- Alex -
ou know what we have to do now,” I said, draping my hands over Gemma’s slippery legs, which lay lifeless across my lap.
“There’s no more doing,” she whispered, her flushed body strewn across the hot tiles. “I’m done. Done.”
“We’ve been in here long enough. We’re liable to melt.”
“Go,” she said, lifting her head and shooing me away. “Save yourself.”
“Not a chance. I’m more determined than ever to keep you alive after that.”
She propped herself up on her elbows. “Is that so?”
“It is.”
She cocked her head and smiled lazily, closed her eyes, and lay back down.
“I’m so sorry about this,” I said, ducking under her legs so I could stand up. “But you’ve left me no choice.”
“Shhh,” she said, carrying on like she was perfectly happy to pass out in the steam room.
I scooped her limp body up and paused, giving her a chance to hook her arms around my neck.
“Where are we going?”
I didn’t want to answer her. I was afraid if I did, she might jerk and cause me to slip on the wet floor. Fortunately, she was too exhausted to press me further as I pulled the steam room door open, blasting us with surprisingly chilly chlorine-scented air.
“Brrrr,” Gemma said, tightening her grip on me.
I walked to the edge of the pool and jumped.
She started screaming before she even hit the water and popped back to the surface like a buoy. “Oh my God,” she panted, swimming towards the closest ladder. “It’s so fucking cold! What were you thinking?!”
“Desperate times,” I said, grabbing my Speedo while she scrambled for her clothes.
“Join me for a shower?” I asked, enjoying the view as I followed her towards the locker rooms.
“Not a chance,” she said. “We need to be gone before maintenance arrives or I’m going to be in big trouble with Mary.”
I glanced at the clock. “When’s that?”
“Fifteen minutes,” she said, her expression stern. “So don’t dilly-dally.”
I laughed. “You seemed to think we had all the time in the world when I was dillying your dally five minutes ago.”
“That was before you dunked me in an ice bath and brought me to my senses.”
“I’ll race you,” I said, flashing my eyebrows before disappearing into the men’s locker room.
“Real mature!” she called after me.
She arrived at the front desk eight minutes later to find me leaning against it, checking my watch.
“What held you up?” I asked. “I was starting to worry.”
“Very funny,” she said, her wet hair dripping all over the shoulders of a fresh uniform shirt. “I was like lightning.”
“Where’d you get the dry clothes?” I asked, eager for any excuse to check her out, especially now that I knew the wonders she was hiding beneath all that cotton.
“I keep a spare outfit at work.”
“For occasions like this?”
“No,” she said, scolding me with her eyes. “Ever since… Never mind. It’s a gross story.”
“I’m not squeamish,” I said, watching her gather her things from behind the front desk.
She slung her leather purse across her body and spun her keychain around her finger. “Let’s just say there’s a reason we don’t let kids under twelve use the treadmills anymore.”
I started for the door.
“Especially the week after Halloween,” she said, flicking the last overhead light off.
I stepped into the cool night air and waited for her to set the alarm and lock the front doors, wishing I had the same confidence in everyone who had the keys to my gyms. Perhaps if that were the case, selling never would’ve crossed my mind.
“What are you doing?” she asked when I fell in step beside her.
“Walking you to your car.”
“Because it’s dark or because you’re one of those guys that gets really clingy after a girl gives it up?”
“I’ve never been accused of being clingy before.”
“For some reason, I believe that,” she said, pulling a red beanie on over her wet hair.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She stopped in her tracks so abruptly I figured we were about to get skunked. But when I followed her line of sight, my eyes came to rest on a two-door Pontiac in the far corner of the lot beneath the farthest parking light.
Hateful slurs were written in shaving cream across the windshield and hood, many of which had been smeared by the trash dumped over every surface. I didn’t need to ask if it was her car. I could tell by the defeated look on her face as she approached it.
I looked around to see if anyone was in the area, but the lot was still and silent apart from the half-crushed Coke cans rolling back and forth in the breeze near her car.
“I’m calling the police,” I said, confident that my buddy on the force would send someone right away.
She looked like she was trying to decide if she should start cleaning or fall to her knees. “Don’t bother.”
“But—”
“I know who did this.” She stared at an overturned Chinese takeout box snagged on one of her windshield wipers. “The cops never do anything about it.”
“This has happened before?” I asked, pulling a towel out of my bag. There was no chance in hell I was going to let her look at those nasty words for one more second.
“Variations of it.”
I hoped she would continue the explanation, but she didn’t.
“None of this is true,” I said, tossing the towel over the windshield and dragging it towards me to smear the offensive profanities. “You aren’t any of these things.”
“Just don’t, okay?” she said, unable to meet my eyes.
I crumpled the towel, and when I didn’t see a garbage can, I wedged it under her front wheel for the time being.
“Alex?”
I stood up and looked across the hood at her.
“Can I have a ride home?”
She barely said a word in the car, and all the ideas I had for how to comfort her seemed grossly inadequate.
“The police need to know this happened,” I said.
“The police are sick of hearing about it. I’ve been reporting this kind of garbage—pardon the pun—for the last six months.”
“Your ex?”
She nodded.
“What the hell is wrong with this guy?” I asked. “When a woman rejects me, I just sulk like a normal person.”
“Women reject you, do they?” she asked, smiling for the first time since we left the gym.
“They used to,” I said, checking the rearview mirror. “Before I got so handsome.”
She groaned. “I walked into that one.”
“Seriously, Gemma.” I squeezed my fists around the wheel and tried not to let the tension I felt seep into my voice. “I can’t have this guy harassing you like this.”
“With all due respect, I’m not your problem.”
“I’m not suggesting you are.”
“Besides, he’s harmless,” she said. “Sticks and stones, as they say.”
“There was nothing harmless about the condition of your car just now. Or the way it stole the smile from your face.”
“He’s a bully, nothing more,” she said, staring out the passenger window. “Reacting only gets a rise out of him.”
“Not the kind of reaction he’s going to get from me if I ever catch him hassling you.”
“He’ll find someone else to bully soon enough, and he’ll forget all about me.”
“I find it hard to believe that anyone could forget about you.”
“No offense, Alex, but I’m not really in the mood for niceties right now,” she said. “If you really want to make me feel better, forget you ever saw that.”