Page 2 of Two to Tango

* * *

I’m standing in front of a mirror in the gym changing rooms, running a small amount of product through my towel-dried hair. Kit approaches from behind, his reflection appearing next to mine.

‘I’ll catch you tomorrow, Brooks. I’ve got to get back to Madge and the kids. I say the kids; hopefully, the horrors are in bed.’

Turning, I knock my fist against the one he holds out. ‘You don’t mean that.’

He shrugs. ‘God knows I must have sinned in a past life. But you’re right; I wouldn’t be without them. I might be thankful when they’re self-sufficient, though.’

‘Ha. Be careful what you wish for,’ I tell him. ‘When they’re teenagers, they just find different reasons to make you want to tear your hair out.’

‘Can’t wait. Catch you tomorrow, same time? Thanks for tonight.’

‘Anytime, buddy.’

I move to the large locker I keep permanently stocked with clothes and take out a T-shirt. When my head pops through the neck, I see Drew sitting on a bench in front of me, pulling on a pair of shoes.

‘Is Cady acting out?’ he asks.

Bending to straighten my dark jeans over my boots, I say, ‘Imagine a female version of us at eighteen years old.’

‘Fuck.’

‘My sentiments exactly. I’m thirty-five, and my daughter has a better love life than I do.’

‘Jesus. As long as she doesn’t have the same type of love life you have.’

I get his point. My type of love life is one-night stands a couple times a month. That’s definitely not what I want for Cady. I shudder at the thought.

‘I don’t even want to think about that.’

‘Probably for the best. Okay, I’m ready. I’ll meet you in the bistro.’

‘I won’t be long; I just need to speak to a couple of the staff about closing up. Order whatever you want from the kitchen – it’s on the house – then we can go grab a beer.’

After checking my list of clients for personal training sessions tomorrow and making sure the class schedule has no last-minute changes, I speak to my night team and head into the bistro.

The café bistro is a large, open space with modern, glass tables. We have a small menu offering proteins, veggies, and healthy carbs. We also have a salad and smoothie bar. I eat here often. It’s one of the perks of owning the gym.

The bistro is a relatively new addition to the site. Drew helped me out with it by having his firm deal with the legals around the construction work.

As I walk past the busy tables – some people eating meals, some having smoothies, some just drinking coffee and chatting – I can’t help but think it’s a far cry from where I started out.

The first gym I ever worked out in was an old warehouse on the edge of New York Bay: the Staten Island side, where I grew up. I was seventeen. I’ve always been a tall, broad guy, but back then, I was just a kid who liked to play the guitar in my high school band. The difference between me and the rest of the guys in high school was that I had knocked up my childhood sweetheart, Alice. And I was ready to marry her.

The kicker was, Alice loved me but her parents didn’t. They thought I was a waster. Well, I knocked up their daughter when she was sixteen – of course they thought I was a waster. By comparison to Alice’s private education and her family’s weekend home in the Hamptons, I had nothing. I came from nothing. My mother worked in a bar and my father was ajack-of-all-trades, master of none, as the saying goes.

But I’d have been damned if I didn’t try to prove everyone wrong. I was willing to do everything and anything I could to convince Alice’s parents to let me marry her. She was the mother of my child, and the girl I was crazy in love with.

So, while I finished high school, I started working as a mechanic to earn some cash, and I joined the gym. I wanted to work like a man. Prove that I could provide for my family like a man. And I wanted to build muscle, to startlookinglike a man.

That first gym I went to was owned by a guy we all knew as Crazy Joe. I’ll never forget him. He really was crazy. He served in Vietnam and, by his own admission, smoked too many joints and took too much LSD in the seventies. He was covered in tats. Ready to beat men to a pulp ‘for exercise.’ He was drunk on whisky most of the time. But he’s where it all started for me.

His sanity aside, Crazy Joe was all right. He’d have these moments of tenderness and enlightenment. Who knows, maybe that was just the LSD talking, but he sort of took me under his wing. He got me into boxing every day. I ran with him on the streets, and we lifted weights together. Hell, Crazy Joe gave me my first tattoo. Though my arms and chest are covered in ink now, I still have that first tat on my bicep.

What I didn’t realize then was that I would never be good enough for Alice’s parents. No matter how much gym time I put in. Whether or not I still went to school while working as a mechanic. Despite the fact I went to their house every night to see Alice and Cady, not out of a sense of obligation but because I was desperate to see my girls. None of it mattered to them.

They still saw me as nothing but a weight on their daughter, pulling her down. Of course I didn’t want to be a weight, but I did want to be an anchor. For her. For our family.

---