FIT: #1 in the Fit Trilogy (11 page)

He talked to Master Philip and got permission to bring Violet by his club if and when she was ready. He talked to Armando, who offered any support they needed. He also agreed that Violet should be refunded for the fees she’d forked over to Melrose Fitness. Grant had enjoyed every moment he had spent with her. None of it was part of a business transaction and he wouldn’t go any further until she understood that simple fact.

Right at six he left the folder, complete with some reading material and a check for her refund, on his desk and went outside to meet Violet. Her car pulled up the moment the gym door closed behind him. Grant swallowed his nerves and straightened his spine, but his spirit took a nosedive when Violet walked around the side of her car. She was in her street clothes. She still had her glasses on and the look on her face defined grim.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. Her tone wasn’t too cheery either.

“Okay.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“What? The working out? Or us?”

“Us.”

It was ingrained in Grant not to questions another person’s final decisions, but he had to understand. The last time he saw Violet, they could barely pull themselves off each other and now she was pushing him away. “Do you want to tell me why?”

“When you told me not to tell Faye—”

Grant felt this sickness in his stomach turn into a pressure behind his eyes. Why did everything in Violet’s life come back to this Faye woman? “I told you not to tell Faye because you two work in television and so do a nice number of my clients. What we do is between us and I didn’t want people coming up to you at work functions asking for the number of that trainer you fucked. And I don’t want wanna-be clients coming up to me and thinking this is just something I offer up with every membership.”

“What about the others? They live in L.A. too. They probably know TV people too.”

Grant closed his eyes and rubbed his beard. This conversation was worse than his entire breakup with Ariana. At least he knew she was little crazy. “They were in the BDSM scene already. They knew how to keep certain things to themselves. Either way, that wasn’t about you. That was about your friend, Faye and your coworkers, who I don’t know.”

“Exactly. You don’t know her and you also don’t know me as well as she does. I like you, but you’re into all this stuff. I don’t know where the games end and begin with you. I don’t want to get halfway to my weight loss goal and then you decide you’re bored with me and then I end up eating my way back to where I am now. I don’t want my weight to be wrapped up in my feelings about you at all. I—I…”

Grant waited. He wasn’t putting any words in her mouth. He wasn’t going to let her force him to say the words that were on her mind, that she had come to him to say, only to be called the bad guy sometime down the road. If she felt she was better off without him, then fine. If she truly believed he was the type of guy to use her, especially after the kind of time they’d spent together, then he wasn’t going to beg her to change her mind. If she wanted to cut him off, she’d have to nut up and say the words herself.

“I don’t think we should do this,” she finally said.

“Okay.” That was all he needed to hear. Grant turned to the door to the gym.

“Grant.” He hated that tears lined her eyes when he turned back around, but what was he supposed to do? She said what she needed to say and the message has been received and processed in full. When her lip started to quiver, he’d had enough.

“Bye, Violet.” He opened the door all the way then, after stepping through, closed it on another chapter of his life.

✶

Violet didn’t eat her feelings. She pushed them out in heaping sobs as she cried and cried for nearly two days straight. She went through every stage of regret, denial, partial acceptance, and shame. On the third day, when a check from Melrose Fitness arrived in the mail, she knew she had made a mistake. Yes, what they had and how it started was unorthodox, but it wasn’t wrong. Grant wasn’t ashamed of her. He had presented everything they did together to her in clear terms and she agreed to everything, every step of the way. And instead of acknowledging what was special about Grant and what they had, she fucked it up.

She took the painful things Faye had said at face value, and dumped Grant before they even had a chance to become something more. Whenever her emotions were running this high and strong, she wanted to call Faye but, instead, Violet blew her off as she continued to wallow in her meltdown.

Grant had wanted to know about her insides, about what made her tick, and in those few days Violet realized that her insides were shockingly hollow. She had her work. She had the time she spent with Faye. And that was it. Grant didn’t exactly fill that void, but being without him, and not being able to open up to Faye again, showed Violet how deep that void was. She needed more in her life. She needed more for herself.

Eventually though, she knew she had to talk to her friend. It wouldn’t be good to head back to work with any sort of rift between them. When Faye called for the fiftieth time, Violet answered.

“Are we still friends?” Faye asked, after Violet said her hello.

“I guess it’s better than being completely alone.”

“Violet, I am the worst friend in the world. I shouldn’t have said all that stuff.”

“It’s okay. You were right.”

“No, I was a jerk. And I promise I’ll never be that big of a jerk again, but you’ve gotta tell me what’s been happening? What happened with Trainer Guy?”

Violet’s chest started to ache all over again. “I ended things, but I’m not sure I should have. I didn’t realize how much I liked him.”

“Neither did I.” Faye sighed. “Seriously, I should have at least met the guy or really heard you out before I started dumping all over him and jumping to all of these conclusions about why you were with him. Do you think you guys can work things out? What’s his name again?”

“It’s Grant.”

“Do you think Grant will give you another chance? I can call him. Beg on your behalf?” And that’s why Faye was her best friend. They had their issues but, if she asked, Faye would call up Grant and try to set things straight. Faye would make that call in a heartbeat. Maybe that’s why her initial words about him carried so much weight. Faye did care about her.

Violet sighed this time. “I’m not sure. I was a pretty big bitch.”

“I think we’re all a little guilty of that every now and then. Call him and then call me back. I’ll buy you a super healthy dinner.”

“Throw in some YogurtTown and you have a deal.”

Day 21

Grant’s Saturday morning boot camp class was packed. Violet stretched near the wall, watching Grant as he talked with another man. Another heavy woman, blond with flushed cheeks, sat on the floor beside her, lamenting her decision to sign up for the class. Violet nodded, feeling the exact same way for a completely different reason.

Grant saw her. Fifty different emotions flashed across his face the moment she walked through the door, but he wiped his expression clean just as quickly and started greeting people with smiles and hellos. Everyone but Violet. He started the class with a brief description of the workout for the new people, then led everyone through some quick stretches. He looked so good in his gray Melrose Fitness T-shirt. Violet missed those pecs, the thick biceps and that butt. How she missed his butt. She got a good look at it when he directed them out of the front door.

When Violet had signed up for the class under a fake name and slid the cash to Armando early that morning, she hadn’t exactly thought the plan through. She tried calling Grant a bunch of times, but each time she got his voicemail. She had to see him or at least talk to him before she had to get back to her grueling work schedule. Short of showing up at Grant’s house at five a.m. and praying one of his neighbors would let her into the complex, showing up at his first Saturday group class was the next best option. She would see Grant. He would be angry, but he wouldn’t completely blow her off. He’d be professional. But there was something else Violet forgot to take into consideration. The actual workout she’d have to get through to squeeze in a word with him. She didn’t think of the running.

After the first quarter mile it was obvious that Grant was slowing down the whole group so she and the blonde woman could keep up. He jogged back to them and smiled at the woman who was clearly in pain even though she managed to stay a step ahead of Violet. “Great job, Shana. It’s not a race. You don’t have to beat anyone. I just want you to finish.” The woman nodded, wheezing as she went.

Grant fell back another step beside Violet. She could almost smell how pissed off he was.

“You’re doing great. Just a little further. Keep on pushing.” Grant delivered the generic encouragements, still refusing to look at her. Violet appreciated it. She’d missed his voice and hearing it take on that pleasant tone she hadn’t meant to deprived herself of kept her mind off the fact that her lungs were bleeding and actually trying to climb out of her body via her mouth. She swallowed the sour bile down and glanced up at Grant again, as he turned to run back to the front of the line.

“Grant. Please,” she puffed.

He slowed down to her pace, but his gaze fixed her at a dead stop. “We can’t talk about this right now. We absolutely cannot. Not now.”

“I get it. I understand, but after. Please. There’s something I have to say.”

After another bloated pause, he nodded. “After.” He took off to finish the class as its lead and not the focus of Violet’s stalking.

Violet pushed herself a little further until she caught up with the other woman. Shana, if she’d heard right, glanced at her. “I don’t know why I signed up for this. I’m going to die,” Shana said.

Violet’s chuckle sounded more like a cough. “We can die together.”

Shana stuck by Violet the whole class. Violet would have been grateful if her single-minded focus had been on executing the exercises and not counting down the minutes until the class itself was over so she could get to Grant.

Oh, but was it torture. Squats. Lunges. Push-ups. They did this awful thing with bags of sand and she learned two new things you could do with a kettlebell. And they did burpees. She must be falling in love with Grant if she was willing to do burpees. She didn’t cry this time but by the end of the hour Violet wasn’t exactly sure she wasn’t going to die. Her whole body hurt and, even as the rest of the class took their turns saying goodbye to Grant, even after a superficial promise to see Shana at the next class, her whole body screamed at her, wanting to know why. Why?

Grant was why. She had to see him. She had to get him back. Or at least try.

Eventually Grant came over to her. He nodded toward the door. “Let’s step outside.”

Right. The office was for special people who didn’t trash his character and treat him like crap. They walked two blocks, down to a residential corner. Saturday was a busy morning for Melrose Fitness and they didn’t need an audience. When Grant stopped and turned to her, she didn’t wait for a formal invitation to start groveling. She wiped away the sweat that would not stop pouring from her forehead and launched into her speech.

“You asked me what I wanted for myself. Well, I want you.”

“You told me I was exactly what you didn’t want. What’s different now?”

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding outstandingly creepy so I’ll just say it. When I was with you I felt like I was a part of a healthy couple. I felt like I woke up in the morning and got to see my boyfriend and I got to tell him about my day and we walked his dog together and then, after, we had the sex I have been wanting to have my whole entire life.

“And then when we were apart, I couldn’t wait to see you again. Faye said some things that were right, that would have been right if she was talking about someone who wasn’t you. And if she knew you, she never would have said those things and if I had just trusted the wa…”

Violet had way more to say, but suddenly her own words were slurring in her mouth. Her body was also sloping a little to the left.

Grant caught her before she hit the ground.

“Whoa. Whoa. Here sit.” Violet couldn’t see clearly, but she tried to sit up when the cold asphalt on the curb met her butt.

Violet could hear Grant talking on his phone as he wrapped his arm around her. It felt nice to have him so close again, but she was more concerned about the ringing in her ears and the way the trees in front of her were blurring together. Just as quickly as she’d almost toppled over a protein bar appeared in front of her face. Keira had brought the food, probably sprinted down the street on her muscular legs, but Grant held the sustenance up to her mouth. She took a bite and then a sip of water Grant urged her to drink. Next was a segment of an orange and another bite of the protein bar.

“Did you eat before you came to class?”

“No. I was kind of on a mission.” She really needed her head to stop spinning.

Grant muttered something under her breath, but Violet continued to focus on getting the food in her mouth.

“Better?”

“A little.”

“I’m going to take you back to my place. I’d drive you home, but I won’t make it back in time for my next class.”

“I’m not arguing, only because your voice has a really neat echo right now and I’m not sure that’s right.”

Violet let Grant and Keira lead her back to her car and she handed over her keys. In no time they were at his condo. Grant helped her inside, out of her sticky clothes, into his shower and then into his bed. Violet didn’t know where Keira disappeared to, but she would be sure to thank her the next time she could. Throughout the whole awkward situation, Violet still felt lightheaded and a little off. Grant pulled the covers around her and it was some of the coldest contact she’d ever experienced. He left her for a moment then came back with a glass of water and bag of granola that he put on his nightstand.

“I have to get changed for my next client, but I’ll be back a little later. Just rest. Eat some of this.”

“Thanks.”