My Gym Trainer Counted Every Rep and Then Counted Me In novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The 6 A.M. Slot
A new trainer tells Marisol he asked for her slot and counts her tenth bench rep, and she puts a hand on his chest and tells him to count everything out loud.
The new trainer told me he had asked for my slot, and I had never asked for a trainer.
I found that out in the dark, at the front desk of Sonoran Strength.
I had my reading glasses on and the sign-in pen in my hand.
It was a Tuesday in March, a few minutes before six.
I had parked the Mazda in row three, the way I had every morning since October.
Nobody else lifted at that hour.
That was the whole point of it.
The gym smelled like rubber flooring and cold metal, and one row of lights was on over the free weights.
A man came out of the back with a ring of keys and a clipboard.
He was young, six feet, broad through the chest and shoulders, with black hair buzzed close to his skull.
A rosary was tattooed down the inside of his left forearm, bead by bead, ending at the wrist.
"Ms. Ruelas?" he said.
"Yes."
"I'm Rudy Villalobos. I'm your trainer."
I took my glasses off.
"I didn't hire a trainer."
"The owner paired us. It's on the schedule." He turned the clipboard around and showed me.
Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, six a.m. Ruelas, M. Next to it, in the owner's cramped handwriting: Villalobos.
"She might have mentioned it to me," I said.
"She might have," he said. "I asked for your slot."
I looked at him for a while.
He didn't look away, and he didn't smile, and he didn't apologize.
He just stood there with the clipboard against his thigh, waiting for me to decide what that meant.
I was thirty-three years old and a bookkeeper for an HVAC company in Chandler.
I had been alone in this room for five months, and I liked it that way.
A man had packed his truck fourteen months ago and left me a ring in a jeweler's shop for resizing.
I had liked the quiet ever since.
"Bench," I said. "A hundred thirty-five. Same as always."
"Okay," Rudy said.
I walked past him to the bench.
A mop leaned against the squat rack with a bucket beside it, still wet from last night's close.
I lay back and set my feet on the floor and wrapped my hands around the bar.
He came up behind my head and stood over me, upside down in my vision, with his big hands open under the bar.
He didn't touch it.
His forearms were a foot from my face, with the veins standing out and the rosary beads moving when he flexed his fingers.
"Whenever you're ready," he said.
I lifted it off the hooks.
I lowered it to my chest and pushed it up.
One.
I did a second, a third, my breath going out hard through my teeth.
Four, five, six.
Seven was heavy.
Eight shook a little.
Nine came up slow, and I locked my elbows and held it there over my face, and my arms were fine.
My arms were always fine.
I racked the bar.
I sat up and wiped my palms on my shorts.
"You stop at nine," Rudy said.
I turned my head.
"How do you know that?"
"I count."
He said it plainly.
"Every set?" I said. "You've been here, what, two months?"
"Since January."
"And you counted me."
"You're hard to miss," he said. "You lift like you've got a contract with somebody. Nine, and you rack it, and you go to the next thing."
My face went hot, and I was angry at it.
Nobody had ever said it to me out loud.
"Lie down," Rudy said. "One more. I'll count you in."
"I don't need you to count me."
"I know," he said.
"Then why are you standing there?" I said.
"Because I want to see it," he said.
I lay back down.
I took the bar off the hooks, and the weight pulled at my shoulders.
I did one.
I did two, three.
By six my arms were burning, and I could hear him counting low behind my head, not loud, just the numbers.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
I held it at the top.
I wanted to rack it.
Everything in my body told me to rack it.
It had told me the same at mile nine of a half marathon and at the last nine credits of a degree.
"Ten," Rudy said.
His hands were under the bar, not on it.
I hadn't done a tenth rep.
He had said it anyway, plain and steady.
I lowered the bar to my chest.
I pushed.
It came up slow and hard, with my teeth locked and a sound coming out of me I had never heard, and my elbows straightened.
I held it, shaking, over my face.
Then I racked it, and it clanged on the hooks, and I lay there with my chest heaving.
I had done ten.
Nobody had done it for me.
Rudy walked around the bench and stood over me, and he was looking at me in a way I could not read.
He picked the towel up off the floor and held it out.
"There," he said.
His forearm came down toward me, and I watched the muscle move under the black ink, the rosary bending with it.
I took the towel, and I did not take my eyes off his arm.
The gym was empty.
The owner wouldn't be in until seven.
The only light was the one row over the free weights, and the only sound was the compressor on the water fountain.
I sat up, and I pulled my ponytail tight, and I stood.
"Villalobos," I said.
"Ms. Ruelas?"
"Come here."
He came.
He stopped close enough that I had to tip my chin up.
I put my palm flat on his chest, over the gray shirt, where his pulse was going hard.
It was going faster than mine.
He didn't move.
I could feel him waiting for what I would say, the same way he had waited for the tenth rep.
"You count out loud," I said. "Everything I let you do."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend