left and—
A body lay on its side on one of the long benches that stretched between the lockers.
“Sean?” Even though I couldn’t see his face, nobody else had hair that red. “Are you okay?” I rushed to him and knelt.
“Unnh.” There was sound, but no movement.
“What happened? Did you fall? Hit your head?”
“Nooo.”
I scrunched down so my ear was next to his mouth. “What is it? Your heart? Your lungs? Why didn’t you tell me you have a condition—”
“My shoulders.”
“What?”
“I’m—I’m stuck.”
I popped up to kneeling and stared at his collapsed form. Now that I looked at him more closely, he resembled an Ikea dresser gone wrong, with his arms scrunched up in a sweatshirt and his T-shirt hiked over his fish-white belly.
“Don’t just stare. Help me! I’m incapable of voluntary movement.”
Carefully, I took hold of his pretzel-like arms and shoulders and lifted him to sitting.
“Oh God.” His moan ricocheted off the lockers.
“What? Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.” He flopped his head against my bicep like it was too much trouble to lift it. “Mostly, I can’t lift my arms.”
“Oh no. Maybe a stroke or—” The light dawned. “Oh, you mean your muscles are that sore?”
“Nooo. It must be more than that. I’m sure if I check the Physician’s Desk Reference, I’ll find a disease that strikes with agonizing pain overnight and renders one incapable of movement. Lockjaw, perhaps, only for the entire body.”
I chuckled “Since you’re, like, twenty years old, you probably just overdid it. Sorry. I should have stopped you.” I felt kinda bad about it. As his personal trainer, I should have realized we were doing too much. But the weights had been so light!
I grabbed the sweatshirt that was on one bent arm but caught over his shoulder and the opposite wrist. “Let’s get this off.” I tried to be real gentle, but he moaned and whimpered the whole time I loosened the shirt and pulled his T-shirt down.
Finally, he was sitting with both arms cradled in his lap, dressed in a Dr. Who T-shirt and his boxer briefs with his skinny legs sticking out and his red head hanging. Totally pitiful. He muttered, “Perhaps I’m simply unfit for such exertions. Perhaps the wisest course would be to retire from the field of combat.”
I laughed. “You’re so freaking funny, Sean.” I took hold of him under his arms and lifted him to standing. He moaned, but I just grabbed a couple towels from the towel rack behind us. “What you need is a good steam and massage.” I tossed the towels at him. “Get undressed and I’ll meet you in the steam room.” I pointed toward the frosted glass door. “Here, let me help you with that.” In one move, I grabbed his T-shirt and yanked it over his head.
“Holy crap! Warn a guy.”
“Nope. It’s like a bandage. You’ve just gotta rip. See you inside.” I strode to my locker two banks down, stripped, shoved my clothes away, wrapped a towel around my hips, and started to the steam room, then paused in midstep. Did I just offer Sean a massage? I mean, I was good at massages and had given a lot of them, sometimes to football teammates who were injured and sometimes to girls, but that was another story. Sean was a client. Not a paid one, but still. Was that like getting too familiar or something? Nah. I’d just have to be careful not to hurt the scrawny guy.
A big cloud of steam surrounded me inside, and I called, “Sean?”
“What’s left of me is over here.”
I followed his voice and found what looked like a mummified body lying on the top step farthest from the door. Seriously, he must have grabbed six more towels in addition to the ones I gave him, and now he was lying on his stomach draped entirely in white terrycloth.
Biting my lip to keep from laughing, I said, “I’ll need to move those towels around. Getting rubbed with scratchy cloth isn’t fun.”
“You don’t have to do it.” His voice sounded a little muffled since one of the towels was over his head.
“Yeah, I kind of do because we need to work the lactic acid out of your muscles, or you’ll feel worse tomorrow, not better.”
His head lifted. “Pretty sure that’s not humanly possible.”
“No, actually it is.” I scooched up onto my knees on the lower shelf and moved the towel on his left leg aside. “We’ll start on the less painful parts.”
His head snapped around like he was expecting me