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“They’re going to try to make me the newest member of Diamond’s Gym,” Addie said, grinning.
“Now,” I said. “I never said anything about trying to sell you on the place. It’s just a tryout. Of course, I can’t make any promises about Ben…”
Barbara and Corinne both laughed. “I’ll bet!” Corinne said.
“Well, you two have fun,” said Barbara. To Corinne, she added playfully, “Just don’t strain yourself too much, honey. We don’t want you too sore to come to work tomorrow.”
“I promise,” she said, “I’ll take it easy.” Then, with a glance in my direction, “Or as easy as Ben lets me.”
And with another laugh, we all excused ourselves and went out into the early Cincinnati evening.
CHAPTER16
Corinne. Thursday evening
It was at Diamond’s Gym that I saw Elijah out of business attire for the first time. For his workout, he wore a low-cut tank top that showed off how his chest was finely dusted with hair and very short shorts that could have doubled as a swimsuit, and sneakers.
The sight made my blood race around my body like it didn’t know where to go. Some of it collected in my nipples and turned them into marbles. I felt myself getting a little wetter in another, lower place as well.
I let Ben walk me through the gym, showing me all the devices made to enable people to pump themselves into whatever state of buffness they wanted. I went through a variety of low-impact sets on different machines, just enough to “feel the burn,” as they say. The burn that I felt the most, though, was from stealing looks at the spectacle of Elijah on his “arms and chest day.”
He was concentrating on what he was doing, but in the process, he was showing me just how he got that collection of muscles of his so hard and tight, so lean, so perfectly shaped.
He started on a bench where he leaned back, working his arms with free weights. With a weight in each hand, he went through his reps, raising first one arm and then the other, one arm and then the other. I watched those biceps bulge and relax, bulge and relax, and it was almost hypnotic. He worked up just the finest sheen of sweat, which played on his skin in the light, and he puffed just a bit, but he didn’t seem to be tiring himself out because he just never let up.
You must have to do that all the time, I thought,to be so accustomed to putting your body through that kind of effort.
He next seated himself at a contraption where he set the weights for a certain amount, then grabbed a handle in each hand and pulled his hands towards each other, then spread them back apart again, making the metal weights in the device go up and down as he went. This was for his chest.
I watched those muscles flex and relax repeatedly and saw him puff hard with the effort and concentration. The hairs of his chest were the only delicate thing about them; those pecs were as hard as they were beautiful, and they glistened as subtly in the light as his arms did.
I could imagine how he must be in a different kind of “workout” — one that he did in bed with a partner, humping and puffing away, flexing that chest while exerting the same kind of concentrated effort with a different part of his anatomy. Only Ben’s patient voice kept my attention on what I was doing.
The next part of Elijah’s workout was done lying on his back on another bench. Once again taking a free weight in each hand, he lifted them all the way up and lowered them again in succession. His whole physique was laid out like an exhibit as he worked, flexing and releasing those muscles time after time.
He looked so amazing, I thought Ben should charge admission to this place both for access to the machinesandfor the sight of Elijah going through his routine.
Once we were finished — Elijah having definitely put himself through much tougher paces than I had — we retired to a little juice bar at one end of the gym, where we sat and talked over cold drinks. Elijah draped a towel over his shoulders. His hair was tousled cutely, and it may have been just my imagination, but his gym-clothed body seemed to glow in the wake of his exercise routines. He didn’t seem at all tired, just satisfied; and I quietly thought to myself how much satisfaction that body was able to produce. It had to bequitea bit.
The conversation turned to an innocent question from Ben. “You never mentioned what made you pick Cincinnati as a place to move. What brought you here? Was it just the job?”
Elijah grinned when he said, “Out of all the Call Centers in all the IT firms in the world…”
It was an innocent question, and it wasn’t as if it were a state secret or anything. There was no reason not to want to tell them. So, I replied honestly, “Part of it was for the job. There was an offer, and it was a good one.” I flashed Elijah a little grin, and he twitched his eyebrows playfully at me. “And there was something else, a little more…personal.”
“Personal?” Elijah inquired.
“Wanting to make a break with another part of my life,” I explained. “There was something I wanted to put behind me — something you might call an investment that I made that didn’t pay off the way I thought it would, to put it in business terms.”
“What kind of investment?” Elijah wondered.
“A personal investment,” I said. “An investment of…myself, I guess you’d call it. An investment in a relationship. One that ended.”
With that, I had the rapt attention of both guys. I didn’t necessarily feel as if I were about to be hit on, by any means, but I guess it’s natural for great-looking guys to be intrigued when they hear that a girl is “on the market,” so to speak.
“Breakup with a boyfriend, then,” Ben guessed.
After a swallow of my mango juice, I nodded. “It wasn’t going where I thought it was, and there wasn’t any point in holding on. It was sad, but it had to end.” I thought of elaborating, telling them that Blake wanted to keep things as they were but I wanted to move our lives ahead to another stage. But, I stopped there. I was feeling good and didn’t want to cloud it with sad memories.