Anyways, I head out of the apartment and load up into the pink car; I’m sure Damion will give me hell about that when I pull up to the café. I drive towards the nicer part of town, glad to be out of the slums if only for a little while. I recognize the café; I had come here once or twice before with Damion before my manager had dropped me –before my first humiliating loss to Donte.
I park the car in the only available spot up front, and I see the old geezer standing near the doorway laughing slightly. I swear, this was probably a slight revenge scheme on Brandi’s part; we had nine cars between the two of us before I wrecked my Ferrari. This was the one and the only car her lawyer didn’t demand. I had no idea Brandi had the capability of being spiteful, but it seems as though she is sitting at home in my mansion –my mansion I had long before either of us were married –laughing her ass off about me driving around town in her damn pink Volkswagen. “Awe, hell, Jonathan,” the man says as I step up onto the curb.
“Don’t start,” I warn him.
He puts out a wrinkly old hand, offering a friendly shake, which I graciously accept. I hate the way the two of us had left things. We head inside, and Damion pays for our coffees and orders us each our favorite subs. I thank him; I’m running on my last $500 right now. Brandi had wiped me clean. We sit down at small round table in the window, and I am at a loss of things to say. He asks me how I’m doing, and I ask him if he’s seen the news. “Yeah, unfortunately,” Damion says, “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. I was drunk,” I say.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” Damion leans back in his chair, shaking his head. “You have got to get your head on straight. Listen, I asked you here because I want to make sure you and I are okay. Jonathan, I’m sorry I had to throw you out of my gym, but-”
“I know,” I say, “I get it. You run a boxer’s only gym –a professional place. I can’t seem to keep myself out of the tabloids, and I’m not really a boxer anymore, now am I?”
Damion shakes his head, “I felt like shit doing that to you.”
“I told you, Damion, I get it. There're no harsh feelings, really. I’m honestly just glad you called,” I say and then give the old asshole a smile.
The barista comes over and plops two plates in front of us with the freshly made subs. My stomach growls in anticipation. The girl grins at me; I doubt she recognizes me. She probably just thinks I’m cute or something. Damion rolls his eyes as the nervous acting girl trots off. “You just can’t keep them away, can you?” he jokes. “I wish I could still have some game.”
“You’re old as fuck,” I say, “your game done got up and run out the door.”
“Yours is about to do the same if you don’t get your act together,” he says and takes a bite of his sandwich.
“Whatever, don’t lose your dentures in that sub, old man,” I say, biting into my own.
He sits upright after swallowing his bite, rolling his eyes at me. “So Tyler tells me you’re looking for a job.”
“Trying,” I say. “And I’m pretty much failing in that endeavor. I even applied at a damn Burger King, and the guy asked for my autograph after telling me he was uncomfortable hiring someone who was in the news for hiring a prostitute two days before coming in asking for a job.”
“That’s cold, kid,” Damion chuckles slightly. “And a Burger King? Really? Don’t you have any shame left?”
“I can’t keep mooching off Tyler,” I say.
Damion nods. “What would you say if I could get you a job at a gym?”
I immediately perk up. “Your gym?” I ask. Fuck it; I would be a damn towel boy if it meant that I could be back working with Damion.
“Sorry, not my gym,” he goes digging around in his pockets and then hands me a slip of paper. “Call this number and set up an interview with Alex. They already are expecting you.”
“Are you serious, Damion? You got me a job?” I question as I take the slip of paper.
“Alex is an old friend,” he says with a slight twinkle in his eye. “But I only got you an interview. You got to land the job.”
“I don’t know what to say, Damion,” I stutter slightly. “I guess, thanks for looking out.”
“I know it’s not much, but they need personal trainers. It’s a high-end gym, though. They’ll pay better than fucking Burger King, and at least it’s something you might actually enjoy. Fucking Burger King, are you serious, kid?” Damion just shakes his head and continues eating his sandwich.
I smile at the old geezer. He’s been looking out for me ever since I had been an amateur boxer. He had picked me out of the bunch from the get-go. “Thanks, Damion, really,” I say, and he flicks me off and tells me not to be sappy.
As we are getting ready to leave, I pull his chair out for him, and he cusses under his breath about not being so old that he can’t help himself up out of his seat. The little barista chick that had been checking me out earlier opens the door for us since she had been out front sweeping off the patio. She smiles happily at me and says, “I think it’s so sweet that you took your grandfather to lunch.”
Damion looks like he wants to punch her in the face. He starts to say something to her, but I cut him off, “Now, Grandpa, you be nice. Tell her thank you for opening the door for you.”
“Fuck you, Jonathan,” he says and hobbles towards his car like the old man he is.
The girl blushes. “He’s not your grandfather?” she questions.
“Just an old friend,” I say, watching Damion fiddle with his keys in the parking lot.
“That’s so sweet,” she says, grinning at me.
I smile back at her, honestly wondering if I could get lucky with her. I guess now that Brandi has left me, I’m falling back into old habits in regards to women. “What’s your name?” I ask sweetly.
“Don’t bother!” Damion shouts as he’s climbing into his car, “As soon as she sees which of these cars is yours, she’s going to run for the hills!” He pulls out of the parking lot, and I shake my head.
She scans the parking lot curiously, trying to understand what Damion meant. “Oh my God,” she giggles under her breath as she glances over at the pink car –now the only one left in front of the store, and she’s able to deduce that it is mine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were gay.”
“Fuck,” I say under my breath. Cranky old asshole.
26
When I show up at the gym for my interview, a part of me wants to find Damion and repeatedly run him over with my pink beetle. The giant sign out front that reads Women Only makes me cringe. I take a deep breath and head inside regardless. I’m actually pretty blown away by the impressive atmosphere. Is this what women’s gyms look like?
The main entrance is enormous, and I can see that the place is two stories. Looking up, there is a track on the second floor that overlooks the main level. The wall on the far right of the gym is made of glass and looks in on a room full of tread meals and other similar forms of equipment. The main area of the gym is lifting equipment and a giant ass rock wall that makes up the majority of the room. Up ahead of me I see a smoothie bar and a hallway that probably leads down to various private rooms. Also in the main area of the gym, not far from the rock wall, is a boxing ring. I grin. Working here might not be so bad, I think, assuming that despite being male that as an employee I would have access to the equipment. At least there is a ring here. I watch the women up top running the track, their breasts bouncing up and down as they run despite the tight spots bras they’re wearing. No, working here would be just fine, I think to myself as I start to wander inside.
“Um, excuse me?” a woman taps me on the shoulder, and I spin around.
A tiny woman in a pants suit and big, red glasses smiles back at me. “Um, hello,” I say.
“You must be Jonathan Trial. We spoke on the phone. I’m Alex’s secretary, Becky Wallace,” she waves me forward, “come on, I’ll show you to her office. She’s expecting you.”
I fo
llow her down the stretch of the hall until she invites me into a corner office. There is a woman sitting behind a large desk, typing away on her computer. Alex is a woman, of course, fuck you, Damion, for not giving me a heads up, I think as I wait patiently for the woman to look up. She’s got her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she’s wearing a sports bra, a see-through tank, and tight yoga pants. “Thanks, Becky,” she says, not looking up from her computer, “Mr. Trial, come on in and sit down. I’ll be with you in just a second.”
Becky leaves, and I go and sit at one of the empty chairs in front of her desk. After typing away on her computer for a minute, the woman turns and looks at me. Now that I’m looking at her dead on, I can see that she’s a bit older than I had first thought. There is gray in her hair –a lot of it, and she’s got some serious wrinkles going on. My guess would be late fifties, but looks incredible for her age. Definitely an athlete. “So, you’re the famous Jonathan Trial that Damion has told me so much about,” she says, not looking at all impressed. She spins her computer monitor around; the video of me accidently socking Brandi in the face is playing on mute.
My face turns red. Well, this is off to a great start. I just look down and say under my breath, “it looks worse than it actually is.”
“Really?” Alex rolls her eyes. “Because according to the hospital records the media got a hold of, it sounds like Brandi walked away with stitches, a shattered elbow, and a black eye.”
“Shattered elbow?” I question; I hadn’t realized I had shattered her elbow. I wonder how her dancing is going? She’s probably still in rehab if that’s true.
“You see, here’s my problem, Mr. Trial,” she stands up and waves at me to follow. We head out the door as she speaks to me, “Damion is an old friend of mine, and he’s begging me to give you this job,” we head down the hall and she shows me a training room where some of the female boxer’s tend to hang out before heading to the ring. “So I’m torn between doing an old friend a favor, and this,” she points to the far wall where a big blow up of my face from my interview in which I smashed female boxing is plaster –and it’s full of darts.
“Awe, shit,” I say under my breath. The ladies have kindly drawn devil horns and boobs on me with erected tits, and from the looks of it, they use the oversized hand-made dart board quite often.
“Awe shit is right,” Alex says and takes a step away from me, turns towards me, and crosses her arms. “So you see my dilemma. Tell me, Mr. Trial, why the fuck I should bother hiring you?”
“I…. um….” What do I say to that? I just look at her with pleading eyes, and the older woman shakes her head.
“You see, I run a very professional, members-only style gym. Over half of my clientele are professional fighters. A good 25% are of some other athletic professional while the rest are just a bunch of uptight soccer moms who want to pay extra money for some of our perks. So with that many professional, female athletes here, how do you think they’ll feel if I hire you with the sort of anti-woman reputation you’ve gathered?”
“That’s not me, though,” I say, “I swear. That-” I point towards the giant poster from the women have made “-that’s not me. This weird screwed up version the media keeps trying to label as the real me; it’s not me. I don’t hate women. I don’t have a problem with female athletes –that comment I made got spun into a direction, I never meant for it to go. As for what happened to Brandi, I can’t make excuses for that. I love her, and I never meant to hurt her. I’ve screwed up. Bad. And right now, I’m trying to get my life back together. Boxing –sports –it’s what I’m good at. I can bring something to your team. Whatever you need me to do, I don’t care what it is –if you want me to scrub your damn toilets, I’ll do it. I just really need this job.”
I guess that’s all I have to say. I just stand there waiting for a response from her. She sucks her teeth and gives me this death glare; I can already tell she can’t stand me. She’ll probably run me through the ringer if she actually hires me –give me hell every day in search of a reason to fire me. But I got to try. Alex sighs. “You do know I wouldn’t hire you if it wasn’t for Damion, right?” I nod, and she sighs heavily again. “All right. I want you here six am on Monday –I want you to take the weekend to prepare a forty-five-minute beginners self-defense course to teach the soccer mom group that afternoon. Do not be late. Becky will get you your uniform. Go on, get out of my sight.”
I thank her profusely and then head out of the backroom to locate Becky. She finds me a simple t-shirt with the logo for Alexis’s Place on the chest as well as a pair of bright baby blue gym shorts. As I am heading into the main room of the gym, I see that a group of women has gathered around the ring. They spot me and stop what they are doing to glare at me on my way out. Well, this should be interesting.
27
I didn’t want to give Alex any reason to not like me –not any more reasons, at least. I showed up half an hour early and did a bit of cleaning and reviewed the beginner’s self-defense course I came up with that I will be teaching this afternoon. Becky, the secretary, showed up after me and helped me get a sign-up sheet printed out. “If enough ladies sign up for the beginner’s course, Alex wants you to start doing regular self-defense training courses here,” Becky informed me as we were hanging up the sign- up sheet near the entrance.
I notice near the entrance a large case full of trophies and medals. “What are those from?” I ask.
“A lot of them were Alex’s, but most are from the women fighters who come here. Alex lets them show off their awards here –so they’re kind of borrowed for the display case,” Becky says, “feel free to have a look around. Alex won’t be here for another twenty minutes.”
I check out the display case and then go and get a feel for the rest of the gym. There is so much to work with here; it kind of puts Damion’s gym to shame. By the time I have had a good look around, Alex is showing up to get the place up and running for the day. She tells me she wants me working as a personal trainer for the boxers, and I cringe slightly at the thought. “You have a lot of experience. The amateur girls especially will probably be willing to hear you out,” she assures me and tells me most of them show up around seven.
I watch the clock anxiously, and sure enough, a group of incredibly rowdy women comes swarming in from the back of the gym and out of the locker rooms –evidently the professionals have their own keycard entrance closer to the locker rooms. These are the professionals; I can tell from simply how the women hold themselves. They ignore me despite the fact that I’m standing right next to the ring; a couple of the women hop right into the ring. They’re not really much different from the guys back at Damion’s gym with the way they give each other hell about their form or whatever else.
One woman, a tall brunette with freckles, stares me down as Alex is passing by. “Hey, Alex, are you for real with this shit?” she shouts as the gym owner comes within earshot.
Alex shakes her head. “What? I’ve hired male trainers before, Britany” she says, playing coy –knowing damn well that it’s not the fact I’m a guy the woman has a problem with. She knows just who I am.
“Don’t be a cunt, Alex,” the brunette, whose name is evidently Britany, says.
“Play nice,” Alex warns, “he might actually be able to teach you something.” She trots off, leaving me alone with the group of hostiles.
Britany stares at me. “You sure have fallen off of your pedestal, pretty boy.” The other women laugh.
“I’m just here to work,” I say as nicely as possible.
“Well go work somewhere else,” one of the women inside the ring says. She then looks up, spotting someone coming in from the back. “Hey, Laurel, you’re late!”
I start to leave –clearly, these women have no interest in me helping them –when I see the woman the other boxer called Laurel. Holy shit. It’s the bitch I picked up at the bar who threw me out of her apartment. She spots me immediately, and her eyes grow twice their size. “Hey,” I say, taki
ng a step towards her and away from the other women. Now that we’re both sober, I am hoping for an explanation.
Before I can say much more, she grabs me by my shirt collar, “Say one word about it, and I’ll fucking castrate you,” and with that, she lets go of me and heads towards the ring. “Sorry I’m late,” I can hear her saying as she leaves me in the dust.
Before too long the professional fighters wind up kicking me out of the boxing ring, and I wind up working with the amateur boxers in a back room where a smaller ring is set up as well as some additional boxing gear. These women are not fans of mine either, but they are not so proud –so they are more willing to listen to someone who has some experience despite my notorious comments. It actually winds up going pretty well, and I think I win a few of them over as the day goes by.
The self-defense course goes really well too. I only had five women sign up, but they have nothing but good things to say about the class. Two of them even go to Alex to let her know that they want to take more courses with me and that they would bring friends. By the end of the day, fifteen women sign up to take future courses with me. Basically, Alex is impressed.
The day draws to a close, and I would call my first day a success overall with the exception of the heat that I got from most of the professional athletes –boxers especially. I’m hoping that I can win them over eventually, but right now I’m not exactly the favorite employee at the gym.
Filthy Desires: A Romantic Suspense Collection Page 135
