"The stretching is for the warm-up and cool-down," Rush said, rolling his eyes.
"The stretching is to keep my muscles long and lean instead of compact and bulging like you want. See? This is why I need the gym. You adamantly refuse to accept that there are different workout styles for different desired results. Sorry I don't want to have the muscle-y arms of a Navy Seal. I like to be long and lean like a yogi. You know, without having to do actual yoga. I'll be back in two hours."
With that, I slipped into my gym shoes and moved out onto the street, making my way on foot. We had the car, but we tried to avoid driving whenever possible since we weren't legally supposed to do it. Any little thing we could do to avoid suspicion was good.
The gym was on a street called Willow, a good twenty-minute walk from the shack, but it was additional exercise and a way to try to clear my head.
I was being overly sappy about the Mark thing. Again, I was blaming pent-up sexual frustration, a lack of contact with any people outside of my family, and the fact that he was sexy as could be. I was only a woman after all.
Fact of the matter was, there was a part of me that was desperately in need for connection, for human contact. Our lives, while purposeful, while full of support from one another, was still very small. I couldn't claim to have had a friend since I was seventeen years old. I had never been able to hold down a boyfriend. We moved too much. We were involved in too dirty a line of work. Close personal connections weren't just ill-advised, they were genuinely risky.
So we did the work. We were there for one another. And we tried really hard to pretend that was more than enough.
When we were younger, maybe it even was. None of us wanted roots. No one was ready to settle down and pay a mortgage and come home to the same person every night. We were too busy getting high off the adrenaline rush of what we did, gassed up on the righteous anger that allowed us to do what we did. We genuinely liked a new town every month. We liked seeing what living conditions we would be dealing with- be it a shack in the woods or a nice furnished rental. We liked seeing the country, building stronger familial bonds.
But as we were all getting older, it was clear it was starting to weigh on us all in our own ways. Kingston was tired of the act of the robbery itself, tired of worrying about all of us like he always did. Atlas was sick of the new crash pads. Nixon was tired of all the intricate, minute planning. Rush was sick of the rules we had to live by.
And me, well, I was sick of not being able to have friends or a man. I never thought I would be the kind of person to say that, but it was definitely a dominant thought on my mind the past several months. I wanted a girlfriend to go to get my hair done with, to drink coffee with and talk about girl stuff. My brothers were great, but try to bring up the red devil or nail polish colors, and they glazed over in the eyes.
On top of that, I wanted to be able to date. Not just find a man in my travels and makeout with them, or more if the mood was right. Not just exchanging small talk that sounded promising but all the while reminding myself not to get my hopes up because it was doomed from the beginning.
I wanted to share a meal with a man. Then I wanted to wait for him to call. Then I wanted another date. Maybe a makeout session. Then another date that might end up in a tour of his bedsheets. I wanted the possibility for more than just physical touch. I wanted to know what it was like to find comfort in a man, to have trust and potential, and to be with one long enough to start getting sick of them. To be with them past that six months when you realize they are human beings who do ordinary, unsexy things like trim their toenails and pick at scabs.
Maybe that didn't sound romantic to normal people, but it was like a bouquet of flowers, box of chocolates, and giant diamond earrings to me.
Some day.
I would have that some day.
And since today was not that day, I was going to take my visitor badge and work off all my restless energy on a treadmill turned up to eight.
The gym was nice. I had been in my fair share of lawsuits-waiting-to-happen, so I knew a good one when I saw one. There was a certain pride of ownership in the new, unscuffed floors, the fresh paint on the walls, the very updated machines in abundance, in the safe, clean locker room, in the quality of the sound system filling the place with upbeat music.