through a small Bluetooth speaker. Somewhere in the background, I heard the sound of voices coming back into the gym. Heard the sound of bodies colliding. I thought about whether I should go out on the floor and take advantage of Peter working on Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills today since my shoulder wasn’t aching more than normal, unlike the day before. It had been at least a couple weeks since the last time I’d gotten on the mats with anyone, and even then, that had only been for about fifteen minutes to show one of the new girls how to do a submission choke she had been struggling with.
Meh.
Or maybe I’d just hop on an elliptical later and get a few miles of HIIT—high-intensity interval training—in to get my heart rate nice and elevated and burn some calories. Yeah, that sounded like a better idea.
I got back to work on cataloging expenses. Everything familiar and usual, or at least that was what I thought. I had my head full of numbers as I copied some expenses into the computer and was just lightly mumbling along to my 90s playlist when I heard the knock, knock on my opened door. Two lazy, light knocks.
Nothing special. Nothing to warn me.
“Come in,” I called out, trying to hold back a sigh because, to be fair, it was nobody’s fault I was in a shitty mood other than my own.
So when the footsteps treaded across the floor, I was still trying to tell myself to snap the hell out of it. Maybe I didn’t need to be in a good mood, but I didn’t need to be in a bad one either. Nobody deserved me being a bitch today. Not even my own body deserved that kind of stress.
Things were going to happen, or they weren’t. It was that simple, and I knew it. I just couldn’t convince the rest of me that that was the case.
So when the footsteps stopped and a throat was cleared, I took my sweet time looking away from my computer screen to take in the poor idiot who was being brave by coming into the office.
And that’s when everything went to fucking shit.
At least that was what it felt like.
Like someone saw me living my life, minding my own business, trying my goddamn best, then decided to pick it up and throw it into a fire, just to watch it go up in flames.
I wasn’t ready for the wide shoulders taking up the width of the hallway that separated the office from the rest of this part of the gym. I wasn’t ready for the long, strong legs, that had led up to a body wrapped in nothing but layers of muscle, in my space. That body that out of so, so, so many I had seen over the years had done something to my internal organs—including my heart, if I was going to be honest.
I had seen so many half-naked men in my life that I had become desensitized to six-packs, ripped arms, and good-looking faces. I had never put any weight into physical beauty, honestly. I remember once, when I had been about fifteen or sixteen, telling Peter that I was worried about how much I didn’t really care about boys. Or girls. I knew that some guys were attractive, but it didn’t do anything to me. I hadn’t found myself wishing for a fucking boyfriend. Most people I knew wanted to be in relationships, and I just hadn’t given a fuck. Peter, though, had told me that there was nothing wrong with me.
You’re perfect the way you are, he had said, like it was no big deal.
It hadn’t been like I was lonely. I had friends. I had things to keep me busy. I had been a healthy teenager who got curious one night, put my hand over my underwear, and discovered that I really enjoyed masturbating. And that’s what I did, frequently. But I’d never felt the urge back then to have someone else make me orgasm when I could do it myself pretty damn well.
I had enough nonsexual physical interactions with other people that it wasn’t like I missed affection or any shit like that. When I usually thought about guys, I thought about how bad they smelled when their deodorants wore off and how bitchy they got when things went wrong, but that I enjoyed working with them because they were stronger than I was and helped me better prepare to compete against