Page 35 of Gym With Benefits

Splashes rose up in waves. They were a blur of tan skin and churning white foam. Hunter tried to hook Brock’s ankle on the first turn, a dirty move that earned a muffled curse and a splash that nearly hit the ceiling. Brock responded by cutting off Hunter’s line, his powerful shoulders throwing up a wake that forced Hunter to fight for air. They were neck and neck, a brutal, graceful race of bone and grit, each stroke a bid for my attention.

The glass double doors at the far end of the deck opened with a pneumatic hiss that killed the competitive energy instantly. I’d totally forgotten that this was a public space filled with public people trying to go about their fitness regimens.

Dane stood in the frame, his arms folded across his chest. He didn't step into the pool area, but the look on his face didn’t need a close-up.

"Hunter," he said, his voice flat. "The nutrition bar is backed up to the cardio floor and the front desk is a ghost town. What the hell are you doing?"

Brock and Hunter slowed their pace, the race dissolving into a subdued crawl back to the edge. Dane didn't wait for an explanation. He gave the three of us a slow shake of his head—a silent indictment of the goofing around—and stalked back into the lobby. The bubble of the pool room evaporated.

“Always a bag of fun, that guy,” Hunter muttered with a laugh as he pulled himself out of the pool.

Brock and I followed, the transition back to gravity making my limbs feel like lead. The water ran off the guys in glistening sheets, pooling on the tiles around their feet. Hunter reached for a towel, rubbing it over his hair before turning to me. The competitive fire was gone, replaced by that soft, attentive focus that seemed reserved for my messes.

"Did it work?" he asked. "Has your bad day been cured?"

I looked at him, then at Brock, who stood a few feet away, his chest still heaving from the exertion. After searching around for the reason I needed to be cured, I came up empty. All that existed was the texture of wet skin and hands grasping at me under the water.

"Yeah," I admitted, my voice a thready whisper. "I’m pretty sure it worked.”

Hunter’s mouth curved into a satisfied smile. He reached out, his thumb grazing the damp skin of my shoulder with a touch that sent a bolt of heat curling around my clit. "Good. That was the goal."

As I stood there, caught between the two of them in the quiet, echoing room, a realization hit me with more force than the water. The pull toward Brock was a known quantity now, a hunger that had already been fed once. But the pull toward Hunter was just as sharp, just as undeniable.

I wasn't just into the trainer. I was into his best friend, too.

13

Jess

Petty is an underrated virtue. It lacks the grand scale of vengeance, certainly, but it keeps the blood moving on a weeknight when the humidity outside is thick enough to chew.

The glowing screen of David’s Mac sat between a bowl of heavily salted popcorn and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that tasted mostly gross. On the television, two women in bandage dresses were screaming about a charity gala in Orange County, their voices muted just enough that the audio sounded like cats fighting in a dumpster.

“You tell her, honey,” he muttered to the one with the pixie cut. Not really watching, but invested enough to comment.

His fingers flew across the trackpad with the speed of a concert pianist. If concert pianists wore silk robes that had seen better days, that is. And the look on his face was one of absolute glee.

"She used the hashtagblessedtwice in the same paragraph," he murmured, his gaze fixed on the grids of perfect squares. "And the filter. My god. She looks like a ghost that died in a tanning bed."

I sank into the cushions, the cold condensation from my wine glass dripping onto my bare knee. On the laptop, Amberleigh held a giant inflated flamingo in what appeared to be an infinitypool in Tulum. Her hair was that specific shade of expensive, buttery blonde that required three hours of chemical bleaching every four weeks.

"Give her the fitness influencer burner," I said, reaching over to pick some M&Ms out of the popcorn. "The one with the avatar of the celery stalk."

"Already ahead of you, darling." David clicked a button with an audible snap. "I went withfit_mom_dcmd. Fit Mom wants to know if the latex in the floatie was ethically sourced or if Amberleigh just preferred the taste of microplastics in her organic green juice."

A small, tight knot of satisfaction uncurled in my stomach. It was a stupid game, a cheap high, but the anonymous digital ecosystem allowed for a beautiful kind of asymmetric warfare. In the real world, Amberleigh was accomplished in her career, a woman who sent emails ending inBest!while actively plotting the corporate execution of her colleagues. In the digital world, under the scrutiny offit_mom_dcmd, she was just another target in a target-rich environment.

David scrolled down to the next image. It was a throwback post from our sophomore year at Georgetown.

That knot came twisting back with a vengeance.

A group shot at a tailgate outside the stadium. I was standing on the far left, slightly blurred and wearing an oversized sweatshirt that made me look like a potato with legs. Amberleigh was dead center, her arm draped over two guys. Carter was one of them. He wore his fraternity fleece, teeth flashing in that easy, golden-boy grin that used to make my heart flip like a pancake.

The caption read:Missing the glory days with the best crew. #HoyaSaxa #TBT #CollegeSweethearts

"The revisionist history is truly a work of art," David said, his voice dropping into that dry, clinical tone he used when analyzing a bad Tinder profile. "She’s completely excised the part where the crew stopped talking to her because she was busy doing the horizontal tango with the potato’s boyfriend."

"I was nineteen. The potato look was a choice." I took a long swallow of the terrible wine, letting the acid burn the back of my throat. Five years. A whole half-decade of adult life, a degree in archival science, a job that involved handling three-hundred-year-old parchment with white gloves, and yet the sight of that specific shade of fleece still felt like an eviction notice served to my pride.