I don’t know how long we stand shaking hands, my tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth. He has kept his eyes on my face for the whole time that I’ve been staring at him, it’s just that what he sees is something completely different… We’re together for less than a minute and I’m already uncomfortable.
“Do you want to come over to my car? I have some material in the trunk and I’d like to assess the situation before starting.”
No, absolutely not. We aren’t going to assess any situation, because you will not be my personal trainer anyway. Thanks for coming, bye-bye.
I walk behind him and for the first time in my life (I swear! I swear by everything I care about!) I check out the backside of a guy. I can’t help myself, really. He turned and walked towards his car and my eyes looked down all by themselves, of their own accord. Anyway you can’t see anything, the windbreaker he’s wearing is long enough to cover it, and besides, his sweat pants are a bit large. I lift my eyes quickly, as though he might catch me in the act even with his back turned. A broad back certainly. His hair is much shorter at the nape, and longer towards the top of his head. In any case, I think he’d look good even with his hair shaved down to zero or half-way down his back.
We get to the trunk and, as soon as he opens it, he pulls out a digital scale and puts it on the ground at my feet.
“The first thing we’ll do is weigh you, to establish a starting point and some objectives,” he says standing up.
I lift my gaze towards him and for the first time since I set eyes on his perfect form, I feel like laughing. In fact his idea is so funny I giggle. “I don’t think so.”
He is surprised and raises both eyebrows.
“So what is this? The royal ‘we’? Or did you intend to weigh yourself too to establish a starting point and some objectives?”
“We have to weigh you Olivia, it’s important. And if you want me to weigh myself too, I don’t have any problem doing it. Besides, I have a few goals to reach too. We could motivate each other.”
It’s now my turn to be surprised and raise my eyebrows.
“I have to put on a couple of kilos – of muscle of course,” he explains as though I had asked him.
I don’t move and stare at him. For no reason in the world would I want to get on a scale in front of someone like that.
He puts his hands on his hips. “Go on, get on it.”
“If I get on that scale, I’ll be forced to kill you.”
Andrea laughs, showing a long row of straight, brilliantly white teeth.
He thinks it’s a joke. I don’t move. No-one knows how much I weigh, not even Linda. Ok, now the obese dietitian from Tuesday knows, but still… the concept remains.
He stops laughing and crosses his arms over his chest. “Get on it Olivia. If we don’t know where the starting point is, how do we decide where to arrive?”
“I know where I’m starting from.”
“But I don’t.”
I think he’s becoming impatient. Good. We’ll never see each other again anyway.
“I’ll weigh myself later,” he says as though this were an incentive. I couldn’t care less how much he weighs and his goals! He’s practically perfect. What objectives could he have? What are two kilos of muscle?
Suddenly, as I observe him, I have an unexpected thought. Why am I so reluctant to weigh myself or practice some sport in front of him? Why don’t I want him to see me at my worst? For him to know my terrible numeric secret? As though, him not knowing the precise number would make me look less fat in his eyes? As though, not seeing me sweat, I would have the remote possibility to seem pretty to him? What does it matter after all? This guy is so gorgeous that it isn’t even thinkable that there would be some sort of romantic consequences. He’s so beautiful that it’s almost as though he were a woman, he’s so out of reach. It’s almost as though he were Linda. Why make such a big deal of it then? After all it’s just the same. I tear my gaze abruptly away from his eyes and climb on the scale, in silence.
He stands still for a second - maybe because he’s a little taken aback by my unexpected change of behavior – then he moves closer, staying slightly behind me and leans over my left shoulder to see.
Eighty-three and a half kilos.
I sigh, quickly get off and distance myself from that infernal mechanism.
He resets the scale without commenting on my weight and steps on, just as he said he would. I cross my arms, uncomfortable. I’m not the least bit interested in how much he weighs. Anyway I can’t seem to not lean in that… far in order to… see…
And it really would have been better if I hadn’t looked.
Eighty-one.
I jerk around towards him, my arms falling to my sides and say in a whisper, ”You weigh less than me!”
He looks at me for a moment, without saying anything, and I exclaim, almost accusing him, “You’re a man, and you’re taller than me and have two hands like shovels… How much taller are you, twenty centimeters? And you weigh less than me!”
I realize that I have something like tears in my voice and try to clear them away before he notices. He looks at me a little sympathetically. “Olivia…”
“How tall are you?” My voice trembles slightly, dammit.
“Olivia…” He repeats without answering.
“How tall?” And at the ‘all’ of tall, a sob almost escapes.
“A meter and eighty eight.”
As he confesses his height I look him in the eyes and feel my tears rising, damn them. I tear away my gaze and look around - the trees, his car, my shoes, blinking my eyes rapidly to make them go back where they came from, the damned things. I feel a hand on my left shoulder but my head is turned to the right. His voice is low and endearing when he speaks. “We’re here for this Olivia.”
And with this phrase and this tone of voice, two tears, which I can in no way stop, roll down my face. I try to dry the traitorous things without being noticed.
“We’re here for this,” he repeats with conviction.
I inhale again with my eyes closed, and when I think I can do it without further humiliating myself, I turn towards him and move away a little in order to let the hand he still has on my shoulder fall.
“You’ve taken the most important step in the right direction – this should reassure you. In a few months you’ll be a lot less than me and you’ll be thankful to yourself for having decided to be here today, to have weighed yourself, even though it was hard. And you’ll be glad to have undertaken this path with me,” says Andrea with a voice that is deep and sure, looking me directly in the eyes. He then lowers his gaze to the ground and when he looks up says, almost sweetly, “If you’ll allow me to.”
It’s in this instant that I realize, in an instinctive and deep-down way, that he is the right person for me. I realize that he’s competent, that he’ll follow me completely, that I can trust him and that I can lean on him when I need to.
4.
We’re still standing in front of his trunk. He’s been looking at papers in total silence for about ten minutes except for when he lifts his head for a nanosecond to ask me how tall I am and to hold out my hands. I look around. He’s already put the scale back in the trunk and I don’t know what else to do while he does his things.
I’m about to start counting the bits of cuticle around my nails when he says, more to himself than to me, “Ok.”
He puts the papers back together in a folder, lays it in the trunk on top of the scale and closes the trunk. “Let’s go, we’ll walk for a half hour while I explain everything I have in mind. Then you can decide, ok?”
“Ok,” I answer quickly. I’ve already decided, but I’ll wait to tell him.
We walk along the bike path.
“Well, Olivia, as far as I can tell, you have a long body-type.”
I laugh. He turns towards me without even smiling. “I’m serious. From the fingers on your hand, it doesn’t look like you have big bones. Your fingers are long and delicate, which
leads me to believe that the rest of your bone structure is like that.”
I blush and say nothing.
“Starting from this premise, and given your height, I think that your ideal weight ought to be around fifty-seven and a half kilos.”
If possible, I laugh even harder than before. If possible, he turns around with a look even more serious than before.
“Hey,” I try to defend myself, but with a smile still on my lips, “I didn’t weigh that even in elementary school…”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he liquidates me. “Anyway, it’s true that at present it’s a little difficult to know exactly what your ideal weight will be; we’ll find out in time, moving ahead and seeing how you change. So, all told, I don’t think we have to be too precise and can raise the final target a couple of kilos, but I think we should aim for at least sixty.”
I swallow and probably blanch too, because Andrea quickly adds, “It seems like a lot to you, but look, it’s not an unrealistic number at all. Twenty-three kilos… If we work well, in a year you’ll lose it.”
I regard him without saying anything. I must have tipped towards the color of a used ashtray, because he adds, “It could be less too. It could be that at sixty-three you’ll already be ok, or you’ll already feel fine and want to stop – that’s ok, but now let’s aim high and any rounding down we’ll do later. It will be easier for you psychologically.”
I breathe out and nod, finally accepting the huge job awaiting me. What was I thinking, to resolve everything in a couple of weeks after a life-time of absurd, chaotic and destructive eating?
“To begin with, I’d like you to tell me about your level of physical fitness.”
I remain silent.
“I mean from a sports point of view.”
“Oh!” I say reddening a little, “That’s easy. It’s absolute zero.”
“Ok. Do you have a favorite sport or one you do better than others?”
I think of the only sport I know how to do and shake my head firmly. He widens his eyes, “None?”
I shake my head. His eyes widen even more, maybe I’ve finally shocked him. “You don’t know any? You’ve never done any?”
“No.”
He looks straight ahead for a moment, then seems to recover. “Alright. To begin with, I’ll prepare a running workout, it’s an aerobic exercise that everyone knows how to do and is a real blessing for someone who wants to lose weight.”
I’m shaken for a minute. I can’t manage to run even for five minutes in a row. “But it has to start from zero-zero though!”
He smiles. “Of course. Now we come to the other fundamental part of this. Your diet.”
Oh crap. Why didn’t I go when I said I would? “Ok.”
“For the next three weeks, the only thing I’d like you to do is keep a diary of what you eat – that is, write down everything you eat.”
I look at him astonished. “That’s it?”
He looks at his watch. “Let’s go back.”
We haven’t met anyone on the track, not a soul. The person from the third car must have gotten lost in the woods around here or gone off the track… Or maybe he’s going all around the lake… Good grief, it makes me tired just to think about it.
“Yes,” he starts speaking again. “Just this. Eat normally, just write everything down, but really everything you eat. In the meantime, make a list of the foods you like, those you really hate and the ones you’re allergic to.”
“I’m not allergic to any,” I reply quickly. I think my eyebrows are still raised and my eyes out of their sockets. I expected everything but this. I expected that he’d tell me to stick to salad from now on till the end of my days…
He laughs softly. “You seem surprised...”
“I am,” I tell him truthfully.
He smiles. “See, we have a year ahead of us, if everything goes well and you apply yourself. It’s not a lot, but it’s not two days either. We need to create a diet that satisfies you if we want you to stick to it over time.”
I’m liking this thing and smile involuntarily.
“Also,” he continues,” we have to focus on thinking up a healthy diet. One you like and which you can follow for the rest of your life. We have to understand what your bad habits are and eliminate them because doing a diet for a few months and then go back to eating like you did before is useless, you know? It’s for this reason people lose weight and then gain it all back. Because they don’t change their habits.”
I nod, now decidedly more convinced. “Ok. Diary and list of loved and hated foods,” I repeat.
We walk without speaking, then he breaks the silence. “Let’s talk about my fee.”
Oh God, maybe he’s too expensive… “Yes.”
Andrea puts his hands in his pockets and looks at the ground in front of him. “How often do you want us to see each other? How free are you?”
“I work every morning from Monday to Friday and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon.”
He looks up. “So, if we want, we could see each other every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes.”
He nods and glances at me, then returns to looking at the ground before him. “So, considering that you’re my absolute first client and I could consider this a seminar – for myself obviously – I’d give you a ridiculous rate, like seven euros an hour. For three hours a week that comes to around eighty euros a month. Too much?”
I had figured on around ninety to a hundred euros per month for the dietitian with the white coat and the private office… I can do it. “No, that’s fine.”
“Listen, this isn’t the normal rate for a personal trainer, you know! You mustn’t tell anyone the price I’m giving you!” He says smiling. And frankly, with that smile he could ask me for anything…
No! Olivia, don’t fall into this trap! If you work with him you have to get it into your head that you must not consider him that way. Never! You have to think of him as though he were Linda. Linda. Your best friend.
I observe him a second longer – so tall, so blond and so beautiful… It will be really hard to think of Linda. Really hard.
And then, you’re doing all this in part for Gianca.
Oh right, Gianca. For a moment I deflate. Crap, Andrea must have been cursed a lot of times in his life, because once a girl meets him, she’s ruined forever. Suddenly all the others seem bland. But with Gianca I have some hope for the future, with Andrea never in my life.
We get to the beginning of the bike path, the starting point. He stands in front of me. “So, it’s a deal?”
Geez, yes! “It’s a deal.”
He puts out his hand and I shake it.
It will go ok, I feel it. For the first time in my life I’ll lose weight! Seriously! I’ll be able to buy the clothes that I like!
Andrea smiles at me. “You’re smiling,” he says, and I realize it’s true.
I nod and answer sincerely, “Yes, I feel like it will go well. For the first time in my life, I feel as though I can do it.”
His smile widens even more, “That makes me really happy Olivia.”
“Call me Olly.” If we really have a year ahead of us, I wouldn’t be able to stand hearing my full name the entire time.
He nods. We say goodbye and part, each going towards our own cars. But abruptly Andrea turns and yells, “Olly, remember one thing! In any case you cannot fail. You’re my first client. If you failed it would be a huge jinx to my future career!” And he bursts out laughing.
I laugh too, I wave a hand goodbye and yell back, “Ok.”
Yes, this time I won’t fail.
***
It’s been two weeks since my first meeting with Andrea. We’ve seen each other regularly in the agreed upon days and for now we have only walked, even if every time we do a bit more. I like the way he does things gently. He doesn’t scare me and he lets me build up confidence with my body and the movement a little at a time. Sports have always put me in a
difficult position. I’ve always felt uncomfortable - inept - so I’ve done everything to do them as little as possible.
We also chat a lot during our outings, because for the moment the pace doesn’t tire me. Today, for example, I discovered that he had, in fact, been in England for two years after high school. He went there just like that - without a clear plan. Once he was there, little by little, he slowly put together the pieces of what he had always liked to do and he earned an international certificate to work as a personal trainer. For a person’s wellbeing, though, sports alone are not sufficient. You need to lead them towards a correct diet. So when he had finished his course, he decided to return here to Italy and enroll at the university to get a diploma as a dietitian. Now he’s towards the end. He’s finished all the exams and just has to submit his thesis, after which he’ll be able to officially start on his career. This was, is, his plan.
I was right that first day. Andrea may be young, and I his first client, but he’s competent.
Now I’m headed to the twins’ house. It’s Saturday night and they do a home movie couples night – Linda and Marco, Nic and somebody. They wanted to see a film that I have, and that’s why, once again, I’m going to their house. They kindly asked me to stay and see it, but frankly to be the fifth wheel… Thanks, but no.
When I arrive the twins’ mother lets me in and points me towards the stairs going down where there is the movie room. Yes, in this house there is also a movie room.
“Olivia! Will you be staying to watch the movie too?” Mrs. Bonaventura asks me without managing to hide the hope in her voice. The poor thing dreams of a utopian scenario where her son Nic gets his act together with me. I’m not the one inventing this. She told me that to my face one afternoon a couple of years ago. I tried to discourage her as best I could, and since then she’s never mentioned it again, but from the tone in her voice, from her looks, you can tell she’s still hoping. Poor woman.
Training in Love Page 3