Page 49 of Accidentally Amy

Izzy wrapped her hands around the handles and brought up her legs in front of her. “You lift your legs, Phillips, and it strengthens the core. See?”

She brought her legs up and down.

“Thatis how you’re using that thing?” I shook my head as she beamed proudly while dangling from the exercise apparatus. “What about the other side?”

“What?” She dropped her feet to the floor and let go of the handles.

“You’re supposed to grab the top of the other side and do pull-ups.”

She looked up at the pull-up bar, then back at the camera. “I mean, I suppose youcoulddo that if you’re a pathetic little workout monkey, but this machine is for your core, dumbass.”

“It is not,dumbass.” I crossed my arms and said, “It’s for pull-ups, and the part you’re using for your core is for back pull-ups.”

“That doesn’t even sound real, back pull-ups,” she said, walking toward her phone and carrying it with her as she sat back down. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I have the same machine, Shay,” I said.

“Then show me or it’s not true, Phillips,” she replied, her stubborn chin raised.

I stood and started walking toward the spare bedroom. “Fine, but you’re about to feelreallystupid.”

Izzy

Holy crap—his bedroom.

I saw it in a flash as he walked down the hall with the camera facing forward, but it was too quick for me to register anything other than a very big bed.

Of coursehe had a big bed.

He flipped on the lights in another room that appeared to be an office/workout room. There was a big desk, along with a treadmill, an exercise bike, and a workout tower exactly like mine.

He set the phone down—I assumed on the desk—so it faced the tower.

“Oh, my God, am I going to discover the secrets of Mr. Chest’s chest?”

“You wish,” Blake said, and then he reached up with his long arms and grabbed the pull-up bar. Without a word, he started doing pull-ups as if they were the easiest thing in the world.

“Booooo,” I said, unable to stifle the giggle that escaped as my eyes were treated to Blake’s Feats of Strength. “That’s lame. Total weak sauce.”

“I haven’t heard that expression since middle school,” he said while not slowing or ruining his perfect form.

“I don’t think I’ve said it since then.” I couldn’t help but notice the hard strip of stomach that was exposed by his raised arms. Not only that, but his shorts hung low on his hips, so low that I could see that jutting hip bone thing that was pretty much an anatomical aphrodisiac.

Sweet holy hip bones, I need smelling salts.

“Stop it, before I puke,” I said. “Your form is atrocious.”

He dropped himself to the floor and beamed at the camera, smiling in a way that made me feel like he knew how hot I was for him. “Sure it is.”

“What about the other part?” I asked, but I felt like a perv as I said it because I was basically just requesting that he perform another Feat of Strength. “I think you made up something called abackpull-up…?”

He went around to the other side and started doing dip-down things that made me want to bite his apple-bottom biceps, so I said, “Oh, those. I did like a hundo this morning.”

He dismounted, winked, and said, “Okay, Iz.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Don’t you have some chickens to eat or something?”

“Trying to get rid of me?” he asked, turning off the light and heading back in the direction of the living room (or so I thought from this initial FaceTime visit to his apartment).

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