Socially Awkward (8 page)

As I had the thought, my eyes were already making their full scope exploration of my trainer’s body. He was so focused on counting out my reps that he, fortunately, did not seem to notice me
molesting
him with my eyes. 
Thirteen, fourteen.
It was totally not something I should have been doing, ogling my trainer like that,
but it was helping me
stay focused in some really twisted way.
Noah was not the kind of guy I could ever see myself with, not like your Average-Joe kind of hunk like Sean, but there was no harm in a fantasy, was there? Not if it helped me stay motivated.

Fifteen. And all too soon, my eye candy party was over.

“Okay, ladies, take
five minute
s
,” Noah clapped once as we finished. “Nice job.”

“A break?” Claire snapped
, wiping the sweat from her forehead with
the back of her hand
. “Tom doesn’t
give us
breaks.”

“With all due respec
t, Tom’s not your trainer today.
”
Although
Noah delivered the words with a smile, they felt no less lethal. “I like to do my workouts a little differently, if that’s all right with you.”

I nodded to him, a little embarrassed by Claire’s behavior. As soon as Noah was out of earshot, I rounded on her.

“What the heck was that?”

“What?” She scowled at me, tossing my towel at my head.

“Hey!” I grabbed it just before it hit my face. “What is your problem today?”

“Nothing. Can’t a girl be in a bad mood for once?” She unscrewed the cap of her
water
bottle and downed half of it in one gulp. I glared at her, hands on my hips, until she was finished.

“You’re never in a bad mood, Claire. Not unless something is bothering you.”

“So, something’s bothering me. What difference does it make to you?” Claire snapping at you is a lot like one of those box turtles
that live
around ponds
in the New England area
. Once,
on our way home,
my mother got out of the car to help
a little
one cross the road without getting hit by a car. As thanks, it tried to take her pinky finger off.
That was the first time I ever heard the expression, “No good deed goes unpunished, girls.”

I spotted
Noah heading back toward us, so I had to at least get the snapping to cease for the rest of our workout.

“Listen, Groucho Marx,” I told her, imitating her firm and commanding authorit
ative
voice as best as I could manage. “Just be nice to Noah for the rest of the session and we’ll talk about this later.”

“Fine.” She almost spit the word at me, but I let it go, turning to Noah instead for our next instructions. He had peeled off his sweatshirt while he was gone, leaving more of himself open for ogling. The rest of my workout was a breeze.

****

I dragged Claire out for coffee after
we finished working with Noah
. Not wanting to risk her driving off if we got into our separate cars, I wound my arm
through
hers and marched straight across the street to this little diner we’d never
been to
.  It was rundown, but clean, and we chose the booth with the least amount of wear and tear for our heart-to-heart sister time.
A waitress, who looked like she’d just stepped out of the cab of a tractor trailer, took our order for two cups of coffee, and shuffled off to pour them.  As soon as the java had hit the table, I
allowed
Claire no
additional
time to
stall. I wouldn’t let her
deny me the information I needed to put the pieces together
any longer
.

“What’s going on with you and Tom?”

With
the mug
halfway to her lips, Claire froze, her mouth agape. I waited for her to respond, but
instead
she snap
ped
her mouth
shut
and stare
d
at me.

“Come on. I’m your sister
, Claire.
I know you too well to buy any lie you’re going to try to sell me.” I paused, but still she wouldn’t budge. “I noticed something was up the first time you brought me there.
You two were practically having sex with your eyes the
entire
time
.”

She moved her coffee cup back to the table, spilling a little bit over the rim. Still she wouldn’t speak, just kept her eyes on me and her mouth firmly closed.

“You totally slept with him, didn’t you?”

“Jen!”

“A
-
ha! I knew I could get you to talk!” I grinned and took a sip of my own coffee
—black with no sugar and, consequently, no calories—
to celebrate my success. “So did you do it or not?”

“I’m not going to talk about this with you in some diner, okay?” Even as she was half-heartedly trying to skirt the issue, I could see her cheeks reddening.

“Ooh, Claire!” I poked her in the arm a few times,
and then
whispered a little chant. “You did your trainer! You did your trainer!”

“Cut it out!” She batted my hand away before raising her mug to her lips to drink her first sip of coffee. Mostly, I think she just wanted to hide behind something for a few seconds.

“All right, fine,” I said, sobering my tone a little. “But you have to tell me all the juicy details. And then we’ll talk about what the heck was up your butt today.”

“I don’t like that Noah guy, Jen,” she said, coming out from behind her mug to catch my eye. “He looks at you weird.”

“I look at him weird,” I shrugged. It was true; no point trying to hide it from my sister.
Maybe if I led by example, she’d show me the same courtesy.
“He’s just a trainer, anyway. I’m not interested in him. And he makes me work hard. I like that.”

“I just don’t think we should workout with him anymore, okay?”

“Why, so we can work out with your lover boy?” I teased.

She delivered her death stare with surprising acuteness for someone so flushed.

“
Oh please.
It’
s just a workout
,” I said. Her burst of laughter caught me off guard. I straightened up in my seat and caught her eye. “
What do you think is going to happen, anyway?”

Claire’s eyebrows went up. “Seriously?”

“What? Like I’m going to go sleep with him in the locker room after
my workout for the day, burn some extra calories
?” I started to laugh it off, until I noticed the shift in Claire’s expression. The red cheeks were back, her gaze had zoomed elsewhere, and she was biting her bottom lip.

“Shut. Up. You did
not
do that… Did you?” I had to force myself not to yell out the words in the middle of the nearly empty diner. To express my total exasperation, I slapped her hand.

“Ouch!”
Claire kept her eyes on the table, rubbing the back of her hand.
“
I… may have.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Oh, Claire,” I shook my head, sliding back against my seat cushion. “That is so freaking awesome.”

“So glad you approve…” she droned, rolling her eyes. My sister’s habit of sliding into ‘sarcastic teenager’ mode when embarrassed had not changed since high school.  It dr
i
ve
s
my mother absolutely crazy, while I
have learned how to
remain impervious.

“I mean, he’s really hot. And he seems like the kind of guy who—”

Claire shot up straight in her seat, her eyes locked in on my own. “Who
what
?”

“Um…” I fidgeted with my napkin for a moment, trying to think of a cover. I’d been about to say ‘the kind of guy who only sleeps with really hot chicks.’ But given my sister’s reaction, I could see that this thin ice needed careful navigation, lest I crack through it and drown. She was always a bit touchy about the guys she hooked up with, but even more so about how her looks influenced them to reciprocate an interest.

When I didn’t answer, she just folded her arms across her chest. I noticed she was
n’t touching
her coffee
, that one solitary sip having been enough caffeine to fire up her adrenaline—or so it seemed. It was cooling off, forgotten on the end of the red
Formica
table top
, right next to my empty mug.

“I was going to say,” I sta
lled, making my peace offering with
a pleasant smile. “That he seems like a really nice guy, when you get to know him.”

“Oh?”

“Come on, Claire. Cut me some slack here. I’m on Team Claire
&
Tom, okay?” As I spoke the words, her arms lowered, coming to rest on the table. They were still crossed in front of her, more loosely so, but it was not as defensive a posture this way. “I just want the juicy details.”

One corner of Claire’s mouth twitched upward and I knew I’d hit pay dirt. Story time!

“If you really must know,” she began in a raised whisper, leaning over her crossed arms toward me. My eyes were riveted to hers, my lips snapped tightly shut so as not to interrupt what would no doubt be the best story I’d heard in a long,
long
time. I’d been vicariously living through Claire’s social life since
the end of my
undergraduate years and
thus, my social life. Unfortunately,
she’d been
claiming to be
in a dry spell for the past few months
, so
neither one of us
was having any fun
.

According to Claire, she met Tom through work, where his gym had signed with her marketing agency to do a few TV spots, billboards, and print advertisements in the local newspapers. She’d pitched him a web campaign as well, which he’d loved right from the start, and the two of them hit it off. He invited her down to the gym f
or some free training sessions
as a thank you when the web campaign doubled his business in just six months.

“So it seemed pretty harmless,” she continued, reclaiming the cooled mug from the table’s edge. The waitress warmed hers up and topped me off with some fresh brew, and we went right back into the story. “I went to work out with him, like, twice a week at the beginning. Eventually, I realized it was such an effective workout, and he was so tuned into what my body needed, that I didn’t need to do anything else to maintain my weight and tone. So, I upped my visits to three times. I guess all that time together—
alone
—it just gave us ideas.”

Claire stopped talking
, stirred some creamer into her coffee, and just stared at me. I blinked at her a couple of times, and still, her mouth stayed shut.

“I’m sorry
…
I think I fell asleep back there in the middle of your totally lame story.”

“You said you wanted details…”

“Claire,” I laid my hand on top of her forearm. “That was the version you tell Grandma. I want to know how it
happened.
”

“
Y
ou’re not gonna shut up
un
t
il
I tell you something, are you?”

I shook my head.

She sighed.
“Okay, fine.”

I shifted in my chair, eyes glued to my sister’s face, and restrained myself from clapping with glee.

“So, one day, about a month ago,
I had to work really late so I pushed back my training session to the last
time slot
of the day. Tom had
me
working
on the elliptical machine for eight miles or so
—
”

I groan
ed
, earning a glare from my sister, and wave
d
her on with the story.

“
And we ended up working way past when everyone else had already gone home.
He’s standing there in front of me, watching me work out on the machine, and all of a sudden, our eyes just lock. Like that.” She snaps her fingers in front of her face, pulling my focus right to her eyes.
“And everything just slows down. I realize I’m not really pushing down on the pedals anymore, just kind of coasting along in slow motion. He
leans over the top of the machine…” Claire leaned towards me to demonstrate. “And just plants one on me!”

“No!”
 

“Yes! Just like that,” she smacks the table, spilling more coffee over the rim of her mug. “It’s really awkward, by the way, to start passionately kissing someone
around
a piece of exercise equipment.”

Mentally, I try to place myself on that treadmill
with
Noah in front of it. The logistics of trying to make that work—
although
hot to imagine in great detail—don’t make very much sense at all. How would I get my arms around the machine
and
into that sexy hair? And how on earth would he lift me up and carry me over to the mats? These are the things you have to consider if you’re going to start daydreaming about hooking up with your trainer.

“
So then what happened
?” I have to
get more details
, overwhelmed by the hypothetical awkwardness that had begun playing itself out in my mind.

“Well, Tom sort of stopped kissing me for a second, made some stupid apology about being so unprofessional. We laughed it off, tried to pull ourselves together…you know, that kind of stuff. But then when he went to hand me my bottle of water, his hand brushed against mine…”

“Uh oh!” I said, maybe a bit too boisterously for the quiet diner.
I put a hand over my mouth and tried to shrink lower in my seat.
The trucker waitress glowered over at us, looking
around for whatever accident she expected I had just caused. Unable to see anything amiss, she turned back to her work.

“And that’s how it happened.” Claire said abruptly.

“Oh, no! Nuh-uh!”

She shrugged. “What else do you want? Next thing I know, we’re on the mats all tangled up, arms and legs, sweaty… And that’s that.”

I considered the drive-by account of what I usually call ‘the fun part’ and decided I would need a clearer mental image, when I recast Noah and
me
in the starring roles. “Were there any oranges
close by
?”

“What?”

Oh, right. That wasn’t supposed to be said out loud. “Never
mind.”

“Well, there’s nothing more to tell, Jen. We did it that one time, then
basically, after every workout until three weeks ago.”

“When you started bringing me in with you,” I finished the thought, my voice deflated. What a terrible sister I was,
sabotaging
Claire
’s love life
like that. But what a wonderful sister
she
was, sacrificing her precious booty-call times to help me get in shape. I felt a tear coming
on;
I was so touched by her at that moment.

“Yeah, but that’s not why,” she offered, trying to sound as committed
to her statement as possible. “
You,
we could work around but… I
think there’s something going on with him. Something at home, or with his family, or… I don’t know. He’s been acting weird, Jen, and it can’t possibly just be because I started working out with you too.”

“Are you sure? If I’m in the way, I can try to figure out something else for myself…”

She reached across the table and lightly slapped my arm. “Stop it right now. I’m here to help
you
, not get laid routinely by some hot trainer. While that’s nice too, I’m your sister first. If I’m supposed to be with Tom, we’ll work it out somehow. And
you
won’t be involved, okay?”

****

“You girls don’t tell your mother anything anymore, do you?” says my mom, sighing as she slides back into the couch cushions. “I had no idea about half of these things you’re telling me. How have I not heard of any of these guys?”

“Aww, mom…” I answer, feeling a little bit guilty. “You’re right. We probably should talk to you more. Maybe we could have avoided half of this mess that way.”

“Here I am, sitting around, waiting for you girls to bring your problems to me…” Her voice trails off for a moment,
and then
she
straightens up. “Should I just g
e
t
better at eavesdropping?”

I want to laugh, but I also don’t want to accidentally encourage her. “Why don’t we just say that I’ll make more of an effort to keep you up to speed, okay?”

“All right,” she resigns, skeptically. “But if I you don’t…”

“Eavesdrop away, Mom.”

She grins, reaching one arm around my shoulders to pull me in for a hug. I give myself a moment to catch my breath and collect my thoughts.

“I do remember Sean, though,” she says suddenly, stroking my hair gently. “Why didn’t you tell me he was back?”

Against my will, a lump forms in my throat. How is it that moms can make this happen so easily? I struggle to swallow it or just talk around it. “I don’t know… I didn’t want to relive all of that.”

“I know, sweetheart,” she says, still smoothing my hair down my back.
“I know he really hurt your feelings, but if you were thinking of reconnecting with him…”

“I
did
reconnect with him…” I blurt out, feeling that lump tighten. “I didn’t think it could happen again, okay? I wanted it to be different this time. I hoped he forgot about that.”

“So what happened this time?” she says, not impatiently. I can tell she wants to know everything, to protect me from what she can, to maybe help me see things differently. But at the end of the day, history has repeated itself all over again… “Tell me the rest of the story, Jennifer, and we’ll figure this out together.”

Taking a deep breath, I decided to keep going. At this point, what else did I have left to lose?