I cross my fingers behind my back. She’s busy reading a printout of tonight’s sales numbers—hopefully great numbers that’ll put her in a good mood.
“Steph? If you haven’t assigned side work for tonight yet, I’d be happy to refill the ketchup bottles.”
Her gaze doesn’t leave the printout. “What do you want?”
I take a deep breath. “Can I take Sunday morning off work?”
“What for?”
“There’s this guy—”
She gapes and sets the sales numbers in a vat of sour cream. That’s gotta be some sort of health hazard.
“You want to take off work to do something with a guy?”
“Yeah—” I’m about to explain about the race, but she cuts me off, grinning and pulling me into a side hug.
“You can do whatever you want, kid.”
Well. That was easy.
What’s not so easy?
My personal training session with Matt on Wednesday.
The gym he works at has an indoor track, and to make my heart stronger, he’s making me do suicide sprints. He set five cones out on the track. The drill goes like this: run to first cone, run back to start, run to second cone, run back to start, and so on. To keep me distracted from his evil exercises, he always keeps a steady flow of conversation going, telling me about the house he and Kate just bought together for when they get married and listing the movies he wants to see, but after seven sets of suicides, salty sweat is pouring down my face and burning my eyes, and I’m hunched over on my knees, panting like a thirsty dog.
Matt hands me a cup of water, and as soon as I’ve sucked it down, he leads me back to the track for more jogging.
“I’m gonna die,” I say after three miles.
“If you don’t push yourself now, you won’t make it through the whole race.”
“I will finish it,” I growl.
Matt grins. “That’s what I like to hear.”
After something like a gazillion sit-ups and push-ups and squats, my hip hurts like someone took a drill to it.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I say, clutching my hipbone.
“Let’s go stretch it out.”
On a mat on the floor, Matt starts pushing on my thigh. That gives me an intense stretch, but it’s odd having him kneel between my legs.
“This. Is. Awkward,” I say, grunting.
Matt laughs, putting my legs into a pretzel-ish position, and pushes down on my knees. God, if I saw someone else doing this, I’d totally think it was foreplay. I decide to shut my eyes and pray for this to be over as soon as possible.
“Well, this sure is interesting.”
I open my eyes to find Jeremiah. Without a shirt on. Watching his brother stretch me in a way that probably looks like dry humping.
“What do you need?” Matt asks his brother. “I’m working.”
Jeremiah slips his ear buds out. “I had a question for Annie.”
Matt looks from his younger brother to me. I’m still in the most. Awkward. Position. Ever.
“Are we on for Sunday?” Jeremiah asks.
“What’s Sunday?” Matt says, raising an eyebrow.
“I invited Annie to run a 5K with me.”
“Yeah, I can go,” I say, which makes Matt fit to be tied.
“Why did neither of you ask me?” he grumbles.
“Because you’d get your panties in a wad,” Jeremiah says.
“For the thousandth time, I do not wear panties.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Guys,” I say in a strong tone. Well, as strong as I can manage when my trainer is holding my butt off the ground and my legs are wide open, straight up in the air, while two brothers are arguing about panties. “Matt, is it okay if I run the 5K? I was going to ask you later today—I want to use it as my regular Sunday training run.”
“You can do it as long as you don’t push yourself too hard. Sometimes when people run their first race, they get excited, they hightail it, hurt themselves, and it messes up their whole training schedule.”
“I won’t let that happen,” Jeremiah says seriously.
“You better not. Now, go away, Jere. We have to finish her workout.”
“I’ll pick you up on Sunday morning, Annie. I’ll text you to figure out details.”
“Okay,” I reply breathily, as Matt makes a pretzel out of my legs again.
Jeremiah heads over to the weights, muttering, “His panties are so in a wad.”
Matt tells me to sit up and do the splits, then plops down in front of me, doing the same. He takes my hands in his and pulls me forward so my nose is touching the mat.