“You have impressive form,” James says. “Nice and deep, and your back is straight all the way through.”

  Ryder snickers. “Yep. Niiiiice and deep.”

  James and I give Ryder identical glares.

  “Shut up, Ryder,” I say. “Let’s see you do better.”

  That shuts Ryder up real fast, and James laughs. “He’s not answering because he knows he cheats on his squats.”

  “I do not!” Ryder protests.

  “At a proportionate weight, you don’t squat anywhere near as deep as she does.”

  I laugh. “That was my warm-up set,” I say. “I’ll start cheating on my form once the weight is nearer the upper end of my working range.”

  “You don’t have to make him feel better,” James says. “He needs the inspiration. He knows he cheats his form.”

  “I don’t fucking cheat!” Ryder insists.

  Jesse laughs. “So put another pair of plates on there and let’s see.”

  I watch as Ryder and Jesse slide two more forty-fives on each side of the bar, clamp it, and then Ryder settles under the bar, lets out a short, sharp exhale, and stands up under the weight. Slowly and under extreme control, Ryder squats down, and he does go deep…but after three reps, he’s struggling to get back up. He finishes five full reps, going deep each time, and then racks the bar roughly, with a loud clang.

  “Boom, motherfucker.” Ryder jabs a pointer finger in my direction. “Five clean, no-cheat squats at three-fifteen.”

  I laugh. “Hey, I never challenged you, that was all James.” I point at the bar. “Not a fair comparison anyway, because there’s no way three-fifteen is a warm-up set weight for you. I was doing a warm-up set, and you were doing a working set.”

  Jesse laughs. “You know your shit, Nova.”

  “I’ve been into powerlifting for a long time,” I say, and then knock out my second set.

  James and Franco pair up for benching, while Jesse takes over doing cleans and Ryder squats next to me.

  Things are quiet for a while, except for the occasional comment or joke here and there. I go through five sets of squats, ending up at 205 by the last set. I could’ve gone higher for a few reps, but I decided against risking failing a rep my first time working out with James and the guys. I transition to a set of cleans next—I notice a dry erase board on the wall by the rack of weights with today’s workout written out on it—5x5 squats, one set of 25 cleans, 3x10 bench, and an overhead press/pull-up drip set. Challenging as hell, and I enjoy it. The guys make it easy to rotate in with them, and I never feel judged or rushed. I end up leaving the set of bench presses for last, because I need a spotter for that lift and everyone else is busy; I showed up after their first set, so they’re all done by the time I’m ready to do those.

  I position myself under the bar, 175 on the bar. Not my highest, but good for 5x5 at the end of a tough workout. Gripping the bar, I decide to play a little game of roulette:

  “Can I get a spot?” I call out, intentionally not addressing anyone in particular.

  I hear heavy footsteps tread over to me, and when a pair of hairy-knuckled, bear paw-sized hands touches two fingers under each side of the bar—guiding rather than helping, as a good spotter should—I know it’s James without having to look beyond the hands. I’m not sure if I won or lost that game of roulette—or whether I wanted James to spot me or not.

  I get through the first set without issue, but by the end of the set I know I’ve bitten off potentially more than I can chew trying to bench 175 for five sets of five at the end of the workout. I’m shaking as I rack the weight, panting hard.

  James doesn’t say anything, but I feel his eyes on me.

  I rest about a minute or a minute and a half, and then go to work on the second set. Again, I make it through the set, but barely. And this time, I know James is adding at least a tiny bit of pressure under the bar.

  I glance up at James as I rest between sets two and three. “No helping,” I say, wiping sweat off my forehead.

  His eyes crinkle with a small smirk—a look I’d almost call sassy. “One-seventy-five may have been a bit ambitious,” he says. “No shame in dropping down a notch or two.”

  I narrow my eyes at him, stick out my tongue, and put my irritation at his needling into my lift. Which, I realize, was his goal all along—motivation via insult.

  “You are such a guy,” I snap as I pause at the top of the press.

  He follows the downward motion of the bar, and I notice for the first time how close he gets, bending over me, making sure he has the leverage to lift in case I end up failing a rep. I can feel his breath, I can smell him—his sweat, his beard oil, a faintly cloying hint of BO that should gross me out but doesn’t.

  “Glad you noticed,” he mutters.

  Set four is hard. The fifth and final rep requires a lot of strain, a lot of shaking. I finish the last rep and rack the bar, breathing hard.

  James’s eyes are on me; I’ve sweated through my sports bra and my shirt. I rest, and then adjust my grip on the bar.

  I hesitate, meeting James’s gaze. “Eyes on the bar, tiger,” I say.

  He arches an eyebrow. “That’s a big ask, babe.”

  “There’s nothing to even see,” I mutter, pushing the bar off the rack and preparing to lower it. “I’m wearing the tightest sports bra I own and a tank top.”

  “Memory and imagination, Nova,” James says, following the bar as I start the first rep of my last set.

  I push through reps two, three, and four, but I’m struggling, straining and shaking as I barely finish the fourth rep. I pause with the bar at the top of the movement, gasping and contemplating whether I can gut out a fifth or not.

  James glances at me. “Going for five?”

  I nod, and grit my teeth. I slowly lower the bar, and when it touches my chest, I push hard, snarling through clenched teeth, pushing my feet hard against the ground and arching my back off the bench for added leverage. I feel James putting a tiny bit of assistance on the bar, but I’m honestly not sure I’d be able to get the rep without it, so, as much as I hate being helped, I accept it. The bar is barely moving, but it is moving upward. Inch by inch, straining with every fiber, I get the bar up, and James takes it and racks it for me.

  The other three guys are all watching me, impressed.

  “That was a hell of a set,” Franco says.

  An awkward silence, then, as I sit on the bench and try to recover my breath.

  One by one, the guys check their phones and shuffle their feet.

  I realize these are lame signals to one another to leave James and I alone in…

  Three…

  Two…

  One…

  “So, I, uh…” Ryder checks his phone again, even though he just did. “I have a potential client looking for a bid, so I have to go.”

  “Same,” Franco says. “I have a custom armoire to finish. Needs a bit more sanding and a couple coats of stain.”

  Jesse looks at Ryder and Franco, and then at James, and then at me; his grin is mischievous and shit-eating. “Not me. I ain’t got shit to do. You wanna shoot some hoops, J?”

  James rolls his eyes. “Funny, Jess. Very funny.”

  “For real. I ain’t got anything going on.” His grin says he’s enjoying fucking with James.

  “Yes, you do,” Franco says, kicking Jesse’s foot. “You’re helping me with the armoire, remember?”

  Jesse isn’t letting it go. He glances at me, winking. “Ohhhh, I see what’s going on. You guys want to be alone so you can pretend to not like each other some more.”

  James hurls a clamp at Jesse. “You are such a jackass.”

  I smirk at James. “I mean, it was kinda funny.”

  James frowns at me. “Do NOT encourage his dumb ass, Nova.”

  I snicker, and James rolls his eyes, trying to hold the frown, but he can’t. Eventually he starts laughing, and waves at Jesse. “Get out of here, moron.”

  Jesse tosses the clamp back to James and heads for his truck. “If I’m a moron, what does that make you?”

  There’s a chorus of diesel engines coughing, snarling, and grumbling to thunderous life, followed by thick-knobbed tires crunching in gravel, and then James and I are alone. James has a canister of antibacterial wipes, and he’s wiping down the benches; I take a couple and wipe down the bars and plates and rerack everything in its own place.

  “You don’t have to help,” James says.

  I just shrug. “Thanks for letting me crash your workout.”

  “We’re here Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings at six,” he says. “You’re always welcome.”

  I look at him, gauging his sincerity—in my experience, people sometimes offer things but often half hope you’ll decline. I kind of do want to accept; I’ve been working out alone for years, and I miss the camaraderie of having friends to razz me into finishing the rep, friends to shoot the shit with between sets.

  But I don’t know that being around James that much is a great idea. Honestly, I’m being pulled in opposite directions right now: half of me wants to throw myself at him, and the other half wants to bolt for the door.

  The weights are racked, the barbells are slotted back in their holder, the benches are wiped down and pushed in; James shuts off the lights and heads outside, and I follow. He rests his forearms on the hood of his truck, and his eyes fix on me.

  His gaze is speculative, filled with thoughts and feelings I don’t know how to read. “Gonna make a protein shake. You want some?”

  I do. I want to be in his kitchen with him. I want to talk to him. Be near him.

  I want a repeat of what happened in my kitchen.

  I want more than that.

  But I’m scared. Of him—of my feelings. Of his feelings. Of him not returning my feelings. Of him being unwilling to indulge in his feelings out of guilt or loyalty to Renée. I can’t compete with a ghost, and I will not try.

  I stare at him steadily, and decide to try. He’s making a step toward me, letting me crash his workout, and now inviting me, alone, into his kitchen.

  “Sure,” I say.

  “You off today?” he asks, opening his truck door.

  I nod, climbing up into my own truck. “Yep. Next three days. Longest stretch I’ve had off in months, actually.”

  “Got plans?” he asks, hesitating before turning his engine on.

  I shake my head. “Not really. Organize some closets, maybe. Catch up on reading, and maybe catch up on a few shows. I’ve got some episodes of Schitt’s Creek I’ve been saving for a stretch of time off.”

  “Sounds exciting,” he says with a laugh. “Meet you at the house.”

  I head out first, and he follows, hopping out after he’s pulled through the fence to close and lock the gate behind himself. I park at the end of the driveway, the nose of the truck facing the street. When I go in through the side door into James’s kitchen, I find him chopping the heads off fresh strawberries.

  I watch. “You said you were making a protein shake?”

  He nudges a giant canister of whey protein. “I am.”

  “I thought you meant, like, in a shaker bottle.”

  He taps his blender, which is filled, so far, with chunks of banana, handfuls of spinach, blueberries, and apple slices; he’s finished with the strawberries and tosses them into the blender. “I like to blend. Makes the shake more fun. If I’m on the go, sure, I’ll just toss some protein in a bottle with water and shake it up. But if I have time, I like to fancy it up a little.”

  He adds almond milk, half a dozen scoops of berry-flavored whey, some ice cubes, and then fastens the top on to the blender and starts it up. A few seconds of noisy clatter as the ice breaks up, and then the mixture begins to smooth out. Once it’s done, he pours the shake into two large plastic tumblers and hands me one; we tap our tumblers together, and drink a few sips in silence.

  I wait for James.

  He’s looking at me like he has something on his mind but, so far, hasn’t said anything.

  Half my shake is gone, and the silence is beyond awkward and into downright agonizing.

  Finally, staring into his tumbler, he sighs. “Nova, I…” He takes another long drink, more for something to do while coming up with what to say than anything, I think. “About the other day, at your house…”

  I wait in silence, keeping my eyes on his.

  “I just…” Another heavy sigh. “I’ve relived that moment a million times, and it hurts more every single time.”

  “Which particular moment, James?” I ask, even though I know.

  He looks at me, pained. “You know, Nova.” I don’t answer that, and James swirls the dregs of his shake. “I know I’ve already apologized and explained, I just…I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “And I told you I understand as well as anyone can.”

  “Doesn’t change it.” He finishes the shake and rinses out the tumbler. “You were crying when I went into your room.”

  I nod. “Yes, I was.” I shrug; I go for blunt honesty, not to hurt him but because it’s just my way. “I don’t cry easily, James.”

  He winces. “You don’t seem like the type.” He hesitates. “It really hurt you.”

  I nod. Go for more brutal truth. “After Craig passed away, I…I guess you could say I sort of went through a period of time where I did everything I could to pretend to myself that I was fine. I grieved, sort of—cried a lot, lay in bed for days until friends dragged me out of bed and forced me to shower and eat, that whole scene. But then I snapped—not like a stick breaking, but like a rubber band. I didn’t crumble, I didn’t turn to drugs or drinking.” I swallow hard. “Until then, I’d been very…conservative, sexually. Few partners, and only ever with someone I was emotionally involved with.”

  I pause. Think. Gather words. I’m not sure why I’m telling him this. I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m not proud of it, either. My feelings about it are, to be honest, very complicated.

  “Craig was my last romantic partner. The last person I was involved with emotionally.” I hesitate again. “I stayed alone for a long time. Six months? Close to a year, maybe, while I recalibrated, trying to figure out what I wanted out of life after losing Craig. I moved away, went back to school. I knew no one, had no friends, no family around—I was just utterly alone. And so, so lonely.”

  James nods. “That’s rough. I always had Jesse, Franco, and Ryder. I don’t know what I’d have done without them.”

  I sigh. “I got sick of being alone and lonely. I needed…companionship. So I tried going on a date.” I laugh bitterly. “That didn’t go well.”

  “No?”

  “Panic attack. Straight up panic attack. Couldn’t breathe, heart palpitating, the whole nine yards.”

  “Ouch.”

  I nod. “I tried a couple more times, but I couldn’t make it through a date without panicking. And then one day I got invited to a party by a classmate.” I roll a shoulder. “I got a little tipsy, and out of sheer desperation to feel anything besides pain and loneliness, I let the guy who’d invited me take me to his apartment. I was…not quite sober, but only buzzed enough that I could get past my hang-up. Sort of. He started feeling me up, and I stopped him, told him I couldn’t stay the night, hoping he’d catch my drift. He just laughed and was like, I wasn’t planning on asking you to. So that was that. And for the first time in my life, I had a one-night stand.”

  James keeps his expression neutral. “I see.”

  I drop my eyes. “That was the start of what I guess I’d call an experimental phase. I coped with my fucked-up feelings through sex. Casual, short-term, no-strings sex.” A pause, and let it all hang out. “A lot of it. But none of it was…” I drift off, hunting for a word.

  “Real?” James suggests.

  I nod. “Yeah.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No.” I scoff, and then frown, tilting my head and rethinking that. “I mean, yes, to a degree. For about two years, I tried to cover the heartache and loneliness with sex, and for a while it was fun. I did enjoy myself, I’m not gonna lie about that. Unless something touched on my hard limits, I went with it.” I blush, because it’s hard to talk about this with James. “But after a while, it became…harder and harder to pretend I didn’t feel weird about it. I think by nature I’m just a monogamous person—a one-man kind of gal. Things just caught up to me, I guess. I really don’t know how to put it. I didn’t feel guilty, and I don’t now. I don’t regret it, and I’m not embarrassed by it. I learned a lot about myself, and about what I liked and wanted, and what I didn’t.”

  James nods. “Good. You shouldn’t be ashamed or feel guilty.”

  “I guess with you having only ever been with one woman—”

  James cuts me off. “That was a choice I made for myself. I found the woman I loved early on in life, and I was damned lucky to have her in my life for thirty years, married to her for twenty of them. But just because I chose her and only her doesn’t mean I pass judgment on others for making different decisions.”

  “I appreciate that,” I say. I finish my shake and rinse out the tumbler, leave it in the sink with James’s. “So, anyway, once I realized my little experimental, casual sex phase was over, I realized I’d only put off the real work of dealing with things.”

  James chuckles. “Boy, do I identify with that. Grieving is one thing, but really healing and moving on? That’s a lot fucking harder.”

  “No kidding.” I pause, meeting his eyes. “After that, I…closed up shop, you might say.”

  James blinks. “Totally?”

  I nod. “Totally and completely.”

  “For how long?”

  “A long, long time,” I say.

  “How long?” James repeats.

  I frown. “Three years. Or, almost.“ I sigh. “I went about…two years right after the experimental phase, and then I met a guy when I first got the job in the hospital here, a nurse in the palliative care ward. I liked him, and I thought I could…I don’t know. I thought I could work past things.”

  James rests his forearms on the island between us, leaning closer to me. “Not so much, I take it.”