I Was Here All Along

by Blake, Penny

  But all that’s about to change, I decide.

  My weight has always been the one thing I hate about myself. The excuse I use not to try anything new, not to take any chances, not to dream big. But now that my fat is melting away, I feel like all the self imposed limits can go too, if I let them.

  In my heart, no matter how I look, I’m always going to be me, clumsy, embarrassing, and accident prone. But now that I’m becoming a hotter, more confident version of myself, it’s a game changer. And the game I’m about to play involves flirting with my insanely hot and completely disinterested trainer. In fact, it’s his very disinterest that makes me want him even more.

  Rio is a challenge, and I’m hungry for a challenge.

  I’m hungry for Rio.

  Chapter 13

  The Amateur

  After a little research, I learn that Rio will be fighting in a boxing match at a nearby boxing club, and I decide to show up. I don’t tell him because I want the element of surprise on my side, but other than that, I don’t have much of a plan other than to look cute.

  I dress casually in jeans and a low cut top to avoid looking like I’m trying too hard, though I spend two hours on my hair and makeup so I look a million times better than I do at the gym.

  The first thing I discover when I enter the boxing club is that Rio has a nickname, Rio “Justice” Ward. The next is that according to his stats, he’s virtually undefeated. And then I learn, with great disappointment, that I won’t get to see him with his shirt off. Since he’s an amateur and not a pro, he fights in a sleeveless t-shirt and wears a padded head guard.

  When the match starts, his style starts out relaxed and but quickly turns viscous. His opponent is a bald, heavily tattooed guy called “The Animal” who hops around and throws a lot of offensive punches, while Rio dodges a lot and seems to hang back at first. Then when he gets an opening, he strikes hard, fast and in quick succession, drilling the guy with punch after viscous punch.

  His powerful stance and the sheer force behind his movements fill me with awe, and then when he’s declared the winner, I’m proud that my trainer is so bad ass.

  It’s not a long fight, and I’m surprised at how small the crowd is. I’m guessing it’s mostly boxing guys from the gym. Rio knows I’m here—when he was in his corner between rounds, I saw his eyes cut directly to me and then linger.

  I hang around outside the locker room while the crowd gets smaller and smaller, and soon he comes out in his street clothes. A few guys pat him on the back and comment about the fight, and even though he’s talking to them, his eyes are on me the whole time. He smiles as he walks forward, then dips his head down and rubs the back of his neck. There’s something shy about the gesture, and on this beautiful hulking beast of a man, it’s almost more than I can take. I feel myself smiling back at him so hard my cheeks hurt.

  I spout out the first thing that comes to mind. “Where are all your groupies?”

  “It’s just you tonight,” he says. Then before I can respond, he says, “What are you doing here?”

  I shrug. “I wanted to see you fight. I’m thinking about incorporating some boxing into my workout routine and I want to see if you have what it takes to train me, Justice.”

  He rubs that back of his neck again and when his eyes come back up, they settle on my cleavage for a fraction of a second before meeting my gaze, but it’s enough. After wearing tight, low cut tops to our workout sessions for weeks, he’s never once checked me out, so this feels like a major victory.

  “What does the name Justice mean, anyway?”

  “It’s in honor of someone who meant a lot to me.”

  When he doesn’t elaborate, I ask, “Who? Were they a judge or something?”

  “No,” he says before silence stretches out between us again. And then before I can break it, he starts making his way through the gym while I hurry to catch up.

  We exit through side door, which leads us into a dark parking lot. My car is just around the corner, but I’m not ready to part ways just yet.

  “Man, you really make a girl work for it,” I say as I stop and lean against a car.

  He stops too and stands in front of me. “Work for what?”

  “Any information about you—you never talk about anything personal. It’s like you’re some robot who just works out all day and has no life outside of the gym. Don’t you have any outside interests besides fitness? Watching TV, going to sporting events, even playing dominoes?”

  He shrugs. “I try to keep things impersonal with my clients. I do this for a living and I have a lot of female clients, many of whom are happily single or unhappily married. Either way, I try to keep things professional at all times to prevent any…”

  “Hanky panky?”

  “Fucking,” he says simply, and my breath catches in my throat as I’m simultaneously shocked and aroused. “It can ruin a perfectly good business relationship.”

  I take a step back until my butt presses against the car behind me. I brace my hands on it in a way that pushes my cleavage out, and look up into his dark blue eyes mischievously. “Maybe it would be worth it,” I say.

  He takes a step forward so that he’s standing so close, I can feel the heat radiating through his shirt. He leans his head down and says in a low voice next to my ear, “Are you teasing me December? Because I think you’ve been teasing me lately, and I advise you to knock it off.”

  “And why is that?” I ask.

  “Because you couldn’t handle me,” he says softly, his breath a warm rush against my ear. “I would tear you apart.”

  Before I can respond, he steps back and gives me the slightest smile before turning and walking to his car.

  Chapter 14

  Captivated

  Rio and I don’t have a session but I hit the gym anyway. In part because Drew is sick and can’t run today, but mainly because I know Rio is working and I want to see him.

  When I walk in, he’s nowhere to be found so I figure he must be in the boxing room in back of the gym. My theory turns out to be true, but I’m surprised to see that he’s with a little boy, an adorable black kid who can’t be more than twelve. Rio appears to be giving him lessons.

  I watch as Rio holds up flat blue pads and the skinny, serious kid throws punches at them. At one point, Rio corrects his form and has him do something again, then smiles and says, “good job.”

  He looks over at me and nods, and I give a small wave before backing away. I wish I could watch longer, but I don’t want to seem like a creepy weirdo, so I head over to a treadmill. Twenty minutes later, Rio leads the kid to the front of the gym and hands him off to a woman in a waitress’s uniform who I assume is the boy’s mother. They talk for a little while, with the kid chiming in excitedly, and then Rio makes his way over to me.

  “I didn’t know you give lessons to kids,” I say as he looks over the settings on my treadmill, then bumps up the incline.

  “I don’t. That was Simon. I do this thing called the big brothers program. I’m teaching him how to box.”

  “That’s very cool of you,” I say. “What got you into that?”

  He shrugs and rests his arm on the side of the treadmill. “It’s just something I do.”

  “How’d you get involved in it?”

  “I don’t know, why? You writing a book?”

  I repeat in a mocking way, “I don’t know, why? You writing a book.” I huff out a sigh. “No, I just want to know about your life. I find you captivating, is that a crime?”

  “Captivating huh? I don’t think anyone’s ever found me captivating before.”

  “Well don’t get a big head about it. A lot of things are captivating,” I pant. “This morning I had a very captivating cup of coffee. And as I read the nutritional information on the back of the cereal box, I found that pretty captivating too.” He cranks up the pace but I’m already out of breath, so I turn it back down so I can keep up with our conversation.

  “Tell you what,” he says. “Since you�
��re so nosy, pull yourself up on that bar”—he points his chin at the pull-up bar beside us—“and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “If I can do a pull up, you have to go out for a drink with me and tell me anything I want to know.”

  He crosses his arms and seems to think it over. “Deal.”

  ***

  Rio and I stand beneath the pull up bar and stare up at it. This is something he’s been pushing me try forever, but I’ve always refused because I know I can’t do it. Plus it brings back traumatic memories of a particularly humiliating physical fitness test I failed in grade school.

  I remember dangling from the pull up bar with my chubby stomach popping out the bottom of my hot pink sweatshirt, futilely straining to pull my body up while my bored-looking gym teacher chomped her gum and kept time on a stop watch. Just then, Justin Bigos came running by and pantsed me in front of the whole gym class, including the kid I liked. The only saving grace was that my underwear remained in place, but the chorus of laughter echoing through the gymnasium has haunted my nightmares ever since.

  “Come on December, you only have to do one,” Rio says.

  “One, one million—it’s all the same. I’m telling you, I’m just not ready yet,” I get up on the step and reach for the metal bar. “I don’t know why I agreed to this.”

  “Just give it a try, you might surprise yourself.”

  I hold on tight, tuck my legs up and pull. I pull as hard as I can and the strangest thing happens—I feel myself ascending through the air. Holy shit, I think as my chin reaches the bar.

  “Keep going! Keep going!” Rio yells, clapping his hands. “Do it again!”

  I lower myself and try for a second pull up. This time it’s much harder and my arms are shaking, but I slowly manage to bring my chin up past the bar one more time. Then my arms give out and I let go, crashing right into Rio.

  “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that!” I yell as he puts his hands around my waist to steady me. “I did not just one, but two—two pull ups.”

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and squeezes me against him. “What did I tell you, huh? It’s all the weights you’ve been lifting. It’s given you upper body strength. These arms don’t just look good. They’re functional too.”

  I babble on excitedly about my pull up, even telling him about Justin Bigos pantsing me in gym class and how it made my two pull ups an even bigger personal victory. Rio keeps his arm around me as I talk, but not in a flirty way. It’s as if he doesn’t even notice it’s there.

  “Now,” I say as I lean into him. “Where are we going for that drink? I’ve got a few questions for you.”

  Chapter 15

  “Justice”

  Around the corner from the gym is a little Mexican restaurant that doesn’t look like much, but they have a spacious outdoor patio and their loaded nachos are out of the world, though given my new lifestyle, I’ll probably never taste them again.

  I order a margarita and Rio gets a club soda, which annoys me. We were supposed to go out for a drink and club soda shouldn’t count, but I let it slide.

  Brian and I used to come here all the time so when Rio suggested it, my first instinct was to think of an excuse to go somewhere else. But having grown up in this town, there aren’t many places that Brian and I haven’t gone to together, and I can’t avoid them forever. I need to start taking my life back and making new memories on top of the old ones.

  Rio and I are sitting on the patio at the same corner table that Brian and I have shared many times, and I find myself wishing that Brian and his new girlfriend would walk in and see me looking hotter and thinner with a ridiculously gorgeous new man on my arm. At first they’ll wonder what happen to the first hot guy they saw me with, then they’ll conclude he was probably just a boy toy. A rebound guy who ushered me into my new life as eligible bachelorette, a woman about town, the female equivalent of a ladies man. Then I realize that because of double standards, the female equivalent of a ladies man is a whore, which makes me angry at society.

  “What are you thinking about?” Rio asks, leaning back and resting an arm over the back of his char.

  “Society.”

  He gives me a questioning look but I just shake my head. A crisp autumn breeze blows by and we both rush to catch our paper napkins before they blow away. Then we turn and watch a couple pass by on the sidewalk alongside us. We sit sipping our drinks in conformable silence, and I touch my finger to the salted rim of the margarita glass and lick it.

  I look across the table at Rio, admiring his profile and the way his wind-tousled hair makes him look like he just got out of bed. And at that moment, I wish I could tell him my entire life story and make him understand. But I don’t know how, so instead I ask, “How come you don’t have a girlfriend?”

  “How do you know I don’t have a girlfriend?”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugs a shoulder. “No one serious.”

  “So you have an un-serious girlfriend?”

  “There are a few friends I see, no strings attached.”

  Ah, friends with benefits—and more than one. It would be ridiculous to think a guy like Rio would go through life celibate, yet the idea of him having multiple fuck buddies makes my heart sink.

  I sip my drink casually. “How many lady friends do you have?”

  “Three.”

  “Three?” I set my glass down harder than I meant to, and it thumps loudly on the table. “That’s just gross.”

  He looks surprised, then understanding seems to dawn. “You’re very innocent, December. It’s a beautiful thing—don’t ever lose it.” He slurps the last of his club soda, then sets the glass down and stands up to go.

  “Wait, you’re leaving already?” I ask.

  “You said just one drink.”

  “Yeah but…it’s only been like five minutes.” My words sound desperate to my own ears, and I realize I don’t like the way I’m acting, like a clingy, needy loser. “Ugh, fine. Just go. I’m tired of you anyway.” I turn away from him and pick up my drink. I expect him to leave, but a moment later I hear the scrape of his chair against the floor as he sits back down.

  “Don’t feel obligated to stay,” I tell him, still staring at the treeline ahead. “I was captivated by you for like a minute, but I’m over it. I won’t bother you for anything other than workout advice from now on. Thank you for making your feelings brutally clear.”

  A few minutes go by in silence, then he says, “You asked me why I volunteered to be a big brother.” I don’t respond, just keep staring out at the pink and purple sky above the treetops.

  “I grew up in foster homes,” he says. “I had a foster brother. This guy Darius. He took me under his wing and helped me out when I was completely alone. I was a little older when I was put into the foster care system, and I got shipped from home to home, school to school, family to family. I was angry and messed up, but Darius kept in touch with me and taught me how to box. And it saved my life. No matter what was going on or how pissed off I was, I finally had an outlet, you know? Sometimes it was the only thing that kept me going. So I try to honor him by doing what he did for me for someone else, other kids who need someone to look out for them.”

  “Your foster brother must be proud,” I say.

  “Unfortunately he passed away a few years ago. He was in a rough neighborhood, visiting a girl. He went out to his car to get something and the police were passing by. They thought he was breaking into the car, and when he saw them and reached for his registration, they thought he was going for a gun and they shot him. Eleven rounds. Didn’t even get suspended. They were back on duty the next day without so much as reprimand.”

  I turn to look at him, but he’s staring out at the trees stonefaced. I put my hand on my heart and say, “That’s the worst thing I ever heard. I’m so sorry.”

  “The ironic part is, the officers who shot him thought he was a criminal because he was a big black guy. In reality, Darius never touc
hed a drug or a weapon in his life. He was an honor student and a gifted athlete who’d just gotten a scholarship to go to college. He wanted to be a lawyer, and he would have been a great one too. Man, could he talk. He was the kind of guy people just gravitated to, you know?”

  I wait for him to continue, but he just stares into space, lost in thought.

  I want to know more. How Rio ended up in the foster care system in the first place, and what he was so angry about. But after everything he just told me, I’m afraid to ask because I know the answer is going to be awful.