Chapter 5

 

 

I never thought I’d say this, but my grandma is actually cool. Mom always made it seem like she was some old hag who hated us, but in my three days here I know that’s the opposite. Grandma is only sixty-eight years old, so she’s not even as old as I had thought she was. She’s vibrant and cheerful and spends a lot of time in her garden. She likes to talk about her late husband, the grandfather I never met. She really seems to love my sister and now me. She tells me at least three times a day that I’m welcome here as long as I’d like to stay.

Despite the love and abundance of home cooked meals, it’s boring here, out in the boondocks in the middle of swampy Louisiana, and I could see myself getting restless if I had to live here full time.

But for now, a few days of relaxing and hanging with my sister has been pretty great. My stress is gone, and my arm doesn’t hurt too much if I just lounge around binge-watching TV shows all day.

Of course, I miss motocross. I miss it a lot. When I’m not broken, I’m riding six days a week, racing once a week, and spending all my free time with the guys on my motocross team. We travel to a new city each week during racing seasons, and right now I’d be in Nevada with the guys if I was still racing.

I’ve been staying off social media lately because if I get on there, I’ll see Team Logo’s posts and I’ll get depressed that I’m not there. But I was the dumbass who lost control of my bike and got my wrist broken. This six weeks of time out is my own damn fault.

On Friday morning, I wake up to the smell of sausage and pancakes. Grandma is watching the news on a little television in the kitchen while she cooks a mound of food that could feed a small army.

“Looks good,” I say, yawning as I enter the yellow kitchen. It’s the best room in the whole house, painted brightly and decorated with fresh flowers from Grandma’s garden. Plus the whole back wall is made of floor to ceiling windows that look out into the backyard. You can even hear birds chirping in the mornings. It’s some peaceful shit. Way better than waking up in a hotel room.

“Morning, Love,” Grandma says. She calls Bella and me that. She gives me a plate and starts piling food on it. All the favorites—grits, sausage, eggs, bacon, and toast.

I kiss her on the cheek and then take my plate to the dining table that faces the backyard.

Bella saunters in a few minutes later and pours herself a cup of coffee, adding a ton of creamer and sugar to it. She grabs a slice of toast and takes a bite before dropping into the chair next to me.

“You’re gonna get fat,” she says, taking one look at my overflowing plate.

“I already am,” I say, patting my stomach. I’m slowly losing my six pack since I haven’t worked out in two weeks.

My sister snorts. “You’re not even close to being fat.”

“A good breakfast never hurt anyone,” Grandma says, joining us at the table with her own plate of food.

After breakfast, and then lunch, I can’t stop thinking about what Bella said. I’m not exactly worried about getting fat, but I do need to do something to maintain as much endurance and fitness as I can while I’m out of motocross. I can’t just sit around and watch TV all day or I’ll lose all my strength. I’ll get back on the bike and won’t be able to keep up with the guy in last place.

The sheer thought of that happening lights a fire under me. I’ve never been hurt like this, not in my entire racing career. I’ve only had a few bruised ribs and sprained ankles. I can’t just sit around and slack.

I have to stay in shape.

I sit up on the couch and look over at my sister, who is half watching the TV show and half playing on her phone. “I need to work out.”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Go for a jog or something.”

I consider it, but with this heat and humidity, a jog would make my arm sweat so much under the cast. It’d be itchy and gross. I curl my lip.

“I need a gym. Is there a gym around here?”

This small town doesn’t even have a McDonald’s, so I’m not expecting there to be anything good within an hour’s drive. At best, I might be able to order some weight lifting equipment online and have it delivered here, but that doesn’t come close to having a professional gym.

“Actually,” Bella says, tapping her phone to her cheek while she thinks. “There is a gym. It’s not too far from here.”

I look it up online and feel a rush of adrenaline when I realize it’s just a couple of miles away from Grandma’s house. It’s open until midnight every day of the week, which means there’s no excuse to let my body fall out of shape over the next six weeks.

“Can I borrow your car?” I ask.

Bella frowns. “How are you supposed to work out with a broken arm?”

I stand up from the couch and stretch. “Easy. Legs, abs, back, one arm. Also I can jog. There’s no reason the rest of me can’t stay fit while my wrist heals.”

She rolls her eyes. “This is why girls are in love with you, you know.”

“Because I’m a hard worker?”

She smirks. “I guess that’s part of it. But it’s the muscles, Aiden. That’s all my friends care about.”

“Like I said, your friends are too young for me,” I say sarcastically. She tosses me her car keys and I find some workout clothes in my suitcase.

Bella had some friends over the other day. I saw the way they looked at me. It was just the way so many other girls look at me. Lustful. Dreamy. They’re falling for what I look like and they don’t even know me. I could be a total prick and half of these women wouldn’t care, so long as I looked good standing next to them for Instagram photos.

Maybe that’s what keeps me single. Unlike some guys I know who are more than happy to hook up with every walking pair of boobs that looks his way, I’ve never been like that. My teammate Zach used to have a different girl on his arm every weekend until he met Bree and decided he was going to settle down.

I just can’t do that—one night stands. It feels gross to me. First, there’s the whole threat of catching some disgusting disease from sleeping around, and that’s not even all of it. Secret babies from girls whose names you don’t remember. Messy breakups when someone gets attached. Waking up next to a stranger whose name you can’t even remember. Why do guys get off on this one-night stand thing?

I’d rather be in a relationship with one woman. I’d want to be like my buddy Jett, who found Keanna and knew she was the one for him. They even found a way to make it work with his crazy race schedule and traveling. Keanna is a cool chick. She joins Jett at a lot of the races when she’s not busy with school.

I want a relationship like that. But I’ve never had it. I’ve never even come close to it.

I climb in Bella’s new car which already has my sister’s touches added to it. She’s put a sticker of her high school mascot on the back window, and there’s a high school parking permit on the rear view mirror. But it still smells good in here, like it did the day we bought it. Like cupcakes, and shampoo. It must be what Jenn smells like all the time.

I crank the engine and head toward the main road, remembering the easy directions to this local gym. I decide to stop thinking about girls and relationships. As long as I’m on Team Loco, mildly famous and covered with rippling muscles that I bust my ass to make, I won’t be getting a girlfriend.

I could get laid, sure. But not a girlfriend. Every woman who flirts with me now is doing it for one reason. Because I’m famous. They don’t know me. They don’t care to know me. And I don’t have the time to know them, either.

I need to focus on my career. Girls would only get in the way of that. I tell myself that the loneliness I feel each night is just me being pathetic.

At the gym, I walk into a newer building which is a little surprising since everything in this tiny ass town is old. It’s called LaValle Fitness and Physical Therapy, and I follow the arrow that says the gym is to the left. The doors to the right go to a PT center. That’s kind of good luck on my part, because I’ll need physical therapy after my cast is removed. Maybe I’ll just stay here and do that instead of going back to Orlando. I sign up for a gym membership, and the guy who works here is about twice as ripped as I am. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s on steroids, but whatever. I’m contractually obligated to be healthy and stay off anything like that. I’ll never be that bulky, but I don’t really want to be.

Lean muscle makes you a faster rider. Bulk would only weigh me down.

There are exactly two people in the gym, and both of them are elderly. One older man is working with a woman who wears scrubs, and I realize the physical therapy section of the gym also merges with the workout section.

I hit the weight machines and do some leg work first. The burn in my hamstrings feels good. It’s been way too long. I’m a little out of shape, but soon I’m back in my groove and feeling amazing. I focus on legs, back, and shoulders. Then, a couple hours later, I’m still not ready to go home yet, so I do some arm work with my good arm. If I stay in shape, I’ll only have to work hard on my right arm once the cast is off.

I’m in my own world, doing my own thing for so long that I don’t even notice when the gym gets a little busier. Several women jog on treadmills and I can feel them staring at me, probably wondering who the new guy is.

Then I see her.

She’s wearing a pair of navy blue scrubs and still manages to look sexy even in shapeless clothing. Her light brown hair is pinned back from her face, and she’s smiling at another woman in scrubs. She must work here, too.

Damn, a girl with two jobs? Ambition is sexy. No wonder she’s already taken.

My chest tightens at the thought of it, and I tell myself to get over it. Why should I care that Jenn has a boyfriend? I don’t even know her. I just know how amazing she smells every time I get in that car I bought from her.

I leave the weight machine I was on, in search of something farther away so I won’t be tempted to look at her like some kind of ogling creep. At eight o’clock, almost every employee goes home for the night except the guy at the front counter. The physical therapy part must be closed. There’s only a few guys here working out, and one lone woman on a treadmill at the end of the gym. I look around while I’m on the stair climber, and then I see her.

She walks into the women’s locker room wearing her scrubs, and then emerges a few minutes later, a towel wrapped around her body. I can see some kind of straps on her shoulders, so she’s probably wearing a bathing suit, although my first thought is to picture her naked under that towel.

She doesn’t notice me as she walks toward a glass door that leads to the indoor pool. But she takes a right. That door leads to an indoor hot tub. I haven’t seen it yet, but the guy who signed me up for membership told me about it. My membership includes access to the pool, hot tub, and sauna as well.

A hot tub sounds damn good on my aching leg muscles.

I turn off the stair climber and look at my cast, wondering if I could wrap a towel around it to protect it from the bubbles of the hot tub.

Only one way to find out.