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Better. You look better already.
Stupid.
I moved to the right side of my barbell and squatted low over my feet, pulling my screaming headphones down so I could take a moment to breathe. The safety clip on the bar clicked open, and I began heaving off the first plate to finish up on the exercise I was doing and move on to the next.
A deep voice sounded to my left as I tugged on the heavy circle. “You know, if you put a small plate underneath to lift the barbell up, it’ll be easier to slide those bigger plates off.”
I gritted my teeth. Twenty minutes in and I was already getting unsolicited advice from some gym guy. Fucking typical. I should’ve just left my fucking headphones on.
The voice piped up once again. “You’ll hurt your back that way.”
I ridded the bar of the plate and stood to face the man. Men. There were two of them, I was now seeing. I looked at the one who’d spoken. He was tall, dangerously tall, with black tattoos twisting up his arms, contrasting heavily with his pale skin. I liked the silver ring in his nose far more than his personality thus far, and his haircut wasn’t bad either. I liked black hair, though I preferred it a bit longer. If I were feeling better about this interaction, I might’ve considered him handsome, but I wasn’t.
The other man was smaller, the dirty blonde bun on his head poking up as he scratched at his chin nervously. He was square and muscular, and his wide eyes may or may not have been communicating an apology to me.
Impressive builds on each of them, though I wasn’t yet keen to admit it.
“Woah,” the voice said, eyeing both my face and physique. “Never mind. Seems like you’ve got it handled.”
“Sorry about him.” The smaller one peeked out from behind his large counterpart. “He’s a little intense.”
“I gathered that,” I said with a smile. The smaller one didn’t seem so obnoxious. As a matter of fact, I liked him just by those few words. I looked back at the giant. “Thanks for the tip.” My gratitude was not genuine.
The grin that spread across his face was even more dangerous than his height. “I’m Aaron. This is Briggs.” He gestured to his sinewy friend. “I’m not an asshole…”
Briggs interjected. “Yes, he is.”
“It’s just that I threw out my back the same way last year, so I wanted to offer some help.”
I crossed my arms and sank into one hip. Aaron was right. Of course, he was right. I knew it wasn't the best way to take weight off a bar before I even crouched down to do it. But I’d done it plenty of times, and I was lazy. He’d evidently been going to the gym long enough to understand that, and to understand why his comment was fucking annoying, so I dropped my grimace and bumped his fist. A truce.
“Are you hitting back or legs?” he asked as he reached his knuckles to mine.
“Legs. I’m back after a week off.”
“Briggs and I are about to squat. His girlfriend, Thalia, should be here in a few…”
“Not my girlfriend,” Briggs said.
Aaron ignored him. “Let’s work in together.”
Hmm… That proposition could go one of two ways. Either he was a total dick and was trying to hit on me as he did every other girl in this place, which would completely ruin this gym for me in one way or another, or he was genuinely just being nice which, based on my experience, seemed unlikely. But I’d never had a gym crew before. Not like other influencers I saw on Instagram, all huddled up with their gorgeous bunch. I didn’t really need any more close friends. I had Jo, Oli and June. And Tiff and Noah were well on their way. But none of them went to the gym, and Aaron said Briggs had a girlfriend, after all. Maybe she’d be nice…
Perhaps it could be fun to have someone to throw shit around with. To get angry with.
“I’m Kai,” I said, suddenly realizing I hadn’t introduced myself when they had. I still hadn’t quite worked out what my plan was in terms of befriending them, but I decided to just see what happened.
“We know who you are,” Aaron said. “I’ve been liking your pictures since you were at that gym with orange walls.” I guess that explained his reaction when he finally saw my face. Maybe he wasn’t being a jerk, maybe he was just surprised. And the gym with the orange walls? That was my first ever gym. That would mean that Aaron would’ve been somewhere in my first fifteen thousand followers, and it’d mean he’d been watching me for at least a year.
“He’s like…super obsessed with you,” Briggs said. Aaron’s giant hand shot out and pushed Briggs so cleanly he fell into a sideways stumble, Aaron having hardly moved a muscle.
His smile stayed in place as he said, “I can appreciate the hard work, that’s all. We do content too. Briggs likes editing, so he uses the gym to film and then gets to play around with it. I like myself, so I take pictures and videos of that.” He held his arms out to the side as if it were completely obvious that he was painfully attractive.
I mulled it over for a moment. I wanted to have friends that did the same thing I did. These two had a cool vibe, and my inner radar wasn’t going off despite my hesitancy.
I looked at Aaron, folding my arms over my ribs.
“Don’t worry,” he said, glancing down at my stance and back at me. “You’re hot. I won’t lie. But so am I. So are a lot of other people I meet. I won’t be a creep.” Mind reader. I started to smile at him when he added, “Unless you want me to be.”
