Page 48 of Just Friends

“Your form is wrong,” I tell him, knowing full well that it’s not.

“No, it’s not.”

“It is, actually,” I say, dipping into a lunge, my calves burning with the exertion. “I coughed up the money for the personal trainer.Youwere too cheap.”

“Oh, with the personal trainer again,” Adam groans, his eyes rolling once more.

I swear I don’t know how he doesn’t get dizzy with how often he does that.

“I was an athlete,” he says, voice taut, and I know I’m making progress.

The edges of my lips lift in a smile, and I have to hold it back. All my progress will be decimated if he knows I’m enjoying this.

“Oh, with the athlete thing again,” I parrot. “You played tennis in high school.”

His eyes flare, and I know I’ve hit the target. “Tennis is a physically demanding sport,” he says through clenched teeth, standing straight up, shoulders tense and workout forgotten.

I keep lunging, ignoring his posture. “I ran cross country.”

“Congrats, dipshit. I ran just as much as youandplayed an actual sport.”

“And yet you still don’t have the correct form when you do a deadlift.” My words overlap his, and it takes all my self-control to keep from laughing at the look on his face.

His breath pushes through his nose slowly, his eyes narrowing. The tree trunks he calls arms cross over his chest. “So things went badly with Hazel this weekend, huh?”

Screw him for being so perceptive.

“No, we’re actually engaged now. Thank you.”

“Ah, so this text she just sent you is a confirmation of the wedding planner she’s booked, then?”

I pause mid-lunge and drop my weights to the ground before snatching my phone from his hand. Hazel hasn’t texted me since last night, which is a little odd, because I can usually count on waking up to texts she sent me late at night, when I’m already fast asleep, asking if it’s okay to eat expired yogurt or if she’s supposed to buy toothpaste with or without fluoride when she orders her groceries.

This morning, there was nothing, and it only confirmed my suspicions that things between us are fractured.

The breath heaves from my chest, and my shoulders slump when I read her text. It’s two tickets to country swing dancing lessons for Saturday.

Alex looks over my shoulder, and I know I must look like a kicked puppy when his only response is “I’m sorry, man.”

I push a hand through my hair, damp with sweat. “It’s fine.”

“At least you have natural rhythm,” Adam says, his normally disinterested expression cracking with a twitch of his lips.

I hold back my smile, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “You’re the worst.”

Adam ignores this, bending down (in perfect form) to deadlift the bar and weights again. Through gritted teeth, he asks, “So who are you going to set her up with?”

I sink onto the floor, my back against the mirrors, no longer interested in my workout. My elbows rest on my propped knees, my phone dangling between them. “I don’t know. Maybe someone from work.”

“Because that went so well for you last time.”

I shoot him a flat glare, my jaw ticking. “I don’t know why I confide in you.”

“I don’t either,” Adam says. “I’ve told you so many times that I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Are you done with those?” Parker, a guy Adam and I have met a few times, asks. He points to my discarded weights on the ground.

I push off the floor. “Yeah, let me wipe them down first.”

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