Weightless (6 page)

He was wearing a dark pair of sunglasses, but still his brows were furrowed over in a squint as he watched me exit the SUV. When I reached where he was leaning, he stood straight and uncrossed his arms, giving me full access to gaze at his chest muscles stretching out the tight fabric of his navy blue shirt. Thank God I was wearing sunglasses, too.

“We’re working outside today. Did you bring a towel?”

I reached into the front pocket of my gym bag and pulled out the towel I’d packed, waving it around slightly like a white flag of surrender.

“Good,” he assessed, walking toward the back of the building without checking to see if I was following. “You’ll need it. Lose the shades.”

I swallowed, but followed quickly behind him, removing my sunglasses and tucking them in my bag as he did the same. It was my fourth day with Rhodes, yet he still hadn’t said more than a few words to me. I’d tried conversation a few times, but to no avail. He was cold, reserved, and not the least bit interested in becoming my friend.

Not that I could really blame him.

He was beautiful. Crazy? Maybe. Intimidating? Definitely. But, beautiful nonetheless. And beautiful guys like him didn’t befriend girls who looked like me.

Still, he was my trainer. My parents were paying him for his service. The least he could do was provide it with a smile, right?

We started the session with a three mile jog around the club property. We ran up and over the hills of the golf course, through the garden, around the tennis courts, and finished with a sprint up the stairs leading to the top balcony of the space used for weddings and events. I had to stop at least ten times along the way, but each time I did Rhodes would scream at me to keep going and threaten me with added distance. The beautiful day I had been admiring in the drive over felt more like my own personal hell halfway through the workout. By the time we reached the top of the stairs, I was completely spent.

“Nice job,” he said simply, wiping the sweat from his face as I chugged from my water bottle. He leaned over the railing for a moment, his gaze caught somewhere across the course. I was panting so hard I had to take short breaths between sips. I felt like I couldn’t drink fast enough and he was just standing there all calm and collected, like we had just watched a movie rather than ran for almost an hour in the Carolina heat.

“Don’t drink too much too quickly,” he said smoothly, lifting himself from his leaning position on the rail. “Take a few minutes and meet me downstairs when you’re ready.” Without another word, he turned and jogged back down the stairs we had just run up. I watched the ridges of his back muscles move in sync as he disappeared from view.

I wasn’t one for cursing, but I could think of at least seven swear words I felt like yelling out to the entire club in that moment. Instead, I focused on my breathing and sipping water until I felt a little calmer before walking down the stairs to join Rhodes. He was setting up some sort of obstacle course with tires, ropes, boxes, and bars.

Good Lord.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t worked out before training with Rhodes, but I’d never experienced anything close to his methods before. I realized at that point that my high school gym classes were a complete joke. Even the Zumba classes that had kicked my butt when Mom and I took them paled in comparison to the sessions I had with Rhodes. He was fierce. He surely had a goal in mind for me, whether I did or not.

“How do you do that without dying?” I asked, nodding toward the path we’d just run.

He shrugged, dropping another, slightly taller box down beside the one he’d just placed. “I just do.”

I fidgeted with the bottom of my t-shirt, waiting for more of an explanation that never came. Sighing, I tried again. “How many days a week do you train?”

“Seven.”

“So you don’t have a single day off?”

“Nope.”

“That’s crazy.” He didn’t respond. “What got you into fitness?”

He paused after placing a weighted plate on the taller of the two boxes, his arms bracing himself on either side. Turning toward me slowly, he locked his eyes on mine as his mouth flattened into a thin line. Small beads of sweat dripped down the ridges of his nose and jaw and I watched them with fascination, wishing I had my camera with me to capture that shot in a stunning black and white monochrome.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I asked four.”

“That’s a lot.”

I scoffed, but he didn’t give me a chance to argue further.

“Let’s start here. Grab these ropes.” He gestured down to two, thickly woven ropes that were anchored to the thick pillar below the stairs we’d just climbed. I slowly bent to pick them up and held one in each hand facing the tied end. They were heavier than I expected and I immediately worried about where the workout was heading.

Rhodes stepped up beside me with his arms outstretched, mimicking the position I was holding the ropes in. “These are battle ropes. They’re going to work a lot of different muscles simultaneously and give you an all-over workout. We’re only going to do ten minutes, but it’s going to feel like hours.” I swallowed, gripping the ropes a little tighter. “Start like this,” he instructed, standing with his feet shoulder-width apart and bending his knees slightly before lifting both of his hands up and bringing them down with force. “It’s a simple double wave. Just lift the ropes with both hands and bring them back down as hard as you can, making a wave.”

I lifted the ropes as high as I could and brought them back down with as much force as I could muster, turning to Rhodes for approval. He nodded, his brows bent in that beautiful way that I’d begun to realize was a signature look of his, and I continued. Immediately I noticed my arms burning, but the more we worked, the more the burn spread throughout my entire body. He had me change positions every minute to everything from an alternating wave where each arm worked opposite the motion of the other to shoulder circles, which were exactly what they were called except with heavy ropes that made my upper back and shoulders burn like they were on fire.

“Let’s finish with snakes,” Rhodes said after what must have been about nine minutes but what felt more like nine days. “You’re going to get into a squat,” he said, illustrating the move. “And move your arms out and then together, but not all the way crossed, making snake-like waves across the ground.” He lifted his brows to ask if I understood and I nodded, turning back toward the anchor. I did my first attempt and laughed out loud at the failed result. When I looked over at Rhodes, his eyes were brighter, the wrinkles in his forehead leveled out. If I didn’t know it was impossible, I’d say he was almost smiling.

“Here,” he said, moving behind me. I stopped breathing as his strong hands found my middle, somehow making me feel small as he lowered me into a squat. Slowly, he snaked his arms up under mine and gripped the ropes just above where my hands held tight to them. His hard chest was pressed against my back, our bodies sticking together slightly, and his breath was hot on the skin of my neck. “Like this.” He moved our arms out and then back toward each other and I watched how the ropes mimicked the movements of a snake, trying to focus on anything other than the buzz I was feeling from being so close to Rhodes. I felt him swallow, the muscles in his arms tensing as he waited for me to do the move with him.

When he was sure I had it, he stepped back, straightening himself as I finished. He eventually called time and I dropped the ropes and stood, shaking out my legs. I was breathing hard, though I wasn’t exactly sure if it was from the ropes. I peered up at Rhodes, hands hooked on my hips as I tried to steady my breathing. He was watching me closely, that same curiosity buzzing in his eyes. I felt like he had a question for me, and I begged him to ask it — to say anything at all. The air between us was charged with an unexplainable energy, and I wondered if he felt it, too.

But he just cleared his throat and motioned to the boxes he’d set up earlier. “Grab water if you need it. We’re doing box jumps next.”

My eyes fell to the ground and I retied the messy bun high on my head as my cheeks heated. Foregoing the water, I followed him to the box jumps, which I wasn’t able to successfully complete. I was terrified of falling on my face and it felt like my feet were glued to the ground each time he demanded I jump. We moved on to the next part of his make-shift obstacle course and continued through it until I was so drenched my light orange shirt was stuck to every curve of my body. Rhodes clapped me on the back like a football player and told me to take an ice bath, then he turned and disappeared inside the club and into the small gym office.

I did take my first ice bath that night, right after drinking the disgusting powder-based post-workout shake Rhodes told me to buy. As I sank down into the freezing water, ice cubes shaking and shifting as I lowered myself in, I hoped it would cool much more than just my aching muscles.

Thursday’s workout was tough, but Friday’s was absolutely brutal. Rhodes seemed pissed off, for whatever reason, and apparently taking out his frustration on his clients was his favorite pastime. So when Saturday finally rolled around, I was beyond thankful for my day off from training. Spending Saturday night with Willow was just what I needed, though I wasn’t sure I’d be able to lift myself out of the booth when the night was over.

Hookah wasn’t really my thing, but I loved going to Rook with Willow. It was a small, dark hole in the wall with plush maroon couches and acoustic music — sometimes played by a live artist. There was something about the vibe that helped me relax, even with the smoke clouds around me. When Willow called me wanting to go out, I was far from excited, but she promised just the two of us. Girl’s night. And that was pretty much the only kind of outing I was okay with at the moment. Plus, I owed her an explanation for shutting her out after the Hay Stacks incident. So, I caved, and after the hard part was over and I’d apologized for ditching her, I finally relaxed and started to enjoy myself.

Willow was going on and on about the program she applied for at Appalachian State when the waitress brought us our second hookah. She had already been accepted in the fall, but the program she was waiting to hear back from was an early acceptance program that would kick-start her academic career and set her up with some of the best professors and smaller, more intimate classes. Plus, she’d get a full ride if she was accepted. She said
if
, I said
when
. Willow was too intelligent not to get accepted. In fact, she could have landed a full ride pretty much anywhere in the country, but — just like every other normal kid in Poxton Beach — she wanted Appalachian State. Part of me wanted to go, too, if only to have at least four more years with my best friend.

“I’m just so nervous,” she said for the fiftieth time, taking the first drag from the new hookah set up on the small wooden table in front of us. “I want this more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my entire life, Nat. What if I don’t get it?”

I shook my head, wishing I had a bank of intellectually deep phrases to pull from like she always did. I wanted to calm her, but I could only laugh. “You’re going to get in. I know it, you know it — everyone knows it. You got your acceptance letter to Appalachian State months before anyone else and you were Valedictorian. This kick-start program committee would be absolutely freaking insane not to accept you. And when you do get in, I’m going to cry for days wondering how the hell I’m going to make it through the rest of the summer without you.”

She smiled softly, reaching over to pat my leg before inhaling through the long hookah hose again. She was smoking a peach and vanilla combination of sheesh that made my mouth water a little. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the taste of it or that I hadn’t tried it before, I just didn’t really have an addictive personality. I could drink if I wanted to, but I rarely did. I could smoke if I wanted to, but I almost never felt that need. Overall, I didn’t need much to have a good time — just my friends. And Mason.

My stomach lurched and I shifted on the couch, pulling my legs up closer to my chest. Willow noticed my shield and narrowed her eyes, letting a cloud of smoke escape her plump lips. Her hair was long and curled tonight while my dark blonde locks were pin-straight. Even dressed in distressed jeans and a Fall Out Boy t-shirt, she looked flawless. I, on the other hand, still felt less than average — even with the make-up I’d taken almost twenty minutes to apply.

“You better not be thinking about Mason,” she warned, handing me the hose so she could drink her water. She had a weird stigma about not letting the hose touch the table until the hookah was tapped.