Strike Me Down - Mindy Mejia Page 0,51
of the otherwise empty room. Her calves stretched long and lean, muscles bunching in sharp lines under the kind of skin that would flush with excitement or stress. I tamped down my excitement and took the treadmill two machines away from her, nodding a perfunctory, harmless-stranger smile—the smile every man has to perfect these days—when she glanced over to assess the intrusion.
I tapped my machine up to a brisk walk on an incline, checking my iWatch heart rate (Noticeably higher than resting. Thanks, Apple) while she flipped a page on a magazine, some kind of professional journal but I couldn’t read it without her seeing I was reading it. After a few minutes of silence punctuated only by pages turning, I turned and pointed to the TV in the corner.
“Is there a remote?”
She didn’t bother looking up. “I don’t know.”
Midwestern accent. Not frozen-throated, deep woods Minnesota, but still laced with prairie-flat vowels. She must have been stranded by the storm, too.
“Sorry, you must prefer it off. I just wanted to check the weather. My flight’s been delayed for a blizzard.”
“I know.”
I’d had our next six exchanges lined up in my head, nonchalant, casual, a slow build of conversation that wouldn’t look like it was going anywhere. Her reply, though, jerked me out of the setup and fast-forwarded straight to the end. My feet landed hard and clumsy on the treadmill belt as I studied her. She didn’t elaborate, didn’t slow her pace, but seemed to expect my stare. Flipping a page, she kept running and reading. A trickle of sweat dripped down her temple and slid into the hollow of her throat.
“What else do you know?” A smile tugged at my mouth.
“That Minneapolis is set to reopen around noon, our flight is tentatively scheduled to board at three o’clock Eastern, and you’re not wearing the Atticus glasses that you had on in the airport yesterday.”
“They’re Armani.”
“Atticus Finch.” She threw me a condescending glance and my veins automatically dilated, pumping a surge of blood to all the places the treadmill hadn’t woken up. Jesus Christ, I wanted this woman to talk down to me while straddled on top of me.
“Do you know who that is?” She couldn’t resist asking.
“Not an eyewear designer.” I played dumb just to watch her mouth pinch, then bumped the treadmill up to a brisk jog. “He’s the guy from Moby Dick, right?”
She shook her head and turned another page on her magazine. This time I caught the title: Fraud.
We chatted for a while, her maybe out of a default Minnesota politeness, me while I processed that magazine, and neither of us getting close to winded. When she hit five miles, she slowed her pace and closed the magazine. She wouldn’t take long to cool down.
“What will you do with our bonus day? See the sights of the Atlanta airport?” I nodded to the magazine. “Learn how to commit fraud?”
She smiled. “I know all the ways.”
“Maybe you could teach me, then.”
“I assumed you’d rather have sex for a few hours.”
It took a superhuman effort not to pull the emergency cord, not to give her the reaction she was expecting. Casually, I punched my pace down to a walk and cocked an eyebrow at her. “I’m an excellent multitasker.”
She stepped across to the open treadmill between us. Her face was glistening and flushed red from her run as she pointed her phone at me. “Smile.”
I hit the cool-down button as she opened an app. “Checking predator databases?”
“I’m sending your picture to my husband. Should I,” she narrated as she typed, “have sex with this man?”
I swallowed a grin and kept walking. She was either bluffing or texting a girlfriend, but before I could suggest grabbing a smoothie together, a beep from her phone signaled someone’s reply.
“He says, ‘Nail that silver fox.’ ”
I burst out laughing. “Tell your friend I’m flattered.”
“Silver fox is blushing,” she narrated again.
“Am I?” I murmured, hitting the stop button on the treadmill. “That would be a first. As would this.”
The truth always sounded like a lie. I was fifty years old and had never been unfaithful. I’d wondered about it, lately, what it meant to cross that line, if it had meant anything to Logan when she had. I’d sat in plenty of hotel bars in the last year, trying not to think about Logan and Aaden together, and considered what would happen if a friendly chat over drinks turned friendlier. A few months ago I’d even danced with a woman, somewhere in California, turning