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“And you’re not going to do that, right?”
I shake my head. Just the thought of those words coming out of my mouth is enough to make me feel ill, so I can’t imagine actually telling him.
“Then you’re fine. Just chill and enjoy this.”
I try to remember her advice as I drag myself out of bed at the crack of dawn and get ready for my class.
I mean, this is why I'm here. This teaching gig is a great opportunity for me. After graduating from Pilates training, I only had a few months of subbing classes at the studio in my hometown before I decided to take a trip to Indonesia with some high school friends to help build a school.
It was just the break I needed after my injury, recovery, and my decision not to go back to college.
Dropping out wasn’t something I took lightly. I just couldn't see a future for myself in business any longer. Once I experienced the broken healthcare system firsthand and knew that so many injured people who needed help were falling through the cracks, all I wanted to do was get trained in the modality that brought me from flat on my back with a slipped disc to dancing around and jetting off to build a school in Asia.
Pilates changed my life, and I wanted to change other people’s lives in the same way. I mean, I still do, of course. I just got a bit sidelined. First, by the trip of a lifetime to do some volunteering, and second by a handsome face I met while doing the volunteering.
Ben will not be a third derailment for me. I’ve been through this plenty of times before. Guys come and go. They want you and then they don’t want you anymore. Sure, this one is particularly good, and I want him extra bad, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation. You can’t get attached to men because they just leave.
The studio is cool and quiet as I turn on the lights. I’m the first one down here, as usual, and I revel in the peaceful space as I get my class set up.
When the first students start to arrive, I’m more than a little surprised to see Ben among them. I try my best to hide my utter glee, as I walk over to say good morning.
“No Avery this morning?” I keep my voice calm and cool as I offer up the joke as a greeting.
Ben smiles and my knees go soft. “I think one class was enough for him.”
“But not for you?”
“The woman at the front desk told me this was a six-week series. I like to see things through.”
I pray to god that my cheeks aren't as flushed as they feel as I retreat back to the front of the room without responding to that particularly leading statement.
I know it’s stupid, considering the secret truth of our situation, but just the thought of this handsome, genuine man thinking someone like me is worth seeing through, worth anything, well…it’s intoxicating.
I manage to make it through the forty-five minute class, averting my eyes as much as I can from the handsome as sin, half-naked man in the middle of the room while still fulfilling my role as a responsible teacher.
Ben is strong and lean, far more flexible than I generally see from men his age, or with his muscle mass. I wonder if he’s done flexibility training before. I wonder if he has a personal trainer. I wonder so, so many things.
I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to ask.
The thing about walking around with a grenade in one hand and the pin in the other is that you just never know when things are going to blow. All you know is that they definitely will.
I wait in the large private bathroom after class for as long as I feel I can get away with it, but the knock never comes.
I finally find him again after resigning myself to heading home alone. He’s sitting on a bench just before the stairs that lead up to the resort, typing on his phone.
My heart lurches, but I keep my pace steady, approaching him cool as a damn cucumber.
“Hey, you did great today.”
He looks up from the screen and smirks at me. “Thanks.”
“This isn’t your first Pilates series, is it?”
He stands and approaches me, putting his body right into my space. “It’s the first time I’ve takenPilates, but plenty of the exercises are familiar from my own trainer’s routine.”
So, I was right about him having a trainer. Of course I was.
A guy like this has everything.
