Page 1 of Ripped

CHAPTER ONE

CONNOR

Of the eight million people in the city of New York, I am the last person who should be in this room right now. Everyone is ripped, pumped, stacked, jacked, or however else you want to describe those guys whose muscles have muscles. Me—I’m a little chonky and I’d rather sit on the couch watching movies than work out any night of the week.

And yet, here I am, sweating my balls off in the back corner of a room filled with bikes, voluntarily getting shouted at by the hottest silver fox spin instructor in the city.

What am I doing here again? I ask myself that about twenty minutes into every spin class. It’s partly because I’ve already paid for a year’s membership to Mars Fitness, partly because exercise is supposedly good for me, and—okay, fine, partly because of sexy spin instructor Donnie.

“You can do it! Almost there!” His voice comes through the sound system, his soft British accent barely noticeable above the driving, frenetic music. Something fast-paced with a deep bass that booms through the walls, the floor, and me. The thump-thump-thump competes with the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of my pulse until I’m one giant vibrating mass, hanging on to my bike for dear life.

“Five more! Four more! Three! Two! One!”

We all let out a collective groan of relief as the song finally ends and Donnie switches to something slower to cool us down. I drag a towel over my face with one hand and turn the resistance on the bike down to zero with the other. My feet spin uselessly in the pedals, my legs are jelly and I want to lie down on the floor and never get up again.

“Great job, guys!” Donnie’s gaze sweeps across the room, pausing for a micro-second at every single person like he’s congratulating us all individually.

When he gets to me, I can’t help but smile back, feeling like I’ve gotten a gold star. This is part of why I torture myself too: that slightly delirious euphoria at the end of every class. I’m weightless, floating, and everything is bright and shiny and happy.

Donnie leads us through the cool down and the all-important stretches, reminding us to “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!” The moment the song ends, half a dozen guys hop off their bikes, as if they’ve merely taken a leisurely ride through the park, and swarm Donnie. It happens every time. The gym bros are all ga-ga over Donnie, and hey, I don’t blame them. He’s hot. He’s friendly. His accent is ear-candy. If I thought I had even a fraction of a chance with him, I’d probably be up there elbowing my way through.

But I don’t, and besides, I’ve got a boyfriend waiting at home for me. A boyfriend who should’ve been at the class with me, who was the whole reason why I had a year’s membership to one of the more expensive gyms in town in the first place.

Miles heard about Mars from some co-worker of his, about how it catered to gay men, how it was “the place to be.” It was only after I let him strong-arm me into joining that I learned about the locker room—and the showers and the sauna and the steam room. There’s a reason why Mars has branded condoms and single-serve packets of lube. They sit in giant fish bowls in every corner of the locker room. “Every good workout ends with a blowjob” might as well be the gym’s tagline.

I strip out of my sopping wet clothes and dump them into my gym bag. There’s already a steady soundtrack of muffled moans bouncing off the tiled walls when I get to the showers. I snag the last one and snap the privacy curtain closed. Even then, my dick plumps at the sound of guys getting off all around me. I give it a couple soapy tugs, then leave it alone. I don’t need a hard-on while walking home and I’d rather come in Miles’s ass than all over the floors of a public shower room.

After I change into my street clothes, I take a minute to scroll through the food delivery app for my favorite Mexican place. On the agenda tonight is tacos and binging the latest season of Drag Race.

Connor: Ordered dinner. On my way home!

Miles doesn’t respond, but then, he never really does. He’s got terrible text messaging etiquette.

“Hey, Connor! How was class tonight?” Sawyer, the guy who mans the front desk on evenings and weekends waves me down as I’m on my way out. He showed me and Miles around when we first joined and he always says hello when he sees me.

“Great! Donnie’s always trying to put us in the grave.”

“No shit.” Sawyer laughs. “How’s your boyfriend? What’s his name? No, wait, don’t tell me…” He scrunches up his face. “Miles?”

“Yeah, it’s Miles.”

“Where’s his ass been? I never see him coming in with you.”

Don’t I know it. “He’s not that big on the whole exercise thing.”

Sawyer frowns at me. “What? Then why join a gym?”

Do I want to get into how Miles is always latching on to a brilliant idea, only to abandon it after a few months for the next shiny, new thing? I shrug at Sawyer. “Beats me.”

“Well, tell your man to get his ass in here, okay?”

“I’ll do my best!” I will do no such thing. I know a lost cause when I wake up next to it every morning.

Outside, winter is still clinging to the March air and the cold wind whips at my face. I pull my hood over my wet hair and hunker down for the walk home. Our apartment isn’t too far from the gym. If my legs weren’t little more than jelly, it’d only take me ten minutes. Right now, it’ll probably take me fifteen.

I’m unlocking the front door of my building when a delivery guy rolls to a stop on his bicycle beside me. The light from his phone is shining on his face.

“You from El Pescador?” I ask him.

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