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“Carol, please don’t take this personally. I’m just very tired from the hospital…”
“Sure, sure. No problem! See you tomorrow, then?”
At first, I don’t understand what she means, but then it hits me.
Now that Carol has joined my gym, I’ll be seeing her here regularly.
My heart sinks, but I try not to let it show on my face. “Umm … I’m not sure. I have a long shift at the hospital.”
She giggles some more as I head out the door.
Finally, I’m back in my car. I put the key in the ignition and enjoy the slow and comforting purring of my Lamborghini’s engine. “Hey Siri, call Emmy.”
Calling Emmy.
“Hey! What’s up? Aren’t you supposed to be at the gym at this hour? Are you alright?” she asks me, her voice soothing.
“Yes, I should be. But I was driven out of there.”
“What? What happened?” she asks, her voice now tinged with concern.
“Guess who joined my gym a few days ago?”
“Umm … Beyonce?”
I start to laugh. “Yes. Beyonce herself joined my gym and, as a result, I decided to leave early because I thought: Hey, Beyonce’s at my gym? No, thank you, I’m not interested in that!”
She chuckles at my joke and tries to guess again. “Was it … Michael Jordan?”
“The best basketball player of all time? At a local neighborhood gym in Boston? Sure, that makes sense. Goodness, you are the worst guesser ever, Dolly.” I laugh.
“Fine, fine, I give up. Just tell me what happened. Who joined your gym, and why did you have to leave?”
“Your friend Carol, that’s who!”
There is a pause at the other end of the line. “Carol? The woman I work with at the beauty shop? That Carol?”
“Yes. How many Carols do you know?”
“Never mind. Why did she join your gym? And … isn’t that kind of a weird coincidence, Evan? That out of all the gyms in Boston, she joined yours?”
“That’s what I thought too. But now … I’m pretty sure she’s been stalking me on Instagram or something. There’s no other way she could’ve known. Unless you told her?”
“Definitely not!” she replies. “So, what happened? Did you … talk to her?”
I sense some frustration in her voice, coming through the phone. “Unfortunately, it’s all she wanted to do. I honestly just wanted to work out, but she kept asking me all these questions…”
“Why didn’t you tell her to go?” Emmy asks.
“Go where? It’s a gym.”
“So, she just … stayed there and you … what? Worked out together?”
This conversation is not going the way I thought it would.
At first, when I called Emmy, I thought we might laugh about the whole situation like we always do. But, for some reason, she’s taking it far more seriously than I expected her to.
“Emmy, she got on the treadmill next to mine and started running. What was I supposed to do? Push her off?” I try to make a joke, but she’s not having it.
