Authors: Christa Maurice
“Pizza and a keg? Is that all you think we need? I mean, I can make some food and we should have a birthday cake.” Jessica paused. If Kevin ‘liked women who acted like women’ would he like a woman who planned a party for him? “Are you sure he’d like that?”
Bobbie grinned, but something about it seemed strange. “Sure. He’ll love it. Listen, you plan the menu, I’ll get the guys, and I’ll choke a couple of bucks out of them for food and stuff.”
Jessica stood up. “You know him better. Why don’t we shower, and you can come back to my place so we can plan a menu and pick a date.”
Bobbie stared at her. “Plan a menu? You take this party stuff pretty seriously, don’t you?”
Jessica nodded. If Kevin did enjoy being the center of attention, she might be able to do something he’d like. “I love throwing parties. Come on.”
* * * *
Jessica walked up to the front door of Kevin’s two-story gray wooden house. The sticky hot weather made her miss the air-conditioning at the gym. She hadn’t seen him since the outing to the hardware store six days ago. Bobbie had started making phone calls to round up his friends for the birthday party less than two weeks away. Jessica had gotten the day off and started gathering supplies. She’d talked Bobbie out of beer and pizza. Instead, she was cooking up some barbecue fare, but in honor of Kevin’s interest in all things Irish, she’d cleaned her grocery store out of canned Guinness, as she understood it was better than the bottled. After consulting with the store’s music aficionados on the best Gaelic folk music, she’d purchased a couple of CDs. Normally, it took about two hours to set everything up, and she planned to ask Kevin to pick her up at home to go running that day. The way the backyard lay hidden behind the house ensured she could hide thirty or forty people out of sight. If only she was sure Kevin wanted a surprise party. Bobbie seemed positive he would.
She’d walked here, which she thought she might pay for on the way home, but it gave her plenty of opportunity to check out Kevin’s house. Minimal landscaping, he seemed to take the mow-it-and-forget-about-it approach. His porch had a swing hanging from the ceiling, and what she’d thought was an enclosed porch was in fact a solarium that opened from inside the house. She judged the house to be from the 1920’s. Old and romantic.
Kevin opened the door and looked her over. “You’re early.”
“Am I? Sorry.” She smoothed her hand along her hair. Suddenly the exercise outfit of bike shorts and tank top she’d been wearing to the gym seemed all wrong, even though Bobbie had never commented on it. Kevin’s gaze made it less comfortable and silly.
He shrugged. “Come on in.” He stepped through the small entry way into the living room.
She glanced down at the blue and white honeycomb tiles on the entry floor before looking up and realizing the living room spanned the entire front of the house. “Wow.” One side appeared to be his dedicated living area with a couch, two chairs and television set grouped together. The other side held the fireplace.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Kevin said, grinning. “I just bought it a year ago. I don’t really have everything set up yet.”
“You really need a chair in front of this fireplace. A rocking chair would be good. Or you could move that tan easy chair over here. It doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the furniture over there.” Jessica admired the large mantle and the built in cases on either side before she glanced at Kevin.
Kevin studied the space and she wondered if she should have made the suggestion. “Maybe. Come on. My weights are in the garage.”
He led her down a short hall and out the back door. She kept to herself her observation that the kitchen remodel, which looked like it predated Kevin, had been ill-conceived. His garage had old-fashioned doors that opened on side hinges instead of rolling up on rails. Because of the equipment, he’d had to squeeze his car against the far wall. “How has your studying been going?” he asked, leading her inside.
“Good. The only part I’m worried about is the tools. I consistently get those wrong on the practice tests.”
“You’re taking practice tests?”
Was that admiration or irritation? “Yes. I tried one the day I talked to you first, just to see what my shortcomings were, and then I tried another one yesterday to see if I’d learned anything.”
“Did you?”
“It’s hard to tell. The practice tests are only fifty questions.”
He nodded and turned his back to her, setting up the bench. “How did you score?”
“Eighty-six the first time, ninety-two yesterday.”
He started sliding disks on the bar.
She wished he’d turn around or say something. Had she been wrong to take the practice tests so soon? Between the three books, she had about fifteen of them. She could take one every week from now until the testing started and not run out. Did he think she was being too gung-ho? Was it possible to be? Had he gotten to the same idea Mindi had? That she was using training as an excuse? Her parents could give him written affidavits that she’d played fireman as a little kid. Provided she managed to tell her parents. Maybe the scores weren’t good enough, and he didn’t want to tell her?
“I’m going to start you out at seventy pounds. You need to do fifteen reps,” he said.
Nodding, she stretched out on the bench. He stood over her with his hands under the bar like he thought she might drop it on herself. The flash of irritation surprised her. He wasn’t doubting her, he was spotting. Normal procedure.
She did the repetitions without even changing the expression on her face. Bobbie had warned her it would take a while to build up strength, but they had already worked up to one hundred pounds of resistance on the upper body machines at the gym.
“Good job,” he said. He leaned down and started loading more weight disks on the bar. “Now let’s go up to eighty.”
Eighty pounds was not much more difficult than seventy had been. While he stood over her, ready to catch her if she slipped, she had the opportunity to watch him. He seemed anxious, with his hands forward and his feet set in a wide stance so he would be more stable if he did have to reach over her and lift the bar off her chest. The more prepared he seemed, the more irritated she felt. He was fully prepared for her to fail.
“Very good.” His tone still rang hollow. Part of her rose up to meet the compliment while another part of her scorned it for being an empty courtesy. She wanted him to be impressed, but she wanted it to be for a good reason. “We’ll just increase to one hundred then. You seem to be in better shape than you thought.”
This time it took a little more concentration to not change her expression. The free weights were more difficult than the machines. She had a hard time keeping the bar balanced. Her shoulders and upper arms burned. When she finished this set of repetitions, he helped her rest the bar in the cradle and turned toward a table against the side wall. Why wouldn’t he look at her?
“You can sit up. We’ll do some biceps curls next.” He sounded like her doctor telling her she could get dressed now before he left the room. That cool, professional tone. Detached. It fanned her fury higher.
“Why don’t you want me to do any more bench presses?” She slicked sweat off her forehead with her hand.
“Because you’re going to exhaust the muscles. To get a really good work out you need to shift around. We’ll go back to that later.” He didn’t turn around. “The hand bells are against the back wall. Pick a weight that’s comfortable, but not beyond your capacity. You aren’t here to impress me.”
Scowling, she walked to the back of the garage and located the hand bells. Sorting through the disks on the floor she chose ones that were about the weight she’d been using at the gym. She started a repetition of fifteen because she anticipated him telling her to do one any minute. Most of this kind of exercise came in repetitions of fifteen. She was starting to like Bobbie more than Kevin.
Unfortunately, Bobbie didn’t look like that in a t-shirt. He wasn’t the type to wear tight shirts to show off his muscles, something she appreciated more and more every trip to the gym, but he had something to show off. His trapezius muscles flowed across his shoulders and up to his neck instead of mounding up to his jaw. Her eyes wandered down to his waist. For nearly thirty-seven, he hadn’t thickened there like many men around middle age had. Those guys hung around the gym, too. The ones who looked in a mirror one day and realized they’d become their fathers. Bobbie referred to them as
mid-lifers
. The mid-lifers were always ready to buy a girl a drink at the juice bar, or compliment her on her prowess with a machine, but Bobbie pointed out most of them had dents on their left hand ring finger where they’d taken off their wedding rings.
Jessica couldn’t see much of Kevin’s glutes in his baggy sweat pants. She decided that was for the best as she felt herself getting warm from something other than the exercise. Absently, she wondered if her bike shorts had any effect on him. They did wonders for the mid-lifers. Kevin, however, wouldn’t even look at her. Shaving her legs last night had been a waste of time. If he wasn’t going to even look at her face, he’d never notice stubble on her legs.
Chapter 6
Kevin turned around from the notes he was making, having braced himself to look at her, and noticed the way her eyes darted up to meet his. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just staring into space waiting for the next order.” She smiled.
“How many of those have you done?” he asked, hoping she didn’t hear the tenseness in his voice.
She looked down at the dumbbell she’d been lifting and lowering automatically. “I don’t know. I lost count.” Her face turned a deeper shade of scarlet.
“Well, switch sides.”
She moved the dumbbell from her left hand to her right and started lifting it up and down. He’d thought he was ready to look at her again, but he’d been wrong. From the moment he’d laid eyes on her in that outfit, he hadn’t been able to think straight. He didn’t want to be juvenile, but all he could think about was how hot she looked in those tight shorts. Standing over her while she worked on her bench pressing nearly gave him a heart attack. He’d dragged all this stuff out here to the garage hoping that being out in the open would help him hold onto a little perspective, but it hadn’t. The only way he managed to not stare was to turn his back on her, and then he had to listen to her behind him. Listening was almost worse because then his imagination took over, and her heavy breathing made too good a soundtrack. But if he had his back to her, she couldn’t see the dumbstruck look on his face. A draw at best.
“Okay, now what?” She looked up at him with her bright, eager eyes.
“Triceps. Kneel on the bench with one knee and pull up from the floor to about your waist.” He hoped his instructions were clear enough that he wouldn’t have to correct her position by touching her.
She put one knee on the bench and started her repetitions. “There’s a machine at the gym we use for this.”
“Oh?” Kevin closed his eyes because she wasn’t looking up. He could imagine her at the gym dressed like that, with a horde of young hunks surrounding her.
“The free weights are different, though. They shift around in your hands a little more,” she said.
“So do the victims.” Kevin opened his eyes. Bodybuilder women always turned him off. They were hard in all the wrong places. Too much like men. So why was watching this woman lift weights turning him on?
“Exactly.” Jessica stood up and switched sides. “I was reading last night about what to expect in the exam.”
“Oh?” Did she notice how stupid he was all of a sudden? He felt stupid. He couldn’t seem to string together a coherent thought. How much worse could he have been inside the house?
“It said the hose drag could be simulated with a duffel bag across a gym floor. Is that likely?”
She sounded so calm. So conversational. No way was she as attracted to him as he was to her. “Pretty likely. When I took the test we had a duffel bag loaded with about a hundred fifty pounds that we had to drag across the parking lot and back. It’s supposed to be like dragging a charged hose, but it isn’t.”
“How is it different?”
Kevin tried to gather his thoughts so he could make an answer that made sense. He missed being able to make sense. “A charged hose is full of water, so it’s stiff and sometimes it feels more like maneuvering a two-by-four that’s fifty feet long.”
She nodded and stood up. “Is that something we’ll be able to practice?”
“I can find a duffel. You might have to run up and down the street.” He wondered if she would be embarrassed, running up and down the brick street in front of his house dragging a weighted duffel bag.