by Alexis Daria
“Thanks. Too bad no one else knows that.”
“I have a hard time believing other people don’t see it. At least two-thirds of our high school baseball team was in love with you.” Including me.
“Then why didn’t I date anyone on the baseball team?”
“Because I said I’d go after them with a bat if they messed with you.”
“Ah. You always were an excellent hitter. But what about you? With that face and body, you must be kicking people out of bed left and right.”
He snorted and shook his head. “A few, here and there. I actually broke up with someone about a year ago. Well, I guess she broke up with me.”
“Was it serious?”
This was something he almost never talked about, but it was easy to open up to Michelle. “I think she wanted to get married eventually. And I don’t.”
“What happened?”
“The gym was more important.” Gabe knew how it sounded, saying that right after sex. It was laying down a boundary, but it was what he did now, what the people he had sex with needed to know about him. The business was his number-one priority.
Liv, his ex, had never understood that. She’d come from money, and work had been a lark to her, something to pass the time between vacations. She’d hated that Gabe couldn’t take off on “weekend getaways” with her whenever she felt like going to Napa or Vegas or Sedona.
Michelle didn’t ask him to elaborate. She just unplugged her laptop from where it was charging on the kitchen counter. “Then we’d better get started.”
“I’ve gotta get my stuff,” Gabe said, glad for the chance to get out of the kitchen. He needed to shake the feeling that he’d revealed more of himself than he’d intended. Sharing with Michelle felt too easy, too right.
He ran upstairs to the bedroom that once again held his suitcase. He should’ve known his attempt to leave would be met with failure. With a sigh, Gabe pulled out his laptop and ergonomic Bluetooth mouse and mouse pad. He knew way too much about hand and finger-joint injuries to use the touch pad, and even the laptop keyboard, despite being a larger one, was pushing it. It was why he was going to teach the hand therapy class with Charisse when he got back to LA.
Downstairs, he sat across from Michelle at the old wooden dining table where they used to sit side by side doing homework. It wasn’t ideal positioning, since they’d have to spin their laptops around to show each other something on the screen, but having the table between them was symbolic of the distance they were trying to maintain.
Michelle had her laptop, a mouse, a fancy notebook, and at least half a dozen pens in different colors spread out next to her.
Once Gabe finished setting up, Michelle spun her laptop to face him.
“There’s a bit of a disconnect with your branding,” she said, getting right to business. The screen showed a website he was very familiar with—the Agility Gym home page.
“The design is . . . fine,” she went on. “But it’s very cold.”
There was that word again. Fine. And the website had cost over two thousand dollars.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s . . . okay. I would have done better, but not everyone is me.”
Gabe frowned at the website, which showed an artsy photograph of a fitness model lifting weights. “What do you mean?”
She gave him a look like she couldn’t believe how dense he was being. “It’s light blue, slate blue, and navy blue.”
“That last one is Yankees blue,” he pointed out. He’d been proud of that choice.
“Gabe. This branding was clearly designed by two dudebros. It’s boring.”
Before he could dispute being called a dudebro, she moved the cursor and opened the “About Us” page on the website.
“Look here,” she said, pointing at the photo of Gabriel and Fabian. “This looks like it’s out of some beefcake calendar, like ‘Real Househusbands of the Los Angeles Gym Scene.’”
Gabe groaned and covered his face. “It was our investor’s idea and that’s exactly what he was going for.”
“Really?” Michelle gave the picture a skeptical glance. “You look like two guys from the high school wrestling team about to win the dance battle that will save the rec center.”
A teen movie reference was absolutely not what Gabe was going for. “It’s not great.”
“The first thing we have to do is reconcile what your brand is saying about you and what you want it to say about you.”
“Me?”
“The gym, Gabe. Keep up. You’re the face of the gym. It’s named after you, right? Aguilar. Agility.”
He nodded, pleased that she got it.
But then she shrugged and added, “It’s a little heavy-handed but I guess your clientele doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice.”
Before he could comment, she shoved a sheet of paper at him.
“Fill this out and let me know when you’re done.” She took her laptop back and popped on a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
Gabe stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and looked at the paper. Michelle had always been this way. Her brain moved a mile a minute, especially when she was working out a problem.
When he reached for one of her pens, she swatted his hand away. After digging in a black zippered pouch that literally said Don’t Touch My Pens on it, she passed him a regular ballpoint pen with a bank logo on it.
He accepted it with a sigh and got to work. But after skimming the questions on the paper, he scowled. Shit like “What are your brand’s core values?” and “How would you identify your ideal customer avatar?” made him sweat. How did you even put such abstract concepts into words? He flipped the paper over to make some notes and saw—god help him—that there were questions on both sides.
He was almost at the end—having skipped at least half of the questions—when Michelle shifted the headphones down to rest around her neck.
“Here’s a question for you,” she said. “Fabian is Haitian, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re Mexi-Rican. Except none of that Latinx flavor is present in your brand. Why is your website full of photos of white people?” It was clearly a rhetorical question, because she kept going. “Have you done any TV commercials?”
Gabe shook his head. “Not yet.”
Michelle tapped a pen against her lower lip as she skewered her laptop screen with a look of fierce concentration. “Maybe we could do something fun with music . . .”
Gabe tried to imagine playing merengue music in the gym. It was nearly impossible to picture. “I don’t think that fits the brand,” he said.
“Don’t you get it? You are the brand. You and Fabian. And there’s nothing of you guys in the messaging aside from this eighties porno picture.”
“It’s not—” He bit back his retort. She was trying to get under his skin. And of course, now that she’d said it, he couldn’t see the photo any other way. Fuck. “The brand reflects the clientele.”
She just raised her eyebrows in a way that said Whatever you say, asshole and went back to clicking with her mouse.
A few minutes later, Michelle’s phone chirped with an incoming call. When she glanced at the screen, her lips compressed into a thin line. She pressed the side button and it stopped ringing. Then she turned the volume off and placed the phone back on the table screen-down.
“Telemarketer?” Gabe asked.
“Ah, no.” Michelle made a show of looking at her laptop. “It was Ava.”
Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Since when do you ignore Ava?”
When they’d been kids, he’d been Michelle’s best school and neighborhood friend, but Ava and Jasmine had been her best cousins. He couldn’t imagine that had changed.
Michelle’s shoulders hunched. “Um . . . she still doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Really?” That surprised him. “Did you ever tell your cousins about . . .”
“About the day we got high and ripped each other’s clothe
s off?” Michelle capped her pen with a sharp snap. “Oh yeah. They know about that.”
Gabe shut his eyes. And prayed he didn’t run into Jasmine or Ava while he was here.
Next to him, his own phone buzzed with a text.
Fabian: How’s it going over there?
Fabian added an emoji of peeking eyeballs that managed to be nosy as hell for just a few pixels.
Michelle had popped her headphones back on and wasn’t paying attention to him, so Gabe lifted the phone and snapped a photo of her and her laptop, to prove they were working. But when he looked at the picture, all he could see was how beautifully Michelle’s cleavage was framed by the low V-neck of her Not Today, Satan tank top. If he sent that, Fabian would immediately suspect the truth. Instead, Gabe sent a photo of the half-filled branding worksheet Michelle had given him, and a short reply.
Gabe: We’re working.
Fabian: Have fun! But not too much fun.
And then he followed it with an animated GIF of Robert De Niro pointing at his eyes and then the camera with the caption I’m watching you.
With a weary sigh, Gabe turned back to his laptop. Fabian was right. He had to stay focused on the project. In this place full of memories, it was easy to forget the rest of the world still existed, and he needed to remember that he was here to do a job, not have a sex vacation with his childhood best friend. But despite his determination to keep his eyes on his own screen, Gabe’s gaze kept wandering across the table to Michelle. After a while, he leveled a glare her way. “This isn’t working.”
She blinked up at him. “What’s wrong?”
“You know what.”
Michelle glanced down at her cleavage, impressively displayed by the skimpy top. Her lips curved in a sly grin. “Oh. Am I distracting you?”
“Yes.” He ground out the word through clenched teeth and she laughed.
“Don’t you work in a gym? I’m sure you see sexy people in spandex all the time.”
They’re not you, he thought, but didn’t say it.
Actually, fuck it. What did he have to lose?
“They’re not you.” His voice was gravelly with desire. Shit, she turned him on so quickly.
Michelle gazed at him from under her lashes. “You can’t keep your eyes off me.”
He shot her a look full of exasperation. “Michelle, I’ve been attracted to you since we were fourteen. I’ve never been able to keep my eyes off you.”
Her lips pressed together and she looked down at the laptop. “Maybe you were better at hiding it.”
“Maybe you were better at ignoring it,” he retorted.
She shrugged. “Maybe both. Get back to work.”
Gabe tried. He really did. But the questions were frustrating him, and he had approximately eleven million emails coming through. He didn’t know how much time had passed before Michelle spoke again.
“How do you feel about some rebranding?”
Gabe looked up just as Michelle spun the laptop. Now the screen showed the Agility logo in red instead of blue, with a white star worked into the design. And while the website still retained some of its original blue tones, there were some bright pops of red balanced by green, white, and gold.
“How did you do that?” he asked, surprised by how much better it looked.
“A quick mock-up in Photoshop,” she replied. She tapped the touch pad and the flags of Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Haiti appeared on the screen. “Incorporating the color scheme and design elements of the flags is a subtle way to get the background of the owners into the branding.”
Gabe nodded. “Makes sense.”
She tapped the touch pad again and the picture from the “About” page appeared in a collage with some screenshots from Agility’s Instagram account.
“You two are also trainers, right?” she asked.
“I’m a physical therapist and Fabian studied sports medicine and business. But yeah, we’re also trainers.”
“Let’s show you both in action. Working with clients. Helping them achieve their best bodies and selves. Not posed and looking at the camera, but in the moment, doing what you do best. Which is not, I’m sad to say, modeling.”
“Hey, I did a little fitness modeling back in the day.”
“I believe it. You have a fantastic body. But this, Gabe, is your moneymaker.” She reached across the table with the pen and dug it gently into his cheek, where his dimple would be. “You’re not even smiling in this picture.”
He glanced at the photo of him and Fabian on Michelle’s screen. He’d felt so uncomfortable during that photo shoot, from the way they’d styled his hair to the tight outfits to the awkward poses.
And she was right. Gabe had been working his dimples since he was a teenager. Senior year, he’d taken a second job as a valet for an Italian restaurant. Most of the other guys had adopted a bored, lazy air, but Gabe had smiled at every single person who pulled into the lot. He asked about their day when they arrived, and when they left, he asked if they’d enjoyed the meal. Those tips had contributed to his “Get Out of the Bronx” savings fund.
The annoying thing was, it was something he’d learned from his dad. “A smile is your best customer service skill,” Esteban Aguilar used to say, and Gabe had spent years watching his father charm customers into buying more than they’d planned on when they walked in.
Too bad Esteban used up all that good humor at work. By the time he’d gotten home every night, he’d been tired and unapproachable.
“They told us not to smile,” Gabe said, gesturing at the picture.
Michelle shook her head. “They were wrong.”
If Gabe had previously harbored any doubt that Michelle was the right person for this job, it vanished in that moment. Hiding a grin, he went back to clearing out his inbox.
ANOTHER FIFTEEN EMAILS appeared and Gabe closed the browser tab. He couldn’t concentrate like this—sitting in the Amato house across from Michelle and her low-cut shirt, inundated by admin work. He usually got in a workout first thing in the morning, and while sex counted, he still had too much pent-up energy to sit here answering branding questions and vendor emails.
Besides, there were still things left unsaid between them, and the words were piling up in his throat. Things like I used to love you and maybe I still do.
He shot to his feet. “You said there’s a weight bench downstairs?”
Michelle glanced up from her screen. “Yeah. Plus an elliptical and a rowing machine.”
They would have to do. “Thanks. I’m going to take a break.”
She shrugged, so he went upstairs to change. When he came back down in basketball shorts and a loose tank top, Michelle slapped her pen down on the table and glared at him.
“Okay, now you’re just showing off.”
Gabe froze. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” She picked up the pen and used it like a pointer, indicating his attire. “Who’s being distracting now, huh?”
His lips twitched as he glanced down at his outfit. “Oh, this old thing?”
She shook her head and returned her attention to the laptop, but as he headed down the stairs, Gabe heard her mutter, “Two can play at that game.”
Downstairs, he paused for a second to take in the changes. The last time he’d been here, it had been Michelle’s bedroom, with her bed against one wall and posters of the Gorillaz and Star Wars tacked up above it. She’d had a desk with an oval mirror over it. Photos of the two of them at various ages had been tucked into the frame of the mirror, along with pictures of Michelle’s older siblings, her cousins, and both sets of her Italian and Puerto Rican grandparents. Gabe wondered where those photos were now, and if she kept them on display in her apartment.
Even when everyone started using digital cameras, Michelle had still made an effort to get pictures printed, sometimes dragging Gabe along with her to the one-hour photo booth at the local pharmacy.
She’d made a framed collage of the two of them, for him to remember her by while
she was away at school. At the time, she’d thought he was staying at home in the Bronx, but it turned out he was the first to leave.
He still had that collage, in a drawer in his apartment in LA. As much as it hurt to look at it, and despite his commitment to minimalism, it had never occurred to him to throw it away.
Now, the basement was a man cave. A leather sofa sat where Michelle’s bed once had, and a huge flat-screen TV hung on the wall over the place where Michelle’s boxy little screen had been. She’d had a cable box and a DVD player, and they’d watched the one and only season of Beyond the Stars countless times on that TV, putting it on in the background while doing homework, along with hours of music videos and raunchy cartoons. As they’d gotten older, they’d smoked weed in her backyard while all of their parents were at work, huddling against the sliding doors, hidden from view by the deck stairs.
Teenage Gabe had needed to be diligent about his smoking schedule because of his baseball plans, but he’d gotten a kick out of watching Michelle roll a blunt. Even the way she’d licked the paper to seal it was sexy. They’d pass a joint back and forth, giggling, the distance between them narrowing the higher they got.
On the far end of the basement, a home gym had been created in one corner. Interlocking foam mats made the floor, and as Michelle had advertised, there were a couple machines and a weight bench, along with some adjustable weights that might get heavy enough for his purposes. A narrow mirror, probably the one Michelle had used in high school, was fixed to the wall behind the bench.
Starting on the elliptical to get his heart rate up, Gabe then moved to the rowing machine. He was on the weight bench doing curls when the basement door opened.
Gabe glanced up and almost dropped the weight on his foot as Michelle jogged down the steps in an outfit that had him instantly going hard.
He’d seen a lot of sports bras in his day. Most were functional, but not fashionable. Some were cheap spandex that didn’t do the job. And some were designed to support while still looking fantastic. Michelle’s was the latter. Her sports bra gave her an impressive amount of uplift and cleavage, and her yoga pants clung to her curves, emphasizing her hips and butt.
She crossed the room and began to unfurl a yoga mat on the floor right in front of him.
