Weightless (15 page)

“Are you finished with your questions?” he asked, standing. I nodded. Without another word, he packed the helmet I’d worn into his backpack and pulled on his own, mounting the bike and sparking it to life. He peered at me through the lens for a short second before pulling off, leaving a light cloud of smoke as he did.

I stood there motionless, scolding myself for asking questions, for effectively ruining the night. He was the only thing good about mine, and I’d just wrecked his. I sighed, dragging my feet inside and up to my room, head not spinning any less than it had been when I woke up that morning.

Before I let myself go to bed, I stood in a scorching hot shower. I tried to burn the night from my skin — the words Shay spoke to me, the words Mason didn’t say to make it right, the words I wished I could take back that I’d said to Rhodes. I imagined the water washing them from me and pulling them down the drain, along with all the hurt they’d caused.

But when I succumbed to my bed and pulled the covers up high over my head, I still felt them on me.

I didn’t dream about Rhodes that night.

I didn’t sleep at all.

My stomach was in knots as I dressed for my training session the next day. I was nervous about facing Rhodes again after what I’d asked about his sister the night before. Would he be angry? Hurt? Sad? Would he ever want to talk to me again?

It didn’t help that I could hear Mom and Dale arguing down the hall. I swallowed as Dale’s voice rose louder when I packed the last of my gym bag. Zipping it up, I tossed it over my shoulder and hurried out of my room and down the stairs, trying my best not to eavesdrop on what was being said. All I’d picked up was that Dale had been drunk the night before, which wasn’t anything new, and Mom was pissed — again, not anything new. It wasn’t that they fought all the time, but Dale did tend to get into trouble when he drank. I wasn’t sure what it was — if he embarrassed himself or Mom or both — but there always seemed to be a bit of a tiff after he had a night of drinking.

I padded down the hall to the kitchen where I figured their voices would be mostly drowned out, pulling up the meal plan Rhodes developed for me. Meal prepping was still far from my favorite pastime, but I was getting better at it.

“Want some help with that?” Christina asked, wrapping an apron around her waist as she entered the kitchen. I smiled and nodded, and in her soft, almond-shaped eyes, I could see that she heard them fighting, too.

Christina had been cooking for me ever since I could remember. She was from Venezuela and her family had moved to Poxton Beach when she was a teenager, fleeing the dangerous conditions of her home country. She had two little boys — Junior and Luis — and she treated me like the daughter she never had. I always welcomed her advice, but I loved it even more when she knew I didn’t want to talk at all. She and Moses were a lot alike in that respect.

We cut and cooked and prepped for the next thirty minutes, not really talking but not feeling uncomfortable in the silence, either. That was, until it wasn’t silence anymore.

“I don’t care what you call it, Dale. If you don’t get it under control, you’re going to have to say goodbye to the woman who has looked past it for so long!” My mom stormed down the stairs and I stood frozen with two packed Tupper-Ware containers in my hand, waiting to go to the fridge. Christina had already excused herself, leaving me to stare alone.

Mom’s face was tear-stained with streaks of mascara marring her cheeks like scars. When she saw me, she sniffed, shook her head, and laughed. “Men,” she said, wiping her nose with a balled up tissue in her hand. “They are just silly sometimes, aren’t they?”

“Mom…” I dropped the containers and moved toward her. I would be late if I didn’t leave soon, but I didn’t care. They’d fought before, but I’d never seen my mom cry like that — ever. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing sweetheart.”

“Come on, Mom. It’s okay. Talk to me.”

She sighed, shaking her head again and grabbing the containers I’d abandoned. She carefully placed them in the fridge and then turned to face me, propping herself back against the counter. “I’m fine. It’ll all be fine.”

I just stared at her, trying to decipher if she was lying. She waved me away.

“I promise. We’re just having a tiff. He’ll realize I’m right and come around. He always does.” She smiled. “You heading to see your trainer?”

I nodded, letting her change the subject, and her smile widened. Mom didn’t really ever talk to me about her relationship issues, which made sense, being that she was my parent. Still, we were also best friends, and I hated not knowing what was making her cry.

She lifted from the counter and tucked a fallen strand of my hair behind my ear.

“He’s really doing a great job already, Natalie. I can tell.”

I shrugged, suddenly feeling odd under her watchful eyes. I was concerned for her fight with Dale, but I still hadn’t forgotten her conversation on the phone that I’d overheard. She was finally seeing me turn into the daughter she could be proud of. I just wished it wasn’t because I was losing weight.

“Oh!” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go shopping after your session! I bet you need new workout clothes. Invite Willow. It’ll be fun!”

“Mom…” I groaned. “I don’t want to buy fat clothes.”

“Oh stop,” she scolded, clicking her tongue. “You shouldn’t be wearing raggy old high school t-shirts to the club and I could use the girl time. Please?”

I sighed, not excited about the idea of shopping, but I also knew that retail therapy was her favorite. This was Mom’s way of telling me she needed me. “Okay. I’ll call Willow.”

I needed to call her anyway. She’d blown my phone up all night and morning trying to apologize for last night.

“Perfect!” Mom scampered off toward the stairs. “I’ll get showered and dressed. By the time you train, get back, shower, and get ready, I should be almost finished.”

I laughed at that. “I could probably eat and take a nap beforehand, too.”

She giggled, but didn’t deny it, before trotting up the stairs. At least she seemed better than when she’d come down them. It took a lot to knock my mom down for longer than a few minutes. After the hell my dad put her through when I was younger, there wasn’t much that could faze her. Though, when she told me stories about her before Dale, it was always so hard for me to imagine. To me, she’d always been a wealthy, classy, refined woman. It was hard to imagine the poor, rough around the edges version of her.

In fact, I didn’t really know much about that time in her life. My dad left her when I was born, not even leaving so much as a note. She met Dale two years later and only a year after that they were married. He’d been around my entire life. Dale
was
my father, as far as I was concerned. Still, my grandmother often told me how Dale brought out the best in my mom and saved her from a really dark time in her life. I guess in a way, Dale sort of saved me, too.

I shook off the feeling of the house as I made my way to the Rover. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily excited about going to the gym, but I wasn’t dreading it, either. I was nervous to see Rhodes, but anxious to workout. There were plenty of things I wanted to get my mind off of, and unlike my mother, shopping wouldn’t help. But, working out might.

On my way to the club, I dialed Willow. She answered on the first ring.

“Okay, I’ve decided you can’t hate me. Because you’re my best friend, Nat, and if you hate me, my life will plummet into a downward spiral the summer before college and I’ll never come back from it. I won’t get in the early admittance program, I’ll probably fail out of college my first year from sheer depression, and then I’ll live the rest of my life trying to be a carny at the Poxton Beach fair and wondering where I went wrong that fateful night years ago.”

Willow was breathless by the time she finished spouting off her story and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Lo, I’m not mad at you.”

“Oh my God,” she said, exhaling a long breath. “I’ve been freaking out all night. I’m so sorry. Whatever happened, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have forced you to go out with everyone. I don’t know what’s going on with Mason and his chick but I’m sorry I pushed you. We don’t have to hang out with anyone else the rest of the summer. Just me and you. I promise. I’m so sorry.”

“Lo,” I cut her off. “It’s fine. I promise. I’m good.”

“What happened?”

Sighing, I gave her the cliff note version in the five minutes I had left before I would pull into the club. She cursed the entire time and vowed to strangle Shay the next time she saw her, which made me laugh more.

“So did you just go home? Did you call Dale? Or your mom?”

I hesitated. “Um…”

Willow waited a moment before speaking again. “What? What is it?”

“Well, don’t freak out, but I may or may not have gone home with Rhodes.”

“Oh. My God.” She said the first word with a punch and the second two altogether. “Shut up.”

I cringed. “Well, he kind of found me. And—”

Willow squeaked, drowning out my explanation. “I need details. Now. All of them.”

This time I laughed. “You’re going to have to wait. I’m pulling up to the club for my training session. But,” I started just as she began whining. “My mom wants to go shopping this evening. Come with us?”

“Like that’s even a question. Call me when you’re on your way. And I better get every single detail with you making me wait like this.”

With that, Willow ended the call and I tossed my phone in my gym bag and trudged into the gym. When I entered through the double glass doors and saw Rhodes running on the treadmill, sweat pouring down his face and drenching the top of his shirt, the nerves I was feeling earlier rushed back in full force. His eyes lifted as soon as I entered and he killed the machine, wiping himself with a small white towel as he made his way toward me.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. “My parents were… well, it doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

He nodded, and I waited for him to rip into me. About last night, about being late — anything to get him to just get it over with before we started. But, surprisingly, he didn’t.

“Do you know how to check your heart rate?”

I scrunched my nose. “I mean, I watch it when I’m on the treadmill or the Stairmaster.”

“But do you know how to check it without a machine?”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he started, moving closer to me. “You know how I tell you to get your heart rate up to at least one-hundred-and-sixty beats per minute when we’re doing treadmill drills?” I nodded. “That’s because at that rate, you’re in the hard-core cardio zone. If you’re between one-forty and one-sixty, you’re in cardio. One-twenty to one-forty, fat burn. Anything over one-eighty is max effort and anything less than one-twenty is warm up.”

I was looking at him like he’d just told me I have a thigh gap.

He chuckled. “I’ll get you a chart. But, the point I’m trying to make is that you should be able to do this on your own, without a machine. You should always monitor your heart rate to know what zone you’re in, regardless of if you’re working out outside or on a treadmill.”

“Okay, so how do I do that?”

Rhodes took my wrist and my stomach dropped, but I didn’t let it show. Turning my arm so that my palm faced upward, he pressed two fingers into my skin on the thumb side of my wrist. “Using two fingers, push hard between the bone and the tendon over your radial artery right here. Then, count how many beats you feel in fifteen seconds and multiply by four to get your heart rate.”

“You can feel my heart right now?”

His eyes lifted to mine and the slightest smile curled on his lips. “Yeah. Yeah I can feel your heart.” For a moment, he stayed staring at me like that, but then he cleared his throat and dropped my wrist. “You can check it on your neck, too, but I like the wrist way myself. Try it.”

I did, and I was embarrassed by how fast my heart was beating while we were just standing there. I knew he had felt it too, which only deepened that embarrassment further.

“Got it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Good. I don’t want you to have to depend on the machine.” He paused, then pulled something from his pocket. “That being said, I got you something.”

He opened his hand and revealed a small white box with a watch depicted on the packaging. It was kind of bulky, but it was pink and feminine at the same time. “What is it?”