Page 15 of Gym With Benefits

He slid the phone back into his pocket, his eyes locking onto mine. The playful mockery was completely gone, replaced by the calculating mind of a true ride-or-die best friend.

"She’s a snake in champagne silk," David said, his voice dropping into an enticing murmur. "And if you want to show up at that mansion in four months looking like the goddess of vengeance you are, you need inside information. You need to know exactly what you're up against."

"But I'm blocked," I repeated, frustration flaring in my chest.

David leaned in close, a slow smile spreading across his face as he tapped the side of my head with his finger. "Then do what any self-respecting archivist with a vendetta would do, Jess. Create a burner account, copy my methods, and start stalking your enemy properly."

7

Jess

The scent of vinegar and decomposing cellulose always greeted me the moment I crossed the threshold of the conservation lab. To the uninitiated, it smelled like a flooded basement fighting a chemical spill, but to me, it was the comforting aroma of a fresh puzzle.

On Monday morning, the sterile, fluorescent-lit underbelly of the museum was a sanctuary. Down here, behind secure keycard access doors, no towering, arrogant men flashed their abs in communal locker room showers, and no champagne-colored bridesmaids' dresses existed to clog my thoughts. There was only the quiet, rhythmic drone of the HVAC system regulating the humidity, and the physical remains of the past.

I stood over the stainless-steel examination table, completely armored for the shift in a heavy canvas apron, snug nitrile gloves, and a surgical mask that muffled my breathing. Resting on the metal surface were three battered, water-damaged cardboard boxes that had arrived via courier from an estate sale in upstate New York.

This was my latest assignment: the unedited, uncataloged personal papers of Constance Hastings, a prominent but largely obscured mid-Atlantic suffragette from the early 1920s.

"Let's see what you’ve left behind, Constance," I murmured, my voice echoing slightly behind the paper mask.

I lifted the lid of the first container, releasing a faint cloud of ancient dust that was instantly sucked upward by the ventilation hood. The contents were in a state of advanced decay. Having survived decades in a leaky attic, the documents had borne the brunt of East Coast summers. A thick, powdery coating of black mold crept along the edges of the top folders, and the paper itself was incredibly brittle, warped into rigid waves from old moisture exposure.

"Jess, tell me you’ve found something we can display by next month."

The sharp rap of knuckles against the doorframe made me jump. I adjusted my magnifying visor, looking up to find Marcus leaning into the lab. My supervisor was a man permanently harried by museum board deadlines, his tie perpetually askew and a tablet somehow always clutched to his ribs.

"Marcus," I said, my voice muffled through the mask. "I just cracked the first box. It’s a total biohazard down here. The mold is active, and the paper is flaking if I even look at it sideways."

He let out a stressed sigh, tapping his stylus against the tablet screen. "I know, I know. But the donors who funded the acquisition are breathing down the director's neck. They want a curated preview of the Hastings collection ready for the upcoming gala, which means you have about three weeks to stabilize, sort, and draft a preliminary finding aid. Can you fast-track it?"

I frowned, looking back down at the delicate, decaying history before me. "You can't rush red rot and vinegar syndrome, Marcus. If my hands slip because I'm sprinting through the preservation stage, we lose the ink entirely."

"Just do what you can to make the top layer presentable for the glass cases," he urged, giving me a pleading look. "The board needs a win, Jess. No pressure, but the spotlight is officially on this table."

With a parting nod, he ducked back out, his hurried footsteps fading down the hall.

I let out a long breath, the sudden weight of the deadline settling onto my shoulders. The museum was supposed to be my escape from stress, not another source of it. Still, the urgency only meant I needed to root myself deeper into the work.

Using a pair of fine silver tweezers and a camel-hair brush, I returned to the meticulous choreography of stabilization. I worked with tiny micro-movements, gently sweeping away the loose spores from a handwritten manifesto dated August 1919. The immense focus required for the task gradually emptied my brain, forcing the lingering image of Dane’s bare chest to dissolve.

By lunch time, I had successfully pried a thick stack of tightly bound documents from the bottom of the second box. The twine holding them together had long since rotted, but the pages were fused from chemical breakdown.

I slid a thin micro-spatula beneath the edge of the top sheet, slowly coaxing the fragile fibers apart. As the page finally separated, the elegant, looping calligraphy didn't look like a political speech or a meeting log.

I pulled my magnifying visor down, leaning closer to the purple script.

My dearest Constance,the ink read, charting a passionate, desperate rhythm across the yellowed parchment.They tell us the world is changing, that the vote will give us a voice, but myvoice is only yours in the dark. Let them march in the streets. I am only waiting for the train back to you.

My breath caught. These weren't political papers. They were love letters. Secret declarations from a period when a woman holding onto a hidden passion could ruin her life in an instant.

David’s voice pushed into my head yet again. He seemed to think I needed to let my hair down a little more. Not question every last sliver of temptation I was met with.

But apparently women had been facing damning consequences for their choices in love for eons. I held the evidence in my hands, and it made me more determined to keep my dick in my pants, as it were.

This newfound resolve brought my focus back without even trying. Hours passed without me noticing, and only once, when Walter tapped on the doorframe, did I realize a whole day had passed.

“You planning on closing up?” His wire-rimmed glasses were taped in the middle and one side dipped lower than the other. That, and his perpetually untucked shirt made him always look like he’d just dragged himself from a barroom brawl.