Page 49 of Gym With Benefits

Me:Only if you stand me up. I’ll find your stash of imported tea and dump it in the Potomac.

His response was faster than any other human could type:I’m putting on my coat. Don’t you dare touch my oolong.

David sat across from me, already dissecting a plate of micro-greens with his usual judgment. The restaurant buzz provided a comfortable barrier of anonymity, cutlery clinking against porcelain while political aides traded secrets over artisanal vinegar.

“You look like a Victorian ghost who wandered into a tech startup," he observed, taking a sip of his sparkling water. "What happened in the subterranean caverns today?”

I moved my fork through my goat cheese salad, the appetite I possessed ten minutes ago vaporizing into the ether. “I found a letter. A woman gave up her inheritance, her social standing, everything, just to be with the woman she loved. It made me think about Carter.”

David’s fork clattered onto his plate. “Jessica. We are not doing this. Not five years after the fact, or ever. Carter’s a lying, cheating piece of shit who doesn’t deserve your thoughts turning to him at random moments. Trust me when I say there’s no grand historical romance to salvage.”

“I walked away without a fight,” I muttered, my fingers tracing the grain of the reclaimed oak table. “Maybe if I stayed. If I forced the chance to heal—”

“You can’t heal a severed head. A severed head means dead. End of.”

“But—”

“If you stayed, you would have spent your life monitoring his location data and wondering why his phone went dark every Thursday at midnight.” David leaned over the table and took my hand. “Pining is pathetic, and beneath you. It’s a defensemechanism used to avoid dealing with the present because ghosts are easier to manage than the living.”

A hot flush crept up my neck, the memory of Hunter’s fingers teasing me in that office making the skin beneath my collarbone prickle. I hadn’t exactly been pining.

“Your life is good,” he continued, his tone softening into his familiar voice of reason. “You have a fellowship. You have an apartment with crown molding. And from what you told me last week, you have two hunky muscle men treating you like a prize exhibit. You’re doing just fine.”

I averted my gaze to prevent any traitorous details about Hunter from slipping out. If I looked at him for too long, I’d spill it. As far as David knew, Brock remained the solitary focal point of my athletic endeavors.

“Speaking of your fitness journey,” he said, his fork resuming its assault on the greens. “Have you decided who you’re bringing to my work mixer next Friday?”

“I haven't,” I said, grateful for the partial detour. “Work’s been crazy. And things at the gym’s bee... professional.”

David stopped chewing and his eyes narrowed, internal radar detecting the precise frequency of my omission. “Professional? It’s working out, not a tax audit. You’re hiding something from me.”

I offered him an unblinking stare of doe-eyed innocence. “I would never.”

“I read you better than anyone on this eastern seaboard,” he countered. “Who is it? The trainer?”

“They have the lavender-infused duck fat fries on the lunch menu today,” I blurted out, pointing to the chalkboard near the kitchen bar. “The ones with the rosemary sea salt you claimed altered your chemical composition last fall.”

The bait landed perfectly. David’s suspicion crumbled, and was replaced by the intense, single-minded focus of a food purist.

“They told me those were seasonal. If the kitchen staff lied to me—” He flagged down the waiter with an authoritative wave of his hand.

I let out a silent breath, relief cooling the heat in my chest. I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to analyze what happened on that desk with Hunter. And I definitely didn’t have the words to explain how turned on I was when he’d brought up Brock’s name while his fingers were inside me. The present felt too dense, too messy. The past offered a simpler framework: a cheating boyfriend didn’t need complex psychological geometry.

David checked his watch a few minutes later, his plate cleared of fries. “I have to get back. The senior partners are reviewing the antitrust brief at two.”

“Go,” I said, pulling my wallet from my bag. “I’ll pick up the check. I want to sit for a minute.”

He kissed my cheek, grabbed his coat, and vanished into the stream of people exiting toward 7th Street.

I sat alone, watching the crowds move past the plate-glass window. A young couple argued over a parking meter; a woman in a power suit sprinted toward a waiting town car. My mind drifted back to Constance and ‘R’ hiding their letters in the lining of trunks, risking institutionalization just to hold hands in a drafty boarding house.

The realization hit me with the clinical chill of a historical fact. Those two women spent their lives wishing for the freedom I possessed right now. They fought the law and their families just to exist in the present. And here I was, wasting my inheritance of freedom by overthinking a college boy who lacked the integrity to keep his pants zipped in a dorm room.

I pulled my phone from my pocket, deleting the text I’d already drafted to Carter. David’s reaction was the make-or-break in whether it would be sent or not. I guess luckily for me, my friend was on top form today and managed to talk some sense into my head before heading back to work. I scrolled down to Hunter's number, my thumb tapping the screen before my fear could mount a defense.

He answered on the second ring, his voice the same cadence that broke into rough pieces against my skin yesterday. “Jess. I was just thinking about you.”

“Me too. About you, I mean. Not me. That would be weird. Why would I be thinking about me, and then call you to tell you about it? Anyway. Never mind. Do you wanna be my boring date?”