Chapter 9: Working Out

To Sam’s relief, Mary’s soreness went away by the next morning. So she didn’t have to worry about any groans of pain interrupting her valuable studying time.

The only problem was, she couldn’t just end it there.

In spite of how sore she’d been, in spite of crashing into someone so hard she’d actually flown through the air, Mary was adamant to go back next week. Sam thought there were clubs that were way more suited to someone like her, but she insisted.

“Everyone there was so friendly! And it was so much fun! Next time, I’m going to do better!”

Most of the time the scrawny girl was as tough as a piece of paper in a hurricane, but she was surprisingly stubborn.

So in order to keep from having to deal with an injured Mary every weekend, Sam was forced to do something she never thought she’d find herself doing.

Spend quality time with her roommate.

It had been a few days since Mary’s recovery, and Sam wanted her to take it easy at first. So she focused on getting the girl’s diet on track. Mary’s appetite (or lack thereof) was the biggest problem with her health at the moment, so Sam had started stuffing her like a pig before the slaughter.

And boy, was their first day at the gym a slaughter.

“…Hah… and… 10!” Mary gasped, the barbell sliding into place with a clank. Her face was as red as a tomato and a puddle of sweat had formed around the weight machine.

“Wow, way to go,” Sam said dryly. “Let’s try putting some weights on it for this next set, okay?”

“Are you kidding?! I’ll die!”

Sam rubbed the bridge of her nose in frustration. This was a 15 pound barbell, the lightest one they had. And she could barely lift THAT.

It seemed that she had a long way to go before Sam could leave this girl to her own devices.

“…Okay, forget the bench press, let’s move onto the free weights,” she decided, turning away from the heavy-duty machines with a swish of her ponytail. Any longer and she’d just feel embarrassed for the poor thing.

She led Mary to another section of the gym, where dumbbells were. They came in a variety of weights, so it was easy to customize a proper workout session with just the equipment here.

“Look, Sam! I can lift this one! See?!” Mary said excitedly, holding pink dumbbell up with pride.

“Mary, that’s 3 pounds.”

“I know! And I can lift both of them!”

God, she looked so happy.

“…Yes,” Sam said, patting Mary on the head. “You’re doing great, champ.”

Maybe the best thing to do was start with the small victories and go from there. Sam was already revising her workout plan to help Mary bulk up when someone interrupted them.

“Oh, hello! I didn’t know anyone else was using the gym this early!”

Suddenly Sam was extremely grateful that Mary could only lift the 3 pound dumbbells, because the minute she heard the boy call out to them she shook with terror and immediately dropped the weights, and Sam’s foot had been right under one of them.

A whole 3 pounds. It almost hurt.

Sam was no stranger to guys approaching her at the gym. But her first week she’d sent a strong enough message that she wasn’t interested that the boys in her usual workout time had given her a wide berth since then. And all it had cost was a bruised foot or two.

But Mary was so self-conscious about being seen that she’d insisted they go the second the gym opened, at 5:30, so no one would be around to see her mess up.

So much for that.

Quick as a whip the pale girl scurried behind her Sam shield as the guy approached the two of them. His sandy blonde hair and muscular figure looked vaguely familiar, but Sam didn’t make a habit of remembering people who didn’t matter.

“We, uh… met at Boffer Club last week?” He tried, giving them a shaky smile.

Oh! That’s right! The guy who’d ran into Mary. What was his name again? Bruce? He looked like a Bruce.

“I’m Daniel.”

Or Daniel, that worked too.

“Oh, yeah. I remember you now. The guy who turned my roommate into a pancake. What do you want?” She scowled, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

Like most guys were when she got snippy, Daniel was a little caught off-guard. He mumbled, “um, I just… I saw you two were lifting weights, and I wanted to say hi, since I don’t, um… see you around that often…”

“Oh, and you make it a habit of bugging girls trying to lift weights in peace, then?”

“I, um, I just… sorry to bother you!” He said, leaving as quick as he could.

Sam sighed. She turned back to Mary, who was still shaking. “Look, Mary, you need to stop hiding behind me all the time, okay? Next time a guy you’ve got a problem with comes up to start something, just tell him to back off.”

“Huh? I don’t have a problem with Daniel!” Mary protested.

“What? But he ran you over, remember? Isn’t that why you hid behind me?” Sam could have sworn that it was just more of her roommate trying to avoid confrontations, but Mary frantically shook her head back and forth.

“No, no, that was, well… I know, but… but you saw what he was wearing!” She sputtered, her face red with shame.

What? The dude was in a tank top, like every other gym bro in the world. Mary was wearing one too, and Sam was in her sports bra, what was the problem?

“His arms were out! They were just, like OUT! In the OPEN! And he had those bulging muscles, and it was just so EEEWW!” Mary shielded her eyes, her face red with shame.

“…That’s bad?”

“I don’t want to see that! I didn’t even know where I was supposed to look! It was just so… ah!” Realizing what she was saying, she quickly clamped her hands over her mouth and shook her head.

Honestly Sam had no idea what was even going on at this point, she just wanted to get back to lifting weights.

“Okay, well, sorry to say this, but if you go to a gym, you’re going to wind up seeing some muscles,” Sam said. “What’s the big deal? You haven’t said anything about my muscles, right?” She asked, flexing her arm in comparison.

“It’s different with you, you’re a girl!”

She took a second to process what Mary just said.

“Wait, is this, like, a sexual thing?”

“WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?! WHY WOULD YOU EVER THINK TO LET THOSE WORDS COME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH?!” Mary exclaimed, her face so hot it was practically smoking.

Okay she really just did not care. “Look, whatever it is, if it’s a sexual thing, or just you not liking this guy, forget it, okay? Not my problem. Let’s just get to working out.”

Sam went over and picked some 25 pounders, not wanting to strain herself too hard, and got started on some arm curls.

“Do you think I don’t like him?” Mary asked.

“Don’t care.”

“Because he’s a really nice guy. He actually came up to me after our psych class the other day and apologized again for running into me.”

Sam’s eye twitched. It was really hard to keep count with Mary’s voice in her ears. Was that 7 reps or 8?

“…Do you think Daniel thinks I don’t like him?”

“I think he probably thinks that you’re the kind of person who won’t leave her roommate alone when she’s trying to work out, that’s what I think,” Sam snapped.

Mary began to tear up and Sam immediately felt bad. She set down the dumbbell and rubbed her temples.

“…Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped like that. What’s wrong?”

Mary immediately brightened.

“Well, I mean… so I went to class yesterday, right? Oh, also, Daniel’s in my psych class too, and like, after class let out, he came up to me and asked me stuff like if was okay, did my shoulder still hurt, telling me how sorry he was, all sorts of stuff. So you don’t have to be so mean to him, okay? He’s nice!”

Sam decided not to mention the fact that the only reason she’d chewed the guy out in the first place was because Mary hadn’t been able to talk to him herself.

“…Well, at least you can have a conversation with a boy, that’s progress I guess,” Sam sighed.

Mary gave a guilty glance to the side.

“…So you didn’t say anything back, then.”

“I, um, squeaked? I made a squeak, and then I ran the other way.”

Ugh, this girl was hopeless. “Okay, then yeah, he probably thinks you hate him.”

“What?! No! I don’t want that!” She wailed.

“…So you want him to think that you like him?”

“No! That would be way too embarrassing! He’d start talking to me MORE!”

“…Then do you want him to stop being completely neurotic and leave you alone so you can get some exercise in peace? …Oh, wait, no, that’s me.”

“SaaAAaamm!”

“So what do you want?”

“I-I don’t know,” she admitted. “He seems nice, and he feels really bad about what he did, but like… he’s a boy. And he’s a boy in my class. What if I talk to him, and he, like, gets the wrong idea, and thinks I like him, and then he asks me out and then things get awkward, and then Boffer Club will be super-awkward, and my psych class will be awkward, and… and…”

Oh, yeah, because things could somehow get MORE awkward when it came to this basket case, Sam could totally see THAT happening. She eyed the 25 pound weight in her hand and wondered how much it would hurt to just smash it into her face until she lost consciousness.

“You’re the one taking the psychology class, don’t they teach you, like, brain stuff to work this whole thing out yourself?” Sam groaned. She’d signed up to help Mary get in shape, not be a sounding-board for her laundry list of problems.

“What?! No, it’s an intro class! I won’t get into the big stuff until, like, way later,” she explained.

“Oh. Huh. So you’re actually interested in that kind of thing?” Until now, Sam had given the idea of what Mary was actually going to college to study precisely zero thought. But if she had to guess, it wouldn’t have been psychology.

“Yup!” Mary said, smiling brightly. “When I’m done with school I want to go into therapy!”

“…As a patient?”

“HEY!” Mary flushed red and stomped her foot on the mat.

“Okay, but you realize that as a therapist you’re going to have to, like, talk to people, right?” Sam said, raising her eyebrow. “A lot of people? Like, every day?”

Mary blanched. She gulped and quickly put on a confident face. “That… That’s fine!” She said, giving Sam a shaky thumbs’ up. “I’ll… figure something out!”

Sam shook her head. The poor girl was doomed.