Rescue You

by Elysia Whisler

Constance blinked at the man who held the door. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  Chicken. Sunny’s taunt ran through her head. As if on autopilot, Constance crossed the road. Something deep inside her pushed forward, making her feet go, one in front of the other, until she was right at the entrance.

  The gym’s bay doors were wide open, despite the chill. Inside, a large group of people stood in a circle, near metal rigging, which had bars and rings and racks. Constance stepped in and stood in the back, unnoticed.

  She’d never seen a gym like this. Racks of barbells and stacks of weights lined the north wall, along with a shelf of kettlebells, dumbbells and mats. Boxes were stacked in the corner, a dozen or more deep. Ropes hung from the ceiling, but were secured behind the rig, out of the way of the large, open work space. A huge tire was tucked in the corner. A tire? What the hell would they do with a tire? Rap music played softly from the speakers.

  A muscular woman stood at the head of the circle, speaking to the group as she gestured toward a large whiteboard. She had her hair in a ponytail and her eyebrows looked recently plucked and shaped. Nothing else fancy about her, though—no makeup or jewelry, just one small hoop earring at the top curve of her ear.

  Even from a distance, Constance could read the bold, black writing on the board.

  1 Rope Climb.

  10 Front Rack Lunges, per leg, 75/55.

  2 Rope Climbs.

  25 Kettlebell Swings, 53/36.

  15 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls, 75/55.

  20 Goblet Squats.

  3 Rope Climbs.

  20 Front Squats.

  15 Kettlebell Sumo Deadlift High Pulls.

  4 Rope Climbs.

  10 Kettlebell Snatches.

  Whatever all that meant.

  Constance glanced around the room. The crowd was mixed. About twenty people, male and female, some with seriously muscled physiques, some not. All ages. There was a young couple who kept whispering and glancing at two small kids, plopped behind a baby gate with an assortment of toys. A tall lady wearing a WOD Now, Wine Later tank top. A man with more tattoos than bare skin. An elderly gentleman with a potbelly and big pecs.

  “Everybody start the warm-up.” The coach pointed at the whiteboard. “Right here. Then we’ll go over the movements for the workout.”

  Constance knew she should introduce herself, but that autopilot feeling hadn’t gone away. She read the warm-up, then peeled off her coat. A second later, she found herself doing jumping jacks. Constance ran through the movements on the warm-up list, most self-explanatory. When she started to struggle through push-ups, a tap came on her shoulder.

  “Hi,” the coach said. “I’m Zoe. Are you new?”

  “Um. Yes.” Constance was keenly aware of her outdated fitness clothes. Capri tights from college, a sports bra that cut into her back and an old T-shirt that, alas, had a unicorn on the front. None of her old running clothes fit anymore and these had been the only passable things in her closet.

  Oh, hell, who was she kidding? She’d never intended to go to spin class or anywhere else and hadn’t cared what she put on this morning. Yet, here she was, doing push-ups without permission in a strange gym for people who played with tractor tires.

  Had she gone insane?

  “Okay. I’ll get you a waiver. Keep warming up, but go ahead and do those push-ups on your knees.”

  Constance was a sweaty mess when the warm-up was over. Part of her felt like she’d already done her workout, but the really fit people hadn’t even broken a sweat. She glanced at the entrance. The door was only a few steps away and it was so crowded nobody would notice if she slipped out, just like nobody had noticed when she’d slipped in. Through the window she spied the bakery.

  Zoe turned down the music and clapped her hands together. “All right, guys, let’s start going over this workout.” She looked toward the rear of the gym and called out, “Rhett, you joining us?”

  Everyone turned in that direction. Constance, two steps from the exit, froze. This was the first time she’d noticed the man on the far left of the gym. He worked alone, on a raised platform, his body deep in a squat with a loaded barbell on his shoulders. He stood up, rolled the bar off his back with a clang! and shook his head.

  “C’mon,” Zoe goaded. “This one’s right up your alley.”

  “Yeah, Rhett,” someone else yelled. “Come kick our asses!”

  Rhett—tall, dark-haired and built like a brick house—shrugged. “Fine.”

  * * *

  Constance tilted her head and stared up at the rope, attached to the twenty-foot-high ceiling. People really climbed that. Grown adults, not little kids in a gymnastics class. She wouldn’t have believed it, except many of the people around her were already doing it. Quickly.

  Everything was supposed to be done quickly, Zoe had said. The goal was to complete the workout as fast as possible. Everybody started at the same time, and everybody did the same thing. Except if you couldn’t do something, like climb a rope fifteen feet, then you scaled the movement to your ability. Constance grasped the hemp and tried to remember what her scale was.

  “Lower yourself to the ground—” Zoe raised her voice over Lil Wayne, booming from the speakers “—then back up.” She pantomimed, her biceps flexing.

  Constance gave it a go, but the rope slipped in her hands and she fell hard, on her ass. She paused a second before standing up and grasping the rope again, refusing to look around to see if anyone had noticed her spill. Why the hell had she come here? The last thing she needed in her life was another reason to feel weak.

  “Tighten.” Zoe was by her side, one hand on her midsection and the other on her lower back. “Tighten your core as you lower yourself down.”

  Tighten your core? Oh. Okay. Tighten rectus abdominis and quadratus lumborum. Glutes. Quads. Now you’re speaking my language. Constance gritted her teeth and rappelled her way to the floor. Zoe helped guide her until she was flat on her back.

  “Yep,” Zoe said. “Nice. Now pull back up.”

  Constance sucked in her breath and hauled her way back to her feet. Her biceps, triceps and delts screamed. Functional fitness, Zoe had said. Everything about Semper Fit was supposed to be functional—fitness you could translate to real life. When the hell am I ever going to need to climb a rope? A middle-aged woman, off in the corner, was doing the same scaling option with the rope. She slipped and struggled, too. Feeling a little less helpless, Constance started in on the next movement on the list: lunges.

  By the time she was done with the lunges and started in on two more rope climbs, sweat was dripping down her face.

  “You can do it,” Zoe said, smiling big and baring her dimples.

  Constance took a deep breath, now completely unable to dwell on why she’d left her warm bed this morning. Why she’d bothered to dare dump trucks in the first place. All that mattered was getting through this. She lowered herself to the ground, much more gracefully this time, then braced to pull back up. The guy next to her—Rhett—caught her eye. He jumped on his rope, stuck out his legs and, without even using his feet, ascended to a piece of blue duct tape, which he tapped before he sailed down the rope, quicker than he’d climbed it. Without pause, he jumped and did a second rope climb, zipped down and picked up his kettlebell and began swinging it from between his legs to overhead.

  Just like that.

  Zoe, who’d moved off to help others, reappeared and loomed above her. “C’mon, Constance. You’re doing great! Let’s go!” She waved a hand in Rhett’s direction. “Don’t worry about him. C’mon!”

  Constance watched Rhett a second longer. A powerhouse of energy, his traps and pecs bumped out beneath a T-shirt that read Westside Barbell. Each kettlebell swing was so controlled and well executed he made it look easy. And he was using a bigger kettlebell than the other men.

  Maybe it was easy—at least for him. Con
stance grabbed the baby kettlebell at her feet, the smallest one in the gym.

  “Pop the hips,” Zoe said, pantomiming the practice they’d had with the bell before the workout began.

  Constance’s heart pounded in her throat. All her nerve endings were on fire and her lungs were tight, her throat dry. But she saw Rhett, from the corner of her eye, doing one swing after another, without pause. There were supposed to be twenty-five in a row, according to that whiteboard. Holy mother, Constance thought as she attempted to swing the bell over her head. It flashed up near her brow, then swung back down, pulling her forward and making her stumble.

  “Keep tight,” Zoe said. “And use those hips to get it up there.” She lifted an unmanned kettlebell, much larger than what Constance was using, and held it between her thighs. She pushed her butt back, kept her back flat, then popped her hips forward as she swung. The bell rose without much visible effort. “Keep it right here,” Zoe said as the bell rose to about eye level. “I want you to do Russian swings. When you come down, use the momentum to swing it up again.”

  Constance sucked in her breath and gave it another go. The bell swung a little smoother, a little higher. She felt a surge of accomplishment creep inside the bundle of screaming nerves and rivulets of sweat trickling down her back, chest, face and stomach.

  “Ten,” Zoe said, holding both hands open. “Not twenty-five. We’re scaling your load. Just do ten. You’re doing great!”

  Time was a blur. The seconds and minutes crushed in on themselves and became nothing but sweat and heartbeats, fear and excitement. Once Constance completed everything on the whiteboard, she fell flat on her back and stared at the ceiling, the rope dangling between her legs as she sucked wind.

  Physically, she was in just as bad shape as when she started. Something was different, though. Constance gasped for air and tried to make sense of her scrambled brain.

  “Good job.” Zoe beamed above her, her hand outstretched for a high five.

  Constance smacked it, but laughed at herself. Zoe was a good coach, acting like Constance had done something awesome, even though she was the very last person to finish, despite all her scaling, and was now lying there, unable to move.

  She figured she’d stay there, until everybody left, unwilling to face the aftermath—the giggling and the chatter and the discourse on the evils of bacon. But then another person showed up, the other lady who’d scaled her rope climbs, and she, too, gave Constance a high five. One after another, it seemed like the entire class was there, smiling down on her, slapping her palm, giving her praise.

  What the hell?

  Constance returned all the high fives, incapable of fleeing, even if she wanted to. The timer on the wall, with its bright red numbers, caught her eye. The clock had stopped at just after fifteen minutes, which would’ve been close to Constance’s time. Just fifteen short minutes. A fraction of the time she used to spend training for marathons. Half of your standard sitcom on TV. The amount of time you give someone when you just need a few moments to get your shit together.

  Yet, those were some of the longest fifteen minutes of Constance’s life.

  “Nice work, My Pretty Pony.”

  Constance blinked the sweat—tears?—from her eyes and looked up. A man loomed above her, hand outstretched. He was mostly a blur. Sweat dripped from his forehead, landing on Constance’s chest. She went to give him the high five that apparently was expected, but he clasped her fingers and hauled her to her feet.

  Rhett, she realized, once her vision cleared. The guy who had climbed that rope like he could fly. “Thanks.” Constance hoped he’d been too focused on his own workout to see any of hers. Then again, he’d finished way ahead of her. In fact, Constance was pretty sure he’d finished before everybody.

  “First time?” He glanced at her shirt. His eyes had a bit of a sparkle to them. Amusement, maybe.

  “Yeah.” Constance remembered what she was wearing. Her cheeks burned. Then she realized she still clasped his fingertips. She released him, her cheeks burning hotter.

  “Nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  And then he was gone, off high-fiving others and gathering his bag in what seemed like a rush to get out as quickly as possible. “Zoe, I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Sure.”

  Constance noted a slight hitch in his gate. It was nothing anyone else would see, but Constance’s eye was trained. If she had to guess, he’d injured his right quad. He stopped in front of the whiteboard, wrote down his name and then some numbers beside it. Sweaty people queued up, taking their turns with the dry-erase pen.

  “Name and time on the board,” Zoe said, once Constance was through mopping her face with the hem of her T-shirt. “Promotes community. Measures progress.”

  “Right.” Her mind was still on Rhett. There was something about him that she couldn’t quite shake. He’d touched her right after he’d spoken to her, so she’d gotten the full thrust of his energy right up front. It was overwhelming, but not in a bad way. Kind of like getting smacked by a wave that was bigger than you expected. It stung, but you were so impressed you couldn’t be mad about it. He reminded her of that old adage: Never turn your back on the ocean.

  Constance pressed the tip of the marker to the board and wrote her name, beneath all the others, as neatly as she could. Most of the times were between twelve and fifteen minutes, but Constance was dead last at 15:14. Most people had scaled the workout in some way, even if it was just lower weight for the lunges and front squats. Rhett was at the top, his time 8:01, with Rx written after. As prescribed, Constance thought. He hadn’t scaled at all and he’d still beaten everyone.

  “I don’t remember seeing you before.” The middle-aged woman who’d also scaled her rope climbs stood before her, with a foam roller in either hand. “I’m Sally.” She offered a foam roller, which Constance took. Sally plopped down on the floor and shoved the roller beneath her butt. “You did great today.” Her dark hair was stuck to her cheeks as she braced her weight on her hands and rolled out her glutes and hamstrings.

  Constance lowered herself to the floor and joined in. Nothing was sore yet, but she figured by tomorrow she might have a tough time walking. “Thanks. I’m Constance.”

  “That’s not a name you hear every day.”

  “It was my grandma’s.”

  “Do you go by Connie?”

  “No.”

  Sally chuckled. “Okay.” A little pause passed, as though Sally expected her to say more. When she didn’t, Sally changed the subject. “I remember my first day—” Sally leaned into the foam roller “—and it was nothing like today. Just some air squats and push-ups. Pull-ups with a band. If I’d have been faced with that—” she gestured to the whiteboard “—I’d have left. You’re brave.”

  Constance wanted to laugh, but bit down on her lower lip. “I used to be a runner. Cross-country in high school. A few marathons. Tough. But this was hard in a different way. I haven’t run in a while. I guess that’s obvious.” She gestured at her sweaty, old clothes, and was suddenly back to that day, when she’d gone out to surprise Josh. Wednesday morning, which meant a trail run in the park. Cumberland Trail. Constance hadn’t joined him in longer than she could remember, which was probably why he hadn’t been expecting her. Neither had the woman next to him—blonde, slender and stretching out her hamstrings on a tree stump.

  Constance blinked, and the image of Josh with his new running partner vanished.

  She turned to the whiteboard, avoiding Sally’s curious gaze. “In my dreams I’ll do this workout in eight minutes.” She thought back to Rhett’s figure as he flew up that rope.

  Sally followed her gaze, then shrugged. “Don’t measure yourself by Rhett. Or go ahead...reach for the stars.” She grunted as she wedged the foam roller deep into her hamstrings. “He owns this place. He’s a war veteran. Marines. Always on top.” Sally laughed, h
er heavy bosom shaking. “But Rhett’s not into these workouts as much as the other coaches. He coaches the weight lifting and prefers to spend his time over there.” Sally waved at the corner with the platforms.

  A combat vet. She knew that. She’d known it before she knew it. That’s why he seemed familiar. “Nice guy?” Constance peered out the doorway, but Rhett had disappeared.

  “Eh, I don’t know about nice,” Sally said. “Great athlete. Great coach. Doesn’t take any shit. But motivating.” She lowered her voice and leaned closer, even though nobody else was within earshot. “I heard he was hurt in Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or...maybe both. Hell, I don’t know. He’s got a Purple Heart.” She touched her chest. “Who knows what he went through.”

  Constance rolled her hamstrings slowly over the foam tube and realized that not once, in that brief yet grueling workout, had her mind been anywhere but in the moment. She hadn’t thought about the past year at all. Not about Josh. Or Daddy’s long battle with cancer. Nothing. That workout had forced her brain to be put on hold. Her body had suffered terribly, but her brain had gotten some rare respite.

  She glanced over and saw that Sally was wrapping up her cooldown.

  “Well,” Sally said, rising. “You coming back tomorrow?”

  Coming back? Constance hadn’t even considered it. “Maybe,” she said. “Thanks for the encouragement.”

  “Hey,” Sally said. “We need all we can get.”

  Sally wasn’t gone long before Zoe appeared. “Yeah? You loved it, right?” She beamed from ear to ear.

  “You and I—” Constance got to her feet with a groan “—have very different definitions of love.”

  Zoe laughed. “But seriously,” she said. “You did great. You’ve got heart.” She tapped her fist against her chest. “That was a tough workout for anyone, let alone a first-timer.”

  “Thanks.” Constance grabbed her water bottle, which was empty.

  “You can try out the week for free,” Zoe pressed.

  “Thanks. We’ll see.” Constance headed to her car.