Behind His Back Read online

  Behind His Back

  Sadie Stranges

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Afterword

  Copyright © 2015 by Sadie Stranges

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book contains adult scenarios and naughty words like fuck and cock, and should not be read by anyone under the age of eighteen.

  Chapter 1

  Begging for air and soaking through my sports bra, I find a spot on the floor and collapse. My sopping, salty body paints a misty sweat angel on the hard black rubber beneath me. High on the wall, a clock’s glowing red digits tell me twelve minutes have passed.

  Those twelve minutes of oxygen-sucking, callus-forming, sweat-draining work have left lactic acid burning in my muscles and white points of light fluttering around the outskirts of my vision. That kind of exquisite pain might not sound like it warrants getting out of bed early on a Saturday morning, but since I first walked through the door at Rev Fitness a year ago, this is what I’ve lived for.

  As usual, Nicole is to blame. A short, quirky brunette with a brazen sense of humor, she covers the pop-culture and city beat at Simply Living, a lifestyle magazine where she holds the enviable title of trend editor. As a features editor with an office next to hers, I’m used to getting dragged along every time she explores the next big urban obsession.

  Macrobiotic gastropub hopping?

  Sure, why not.

  Drunken underground axe throwing with bearded hipsters?

  I’ll give it a go.

  Pop-up raw dairy markets in crumbling warehouse parking lots?

  Count me in.

  Everything with Nicole is new and fun for about a week, and I never have to worry about committing beyond a single outing because every fad soon fades, giving rise to the next adventure.

  But something clicked in a weirdly permanent way when she pulled my unwilling body through a dingy door in a formerly industrial part of our city. Beyond that heavy steel door was a gym. At least that was the word she used when she pitched it to me. I’d been to gyms before—always starting with a New Year’s resolution that came on strong and then petered out into the occasional sauna visit to justify the monthly fee—but those places looked nothing like the sparse space behind the steel door. Instead of rows of screen-fitted treadmills and StairMasters and selectorized weight machines, I saw rough wooden plyo boxes, heavy medicine balls, an artillery of barbells, and stacks of thick bumper plates dusted with chalk. A weathered power cage loomed in the far corner, and metal pull-up bars snaked around the walls above us like exposed plumbing. How the hell was I going to do a pull-up? Since graduating college, I’d never spent more than thirty minutes on a treadmill, and most of that was walking.

  That first day, we arrived early so that Nicole could interview Chad, the owner. He would have looked puppyish if it weren’t for his freakish muscle and wide-jawed smile, and he couldn’t have been older than his mid twenties—at least a couple of years younger than Nicole and me. He explained the gym’s philosophy to Nicole’s outstretched phone: members showed up for any of the day’s scheduled classes, and they raced through a gruelling workout that combined weightlifting with something called high-intensity interval training. Fancy lingo aside, it all sounded like torture to me. But as Chad walked us around, I found myself distracted by his physique. He was far from a bodybuilder—not a musclebound meathead with more blood in his biceps than his brain—but I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the sleek, sinewy slabs of hard muscle hugging his frame beneath his thin cotton T-shirt. His sculpted triceps tested the hems of his short sleeves, and as he pointed out the squat racks and gesticulated toward the mirror-free walls, tiny muscles beneath the shrink-wrapped skin of his forearms popped and twitched, sending carnal signals rushing from my brain to less professional parts of my body.

  Naturally, this was unacceptable. I didn’t spend all four spring breaks of my college years in the library just to graduate and start ogling some personal trainer with the body of an anatomy diagram. Chad was on the same brainwave as the adorably dumb, beer-chugging, breast-worshipping frat boys I ignored back at school. He referred to both Nicole and me as dude, and at one point during our tour he used the word pacifically when he meant specifically. I liked men who read The New Yorker and watched Werner Herzog documentaries—not guys with no ambition beyond gaining size and counting reps. Plus I had just married a man whom any rational woman would consider a once-in-a-lifetime catch. So why couldn’t I stop staring at this brawny frat boy’s forearms?

  My ogling turned to intimidation when the gym’s members started arriving for the class. They looked like Spartan warriors readying themselves for battle. Most of the men shared Chad’s chiseled frame, and even the few women were buffer than what I considered normal back then. To me, getting in shape meant taking up Pilates like some skinny starlet. It meant following the slimming soup-diet propaganda of women’s magazines to drop a dress size for bathing-suit season—not brandishing a toned back and biceps that would leave Madonna feeling meek.

  Nicole and I exchanged regretful glances as the warriors shed their sweatpants and hoodies and started warming up. As they sped through complicated mobility drills, I stared at the girls in their skimpy sports bras and tiny, cheek-hugging shorts. I felt overdressed in my baggy sweats and never-worn running shoes that I’d purchased two years earlier during one of my fleeting bursts of motivation. I didn’t even own a sports bra—I’d warn a Warner’s laundry-day classic from Target that I figured I could sweat through without mourning its loss.

  I’ll never forget the fear that shot down my spine when, right before the workout started, one of the male warriors peeled his shirt over his head, revealing a serrated midsection that I’d have assumed was Photoshopped if I wasn’t seeing it in the flesh. A year into my new obsession, I now know that the rippling muscles he revealed were his abdominals, obliques, and the intercostals between his ribs. These days I catch myself using a lot of words that don’t fit with my humble magazine-editor persona. Words like jacked and swole and ripped, and an array of dirtier terms—words I’ve picked up from the occasional online porn I’ve started watching—that would make the former me blush.

  Chad caught me staring. “The whole shirts-off thing is just something we do,” he said, pulling his off to show me the same armor. “You’ll see why when you start sweating. “You’ll be doing a lot of that here.”

  #

  Fast-forward eleven months. Nicole may have never returned after that first embarrassing session, but something lit a fire in me that day, and I’ve been hitting it hard four days a week ever since.

  I’m now a different woman. A far sweatier one, just as Chad predicted, but it’s so much more than that. Snoop through my dresser drawers, and you’ll find a multi-colored roster of sports bras. Some are frayed and faded—the evidence of my exertions—and many are reaching the end of their lifespan. Not because the stiff fabric no longer holds my girls in place, but because all of that moisture-wicking fabric has a way of locking in the
stench of hard work. It sounds gross, but I have to do a smell test every time I put one on.

  The same goes for the tight yoga shorts I now wear on workout days—and any other chance I get. A year ago I’d have been too shy to wear such tiny shorts to bed, but now I don’t even hide them under sweatpants when I walk to the gym. I was once terrified of people seeing my thighs, but now my firm quads are emblems of my strength, and I find myself questioning whether enough of my hard, round booty pokes out of my shorts when I bend over to deadlift a barbell.

  This is my life now. These are the things that worry me.

  Shopping used to mean trying on flats or buying a quirky work sweater from Anthropologie. Now when I splurge on clothes, it’s at Lululemon or Dick’s Sports. Instead of wasting time thinking about what I’ll wear to the office, I’m coordinating the colors of my sports bras with my shorts. I’m even exploring matching athletic knee socks. And instead of worrying about whether something makes me look fat or too mature for my age, I’m worried about how quickly I’ll sweat through a new find, and whether it shows off enough of my newfound strength. I used to shop according to a preconceived idea of what the quintessential magazine editor should look like, but now I just want to look strong. Strong and—if I’m honest—hot.

  That’s something I’d have never admitted to myself a year ago, but whereas my validation once came from a good grade on a paper or a compliment on a magazine article from Angela, our editor-in-chief, it now comes from catching one of the other warriors checking out my ass while I’m squatting.

  It’s not enough for me to train like one of the boys—I want to make them salivate too. I know that sounds shallow, but it feels good when you know you’ve earned it.

  Today’s workout called for a brutal succession of walking lunges with a barbell on my back, followed by heavy kettlebell swings—a personal favorite because of how they make my ass look—and then high-rep sets of pull-ups.

  And yes, I can do pull-ups now. Dead-hang, zero-elbow-kink pull-ups that would bring tears to the eyes of even the most vicious drill sergeant.

  After those exercises were done, we had to finish the workout by pouring through the steel door and running a timed mile. Then we got to go through the whole batch of exercises again for a second round.

  Like I said, only twelve minutes on the clock, and I’m dying.

  And I love every minute of it.

  With the battle over, I’m indulging in one of my new favorite pastimes: lying on my back on the dense rubber flooring while my heart thumps and my lungs desperately draw what little oxygen is left in the room. My fellow warriors are still struggling through the final dregs of their workout, and clanking weight plates and dropping barbells erupt all around me in a testosterone-drenched symphony.

  For months I was the last to finish. But today I was third—and the first female. You could climb Everest on crutches and still not feel this good.

  In a few minutes I’ll peel myself off the floor and walk home, jangly legged and fully satisfied with what I’ve accomplished. But right now, and for the next few fleeting moments, I get to lie here and suck wind and be nothing but a physical being. No thoughts, no urges—just a tired, happy animal.

  And it feels fucking fantastic.

  Chapter 2

  My life seems to get a little duller each time I return to it after leaving the gym. But it shouldn’t. My neighborhood is perfect. It’s the bright, vibrant downtown hub you dream of when you’re a culture-craving teen swaddled in sprawling suburban strip malls. It’s the kind of newly gentrified hipster enclave that corporate scouts from Whole Foods watch like vultures, waiting to swoop in and convert a vacant warehouse or boarded-up church into a beacon of yuppy commerce.

  Rev Fitness sits just beyond the Jamba Juice–ified cluster of blocks where my husband, David, and I live, and my fifteen-minute walk home feels like I’m watching the outskirt slums evolve with every step. Five years ago the same route would have taken me past methadone clinics and transients passed out on vandalized benches. But by the time David and I bought our dream townhouse, it had morphed into a smoothie and organic-coffee stronghold.

  I now pass four distinct smoothie bars on my way home. I’ve sampled all of them except for Sympathy, a dank-smelling vegan shop with mung beans growing in the storefront windows. Nicole covered its opening for the magazine, and she said she barfed up her kale and camu camu “Shaman Shake” in the tiny herb garden out front.

  When we first moved here after our wedding, I was obsessed with a raw-food smoothie bar called Raw. Then I was addicted a place called Element, until its soy-based peach-pie shake left me stapled to my toilet for the better part of a day.

  These days, in keeping with my new predilection for pushing heavy pounds over my head, I’m a sucker for Pump Juice, which is a little more fitness oriented. Of the four smoothie shops on my route, it’s the only one that posts the macronutrient profiles of every item on its menu board. If I’m going to shell out six dollars for something in a plastic cup, it better have at least thirty grams of protein in it. Especially after a workout like the one I just finished.

  As I round a corner and see the Pump sign, my mouth waters and my muscles start twitching in anticipation for my current go-to smoothie, an antioxidant-rich blend of açai, blueberries, pomegranate, and whey protein. It’s got nothing on peach pie taste-wise, but your priorities shift when you start seeing ab definition in the mirror.

  Another five minutes and three-quarters of my smoothie later, and I’m bouncing up my front steps. Every time I walk through the door, I have to remind myself that this is, in fact, where I live. You know that Talking Heads song where David Byrne says This is not my beautiful house? That’s exactly how I feel when I walk through my thick oak door, stand on my reclaimed hardwood floor with its perfect imperfections, and gaze around at the massive, sunny windows and the subtle off-white walls adorned with tasteful prints, each one evoking a memory of the distant city or exotic locale where David and I bought it.

  But there’s also an emptiness here. You can feel it in the freshly painted dining room that never gets used, and in the modern kitchen with its dual ovens and dishwashers.

  It began when David was hired to head up the legal team of a tech startup whose dating app helps singles mingle based on their preference in pets. It seems like every week he’s jetting off to their head office in San Francisco, leaving me to burn off steam at the gym and come home to stare at our perfect walls. But lately it’s been worse than that. For the past few months the emptiness has been sticking around even after he comes home.

  I walk into our airy kitchen and set the rest of my smoothie on the granite counter. From a little wooden box beside the coffee maker, I retrieve my wedding ring and put it back on my finger. It stays in this box during workouts so I don’t scratch the band on a barbell’s knurling or get lifting chalk caked between the diamond and the little gold fingers that grasp it. At first I felt weird about leaving it at home, but there’s no way I’m stowing it in that stinky gym change room with its curtain doors and open cubbies.

  I slide the ring past my knuckle and over newly formed calluses, and I think back to when I tried it on in the jewellery store. I was fresh out of college, and David was two years into law school. I had no idea how he could afford something so big and shiny and brilliant. Not that it’s an over-the-top iceberg. But back on that day when David and I stood in front of a display case filled with rows of glistening rings, it felt like a fairytale—or at least a sugary romantic comedy. I tried on only one ring that day. A modest princess shape with a zero-cut shimmer flanked by clusters of coruscating smaller diamonds, because just like David, I knew it was the one. David was six foot two and definitively handsome. From his carved jaw to his deep brown eyes and perfectly careless hair, he was so unimpeachably good looking that you couldn’t specify any one trait as being his best feature. And he still is, despite the ever-present bags under his eyes and the bit of paunch he’s accumulated from a lack of slee
p and an abundance of airport food. I, on the other hand, have been free in his absence to dote on myself like a bored teenager. When I get home from my relatively stress-free job in a cushy magazine office, I take never-ending showers and read trashy novels. I work out constantly, and I waste hours shopping online for lingerie to decorate the hard little body I’m honing. It’s become such a fruitful addiction that there are still unopened boxes of underthings in my closet. I should probably sort through them and find something new to excite him when he gets home this afternoon.

  I’ve got two hours to go until his cab pulls up, which means two more hours of blatant self indulgence before I feel like someone’s wife again. I climb the hardwood stairs to our bedroom, and each step pings my hamstrings with premature bursts of delayed-onset muscle soreness. I smile, knowing that tomorrow they’ll be on fire. It’s a constructive pain that scares most people away from lifting, but once you get used to it, it becomes a reliable friend, there to let you know you pushed your body hard enough and you’re making progress.

  There’s a full-length mirror in our walk-in closet, and my favorite new hobby is to stand in front of it after a workout and slowly peel off my sweaty outfit. I start with the knee-high tube socks that took way too long to win me over. Nearly every other woman at Rev wears them—and weirdly enough, some of the guys rock them too—but I was a holdout for months. They seemed like too much of a fuck-me affectation, like the hooker-boot phase my girlfriends and I went through during our college club-hopping days. To me, the socks were an attempt to seem young—creepy high school young, like when a woman in her thirties wears pigtails.

  It turns out, though, that they serve a practical necessity beyond giving the male members fodder for their fantasies. Because when you deadlift a barbell with proper form, you literally drag it up your legs. It hurts until you get used to it, but worse than the pain are the red welts and trails of scabs that lifting leaves along your shins. Those marks might seem like badges of honor for people who take training seriously, but good luck shaving around them for the next few weeks.