Page 18 of What It Means To Be Found

…And maybe a teeny-tiny part of me wanted to experience what it would be like to be rejected by Logan St. James. I was curious if he would be an asshole about it, which seemed likely to me. Or, if he would try to pull some sort of “It’s not you, it’s me” cliché.

Courtney shouldered the door open and scanned her pass at the front desk, smiling at the kid working there. The guy did an obvious perusal of Courtney, and I made direct eye contact with him until she passed, letting him know I saw him.

The tips of his ears turned a little red, and then he cleared his throat and turned back to his computer screen.

“So, what are you going to do today?” I asked her.

“It’s arms and shoulders day, I think,” Courtney replied, her dark eyes scanning the gym until she spotted whom she was looking for and sauntered on. It was a smaller gym, and only a handful of people were there exercising. Courtney and I were the only women at the moment.

“Hey!” Courtney walked ahead of me and waved, and I stepped to the side to confirm who I suspected she was talking to.

Logan was just racking the bar he was lifting and then sat up on his bench. He gave a quick head nod in Courtney’s direction before he hesitated the slightest bit when his eyes slid over and noticed me. It was a subtle movement, but I caught it. I also saw how quickly he dismissed my appearance and bent down to grab a towel to wipe all over his face and neck. He was already working up a sweat.

Then I noticed the number of circle-weight things on either end of his bar, and I realized that that checked out.

“Getting a head start?” Courtney asked as she reached her fist out for him to bump. He returned the gesture with a nod. No smile, just a nod. That was the Logan way. The only time his facial expressions really changed from his bored ones, was when he was signing because facial expressions were integrated with ASL.

“Lo decided to join us today,” Courtney threw a thumb over her shoulder to address me, clearly having missed his hesitation when he noticed me earlier, “So we gotta show her the ropes.”

“Show me the ropes?” I asked, setting my purse down as I pretended to check my phone. I had no notifications; I just didn’t want to make eye contact with Logan. I felt like my racing heart and the heat I suddenly felt in my cheeks was embarrassing enough. Though I could blame the temperature it was inside the gym.

“How many pull-ups can you do?” Courtney asked as she walked around towards the head of Logan’s bench and nodded for him to continue his set. He also avoided looking at me as he leaned back and gripped the bar with his hands. Watching him pull the bar down towards his chest and push it away distracted me for a moment before I remembered to respond to Courtney’s question.

“I don’t know, a couple?” I asked, watching how Logan’s legs flexed even though his feet stayed flat on the ground on either side of the bench. He was wearing some type of black compression shorts that fell to his mid-thigh, showing off the many muscles in his legs. He then wore shorter, looser shorts over the top of them. I assumed they were for modesty, because there was no way his compression shorts underneath concealed anything.

“We like to do sets of ten, if possible,” Courtney spoke, barely distracting me from ogling Logan’s body as he breathed through his nose with every push of the bar, “So we can show you how to use the little rubber band things to help get familiar with the movement of a pull-up.”

I wasn’t a huge fan of how she just assumed I couldn’t do a single pull-up, but I also wasn’t going to correct her because I truly didn’t know what my arm strength was. I wasn’t used to exercising with weights, push-ups, and pull-ups ever. My exercises were usually yoga, aerobics…and occasional bedroom gymnastics.

“Sounds good,” I said, my eyes trailing higher on Logan’s body, where it reclined on the bench. He wore a black men's tank top that hugged his pecs, showing the muscles flexing as he finished off his set. I was eyeballing his biceps and forearms as he racked the bar again, and when he sat up his dark eyes met mine briefly.

Briefly, because I broke our eye contact and glanced down at my phone. Clearing my throat for literally no reason.

God, he was so nice to look at.

I tossed the phone in my bag as Courtney and Logan made their way a few feet over from the bench Logan had claimed. They approached what looked like the world’s most boring jungle gym. Various bars leveled at different heights as Courtney skipped over to one of the tallest ones, jumped up, and started swiftly doing a couple of pull-ups. Logan shook his head at her, tugged on her ponytail in jest, and bent down to retrieve what must have been the rubber band things Courtney mentioned earlier.

“Have you used these before?” Courtney asked after hopping down gracefully and pointing at the bands in Logan’s hands. He walked over to me, and it took every muscle in my neck and face not to glance up and meet his eyes as he handed me one. I took it without question, even though I shook my head to respond to Courtney.

“You use this to help pull yourself up,” Courtney explained as she tugged my band out of my hands and started securing it on one of the medium-level height monkey bars.

“Oh, so my feet rest on it?” I asked, starting to piece together what she was doing. I had been to gyms before, so I had seen other people do pull-ups like this.

“Exactly—” Suddenly, the band snapped in half as Courtney secured it to the pole. It cracked loudly, making both of us flinch. Courtney blinked at the broken band once before shrugging and tossing it aside.

“These are pretty old,” Courtney explained, “I’ll give it to the guy at the front when we’re done.”

“Okay.”

Logan waved his hand, catching Courtney’s peripheral vision, and started signing to her. His hands moved quickly, and my basic understanding of ASL couldn’t keep up with him. Ugh. Irritation started to fill me again.

Courtney nodded at him and didn’t say anything.

Okay, I guessed whatever he said was private, then.

“Okay, this one should work. There’s only one left, so let’s leave that for someone else.” Courtney wiggled her eyebrows at Logan and me. “Plus, I can finally do pull-ups without the assistance.”

Logan’s lips tipped up the smallest bit at her before he shook his head and motioned for the two of us to claim our spots. He, of course, went for the highest monkey bar on the other side of Courtney.

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