jog—a line I had no interest in crossing—was. And then, the new, daring Kasey decided to go for it. I hit both buttons twice real quickly and waited to see what happened.

  The treadmill rose to a no-longer-little hill and threw me over that jog line faster than Usain Bolt ran a forty meter dash.

  I grabbed at the dashboard, trying to keep myself going while desperately poking at any of the buttons that might slow things down. Instead, I changed the channel on the TV I hadn’t even been watching.

  My legs started screaming that they couldn’t take any more. I dropped one foot on the side board on my left, knowing my only chance to live through my warm-up was to get off this darn apparatus of torture. I lifted my opposite foot to drop it on the other runner and, of course, missed.

  Then, of course, chaos ensued.

  This must be what Max was alluding to.

  My foot hit the treadmill and threw my body around, crashing my face into the corner of the dashboard, tossing me across to the far guardrail, before finally spitting me off the back of the darned machine where I hit the wall and slunk to a heap on the floor.

  You’d think someone would have noticed. But, not so much.

  The woman running two treadmills down just glanced over her shoulder, then went running back to her. Hailey was faced away on the treadmill on the other side of the small room. And the two trainers were going over something on a clipboard.

  I glanced toward the entry way considering crawling through it before anyone noticed me.

  “Kasey!” Shawn had rushed over before I could make my escape. “What happened?”

  “Oh, you know.” I grinned up at him and stretched out on the floor. “I thought I should stretch more.”

  “While lying in a heap on the floor?”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  He shook his head, obviously not believing a word I said as he glanced at the super sonic treadmill and offered me a hand up.

  “Maybe that’s enough cardio warm-up for you today.”

  He shook his head again as he stepped on the runner to reach over and shut it down, as if seeing a woman thrown from an apparatus didn’t happen every day. I couldn’t be the first person it had abused. There was something evily genius about it. Look at me, so safe. All you’ll have to do is walk. You know how to walk, right? It was all to lull you into a false sense of safety.

  I’ve got my eye on you, treadmill.

  I gave the machines a wide berth as I followed him over to some huge mats like the ones we had in high school that in no way made falling easier.

  Yeah, I was eyeing those too.

  Hailey stood there looking at me as if she expected the roof to drop in and kill us all if I got too close.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Just fine.” I swung my arms about like I was loosening up to get my athletics on, but probably looked like I was trying to teach myself to fly instead. “What’s next?”

  Shawn glanced at Hailey who just shrugged.

  She was probably thinking that new friends were expendable and, as long as they could hide the body and never told Jenna, everything would be fine.

  “Okay, then let’s move on to lower body.” Shawn handed Hailey a set of weights that read twenty and then turned back and grabbed a pair that said three on the side. “We’re going to do some squats.” I want to see your butt get perpendicular with the floor. Ready?”

  I glanced from my weights to Hailey’s, the miniscule heft of mine making me barely notice them in my hand.

  “I started with threes too.” She smiled at me, a reassuring smile that was the same one she’d used when she told me I’d love working out.

  I was now going to refer to this as The Lying Smile.

  “Kasey, watch Hailey and then join in. We’re going to do three sets of twelve.”

  He stood on the far side of her, pointing out how low she went, how her body stayed in a certain position, how she lifted the weights up and over her head to touch as she came out of the squat.

  I figured six extra pounds shouldn’t be that much over my body. I just needed to worry about not falling over. I totally had this one.

  After number four, I was contemplating falling over. It seemed like the better plan.

  “You’re doing great.” Shawn came to stand behind me, helping my arms as I came out of the squat go up and over my head. “Keep it up, that’s ten. Half way done.”

  At twelve I was thinking about all the ice cream this meant I could eat tonight. At seventeen, I was plotting Hailey’s death. At twenty I dropped the weight, barely missing my foot and thinking I was never even walking past a gym again.

  “Okay, ladies, good go. Hailey, that stretch looks lazy. I want to see you really putting your arm around and into it.” He showed me the stretch, then had me do it, adjusting my shoulder when I raised it up to my ears. “This time, Hailey does twelve and Kasey you’re going to do eight.”

  I would not take that as a sign of failure. I’d take that as a sign of a man who could spot a woman with blunt objects at her disposal.

  After two more sets, we stretched again and moved on to lunges. Then bicep curls. Then something else that I’ve blacked out from the trauma of it all. At the end, Shawn did some weird stretches on the mat with us which were oddly awkward but definitely relaxing.

  “Hailey, why don’t you come in tomorrow and we’ll go through a whole routine?”

  What the heck was that? I tried to keep my eyes a normal size, but the idea that there was even more pain and suffering in a normal workout seemed…sick and twisted.

  And people paid for this.

  I followed Hailey to the women’s locker room where she washed her face and changed her t-shirt. Luckily, she’d warned me I’d want to do the same, so I was at least feeling fairly fresh as I wondered why my shirt was wet all the way through and hers was barely damp.

  As we packed up, I made sure to thank Shawn and tell him good-bye since I hoped to never see him again…in the best possible way.

  “Put some ice on that eye.” He pointed to my eye and headed toward the next woman waiting at the entrance.

  “Coffee?” Hailey asked as we headed out into the sunshine.

  What I really wanted was a shower, but after all but ruining her workout, it seemed rude to turn her down since she was obviously trying to be nice.

  “Sure.” Because walking the four blocks to The Brew sounded great.

  “I
saw that.”

  “What?” I tried to look innocent.

  “That scowl.”

  Now I tried not to scowl.

  “The walk will help you stay loose. The last thing you want to do is sit down right away.”

  I was going to have to take her word on it. We headed east, walking toward The Brew with the sun overhead keeping me from cooling down too quickly.

  Once we got there, she held the door open and pointed toward the couches. “I got this.”

  “You don’t have to.” I was going to offer to buy hers as a thank you for inviting me along.

  “I have a feeling I have to win you back over. I’ll make sure it’s a large.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that. I collapsed on the couch and closed my eyes, hoping my muscles would start forgiving me soon.

  “So,” Hailey placed my drink down in front of me and settled into her chair. “What’s going on with you and Max?”

  “Me and Max?”

  She gave me the universal girl look for Don’t play dumb with me and waited.

  “I thought we covered this.”

  “Yes. But now I’ve worn you out and gotten you carbs.”

  I tried scowling at her since it seemed to work for Max. She just looked at me like I was ill.

  “You guys were all cozy in the corner when Dane and I got there the other night and then all that tension and fighting and then he asked you out. Seems to indicate something is going on with you guys.”

  “We weren’t cozy. We weren’t even on the same furniture. What we were was where Jenna put us. She has a matchmaking streak.”

  “And the tension?”

  He’s almost arrested me three times, didn’t seem like the right answer.

  “I don’t know. There’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way.” That was true. Sometimes I just wanted to punch him in his six pack and I couldn’t even figure out why. He’d just give me that unreadable look I was convinced meant he was judging me and wondering how long it was before an actual judge was judging me.

  “Really?” This seemed to intrigue her way more than I’d expected. “That’s weird because Max usually puts people at ease right away.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “The first time you met him he rubbed you the wrong way?”

  I thought back to when he’d stepped out of that cop car and into the street lights, pulling his cap over his eyes and glancing around the ridiculousness that had become my life.

  Sure I’d noticed he was hot. And yes, I was impressed with how he’d handled Jason. And of course, I’d loved that he’d seen the humor in it all.

  But that was Officer Max. Just Max was a different story. Just Max seemed to see the humor in my situations far less than Officer Max did.

  “Oooohhhh.” Hailey leaned forward and set her mug down. “That look said a million things.”

  Crud.

  “You’re going to have to spill it at some point. That’s what small groups are like. We’re going to figure it out. You might as well tell me now.”

  I sat there knowing that if both Hailey and Jenna were at this, I’d never last more than a week. Unless I hid from them, disconnected all forms of communication, and changed my name.

  “Plus,” Hailey continued. “I always find things out last. You totally want me to have a leg up on Jenna on this one.”

  “So,” I drew the word out trying to figure out how much to tell her. But, with one glance at that devious smile, I knew I was toast. “I might have met Max when he was Officer Max and Jason was Ex-Boyfriend Jackass Jason.”

  “Oh, this is better than I expected.” She settled back into the chair and took the story as it came. At one point, she nearly snorted tea out her nose and raised a hand to stop me. “You know the I’m a Writer Disclaimer, right?”

  “No. I got exempt from social media, but what’s the Disclaimer?”

  “Anything you tell me may end up in a book unless you specifically ask for it to be off the record.” She glanced at her bag and I could all but see her trying to remember if she had a notebook. “I mean, that thing with the tires. That’s good. That would even work with RAVEN when she’s ticked off at the not-quite-even demon guy.”

  Did these ladies know how to take no for an answer? If the gym thing was any indication, I was betting that was a negative. I didn’t know how much of my life I wanted slipping into the pages of books that would go out to millions of people.

  “I can see this worries you. Some people love the idea. I have an aunt who has to be the most boring person on the planet and yet she’s always calling me to tell me something she thought was super funny to put in a book.”

  “I’m kind of boring.” Or, I would be after this.

  “No, you’re really not. And you’re the best kind of not boring. You don’t go out looking for adventures. They just kind of fall in your lap.”

  “Yeah, this unemployed-slash-single-slash-homeless thing is working out really awesome.” Note the sarcasm.

  “What are you talking about? You got rid of a corporate noose. Dropped a guy you shouldn’t have wasted time on. You’re living in a gorgeous walk-up in one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the country. Seriously, if I’d known Ben was just going to rent it out cheap, I would have told him I was homeless a month ago. Now you’re running your own business and you’re obviously talented. This month rocks.” She glanced away and raised her mug to her lips. “Plus, you’ve got Mr. Law and Order on the string.”

  “I do not—You know what? Believe what you want. I’m too sore to argue about anything.”

  “How about this, I’ll ask permission to use anything you say and we’ll go case by case.”

  Did my life get weirder this week? I mean, before I just went to work, went home, had dinner, hung out with Jason, repeat. This was weird, right? Having people steal my name and my experiences to put in books and living in someone else’s home? Not to mention I just went to the gym.

  Going to the gym might be the weirdest part come to think about it.

  “Okay. Case by case.”

  “Excellent.” Hailey pulled a tiny notebook out of her bag. “I would officially like to put in a request to at some time use the break-up story including the post break-up tire situation in a story. Granted?”

  “Sure. Why not.”

  She scribbled in the notebook and dated it before drawing a little line under it. “Initial here, please.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. And you can’t give this story to Jenna now. I have dibs.”

  “My life is so not that interesting.”

  “You may be my new muse.” She collapsed back in her chair as I made a show of initialing the page. “Best. Day. Ever.”

  My new friends were crazy.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Stranded. So close, and yet so far.

  I closed my eyes and rested them against the lovely wrought iron work of the stoop’s banister.

  “Kasey?”

  Oh, so not what I needed.

  I glanced up to see Max standing there, looking annoyingly fit and not at all sore. I tried to ignore the little blue running shorts and white t-shirt sweat plastered with the words Police Academy stretching his annoyingly perfect chest.

  “Max. Hey. What’s up?”

  “Just went for a run.” He glanced down at the rolly cart with my groceries in it. “You?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  “No. Not really.” He glanced down at my groceries again and then studied my face. “Okay, bruiser. Where’d you get the black eye?”

  He squatted down in front of me, turning my head with a soft touch to my chin to look at my bruise. He must have been really worried, because he wasn’t inscrutable today.

  “Oh, you know.”

  “Again, not really.”

  “Well, I went to the gym—”

  “All I need to know is if I have to arrest someone or beat the crap out of them.”

  Well, th
at was oddly sweet.

  “Not unless you have something against treadmills.”

  Max looked at me like I was insane—which he was probably building a pretty good case for at this point. Instead of having me institutionalized, he just shook his head and stood back up.

  He glanced down at my cart. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Just enjoying the air.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “And, that ice cream I see sitting on top of your groceries…It’s just catching some rays?”

  I really had nothing to say to that. It was two days after I’d made the fatal error of going to the gym with Hailey and I think my body was boycotting life to pay me back. The first morning I’d been sore, but this morning I’d woken and barely been able to sit up to get out of bed.

  Worst. Day. Ever.

  I’d remembered what she’d said about walking. Maybe it would make me feel better. Only, now, with my groceries sitting at my feet, I couldn’t get up the three-and-a-half flights of stairs to my apartment, let alone pick up four bags of groceries. My legs were being very clear that added weight would be rejected and my arms were letting them know that it didn’t matter because they couldn’t pick up a dead leaf let alone a gallon of milk.

  Max looked me over and may have almost smiled. I think.

  “A little sore?”

  Knowing Max, there was no way out of this. I might as well just admit it.

  “More than a little.”

  “Why don’t I take those up for you?”

  If I’d been able to move, I might have actually thrown my arms around him in gratitude.

  See? One good thing about this inability to make my limbs move: No stupid moves either.

  “That would be great.” I handed him my keys and he used it as an opportunity to pull me to my feet before carrying the rolly cart from the sidewalk up to the front door. By the time I got there, he was holding the door open with the cart inside.