Noah (3 page)

Both women stared at him, then glanced back at each other. Nellie shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

“All right.” He smiled, trying
to sound
more sure about this than he felt. “Let’s get started. Follow me.”

He started filling out the workout sheets, writing their names down on the top
of
each sheet. When they reached the scale
he turned to face a wide eyed Nellie and
Veronica
’s face had nearly gone white. “Is there a problem?”

“You’re weighing us?” Nellie, who at this point seemed to be the spoke
s
person of the two asked.

“Well, yeah. How else will we know by the end of the week if you’ve lost any weight?”

Veronica
shook her head very slightly but she finally spoke up. “I don’t wanna get weighed
. If that’s okay
with you
,
Noah
.”

It was only then that
Noah
realized it was the first time he’d heard her speak. Her voice
was
deep and husky
and a little too firm. He smiled noticing another thing about her for the first time. Even though she was about the same height as Nellie, she was anything but mousy. It wasn’t just because she was heavier either. Her highly arched eyebrows gave her a very confident
appearance
, almost too confident. Though at the moment
,
he
was sure her arched eyebrow
s
had
not
hing to do with confidence
.
She was trying to get out of being weighed. That wasn’t happening. If he was going to do
this,
he was doing it right.

“Actually it’s not okay,
Veronica
. It’s part of the training
;
I gotta keep track of your progress.”

She crossed her arms in front of her, shifting her weight and unbelievably the eyebrow went even higher. “I’m not getting on that scale.”

“Oh come on,
Roni
,
” Nellie said, slipping off her shoes. “What’s the big deal? I’ll go first.”

Roni?
Noah
ignored the name but he
had to smirk at
Veronica
’s exasperated expression. He stepped closer to adjust the weights on the scale and jotted Nellie’s weight down. Right around what he thought for her height and body size—hundred
thirty-nine
. “Oh my God. I
’ve actually lost a few pounds.
”
She turned to Noah her smile dissolving when she saw hi
s
unimpressed expression. “Yeah, I know I need to lose more.”

“It’s a good thing you’re here
,
”
Noah
said, setting the weight back down to zero. He turned to
Veronica
. “Your turn.”

“I’m not getting on that thing.”

“Look.” He brought the clipboard down against his leg. “I can pretty
much
guess what you weigh just b
y
looking at you. Why not get the exact number?”

“Because I’m not getting on that thing. So guess all you want.”

Noah
stared at her stubborn lips, now pressed together tightly. “Fine—one
-
sixty.”  

Her jaw dropped momentarily and she seemed genuinely scandalized. But she composed herself quickly.

“You two know how to stretch, right?” Nellie nodded,
Veronica
wouldn’t even look at him.
“Great. Start stretching standing up. I’ll go grab some mats so you can stretch on the floor, too.”

He glanced again at
Veronica
, who was obviously still upset about his guess of her weight.
She should be thankful
.
H
e’d
been nice about it. Though he said one
-
sixty, he wrote one
-sixty-five
. Walking back to the equipment room to pull out some mats, he cursed Jack under his breath. This was going to be one
long
ass
week.     
             
     

As soon as
Noah
was out of sight,
Veronica
jumped on the scale.
How dare he
!
  She’d never
even
been
close to one
-
sixty her entire life. She gasped when she had to keep moving the weight
past
one
-
sixty. It finally stopped just over one
-
sixty-
seven
. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she felt the knot forming in her throat
, then she pushed the weights back down to zero before Nellie could see what she weighed
.

“Was he right?” Nellie must’ve seen her near
-
tears expression because she added, “Well, that’s why we’re here right?”

Veronica
felt like
throw
ing
up now.
She could hardly believe she’d let herself
put on
that
much weight in just two years!
“Can we leave, Nellie? Please?”

“No.” Nellie stood in front of her and took
Veronica
’s hands in hers. “I’m not letting you add
any
more reason for being depressed
and
locking yourself away from the world. If being overweight is what has you so depressed then this
is
exactly where we belong.”

Where
we
belong.
Veronica
had to smile. What would she do without Nellie? “You don’t even need to lose weight.” She sniffed
,
bending over to get a bottle of water out of the small gym ba
g
Nellie had brought. The only thing
s
in it were two medium bottles of water, Nellie’s wallet and her inhaler.

“Yes I do!
Even though I’ve lost a few pounds I’m still over my ideal weight
!
Did you see how he looked at me when I said I’
d
lost
some pounds
? Like he was thinking, ‘lose a few more!’
”

Veronica
held back a
harrumph. “I’m sure you’ll lose
whatever else you need to lose
today. It’s probably all water
weight
.”
She took a sip of her water then turned to look
up
at Nellie. “Your asthma acting up
again
?”

Nellie shrugged. “Not really but I figured since I haven’t worked out in so long better safe than sorry.”

Veronica
frowned
,
remembering how in the past there’d been times when Nellie had to be hospitalized because of her asthma. From the corner of her eye she saw
Noah
was on his way back already and they were supposed to have been stretching
.
The closest they’d come was Veronica bending down to get the water.

“Here he comes.” Nellie said, spreading her feet apart and
reaching for the floor with her hands
. “So what do you think of our trainer?”

Veronica
looked up at her from where she was bending. “Huh?”

“
Talk about sexy!
” Nellie whispered as he neared.

“Nellie, he’s a kid.”

Halfway to them,
Noah
dropped the mats and went back. Nellie and
Veronica
watched him from behind. His muscle shirt left nothing to the imagination. There wasn’t a
perfectly defined
muscle on him you couldn’t see. And he had a lot of them.
Typical trainer looking guy. Not an ounce of fat on him and whole lot of huge everything. 

“Oh
,
c
’mon where’s your sense of escapism? I’m a married woman and I’m enjoying the view. Who cares if he’s young
?
Nothing wrong with fantas
iz
ing—besides
how many
kids
have you seen with a body like that? He’s gotta be at least twenty-three, twenty-four.
”

“Twenty-
four
? No way.”
Veronica
said
,
bending over again. “You’re just saying that because he’s so big. But he has a baby face.”

“
One of the strongest
jaws I’ve
ever seen on a baby.” Nellie giggled. “And did you get a load of those lips? Umm umm. Talk about suckable lips.”

Veronica
had to giggle now, too. “Will you stop? The guy can’t be more than twenty-one and I’m being generous.” She’d been around students
enough
when she worked at the college
to be able to guess their age fairly accurately.

“Let’s ask him.”

“No!”
Veronica
stood up. “Don’t you dare.”

Nellie laughed. “Why not?”

“Because it’s none of our business. You better not.”

Nellie shook her head, her face still full of humor. “All right, all right. You’re no fun anymore. The old
Roni
would’ve already been flirting with him.”

Veronica
rolled her eyes going down for one more stretch. “Yeah, well the old
me
didn’t weigh a hundred and sixty-seven freakin’ pounds!” She groaned disgusted in herself. How could she let herself go like this? She’d gained
more
than the forty pounds she thought she had.

Nellie was right about one thing. She’d almost forgotten what a flirt she could be. But she was wrong about the other. There was no way she’d ever think about going out with someone so much younger than her. It was hard enough to find a mature guy her age, she most certainly
was
not taking her chances on the younger ones.

Noah
dropped
a
mat in front of each of them and then one in front of himself. “All right, ladies. Have a seat.”

After stretching for
only
about ten minutes,
Veronica
was already sweating.
Sweating!
And they hadn’t even started the work out. This was humiliating. Once stretched out to
Noah
’s satisfaction
,
h
e had them
hop
on the treadmill. What he called a warm up had
Veronica
drenched within minutes.

As they did their
warm up
, before the real workout started—good lord
this was going to kill her
—he talked to them about his plan for them. Since
Veronica
needed to lose so much more than Nellie, their workouts would be a little different. Which, to
Veronica
,
translated into, he’d be working her out until she was in tears. Oh yeah, she’d be coming back for more of this crap. If she made it out of here alive tonight, Nellie would be lucky to get her to take that walk in the park she talked about earlier, much less get her to come back here.

Once the
real
workout
started,
Veronica
did feel like throwing up. She regretted wearing a sweatshirt now. She was roasting but taking it off and revealing the t-shirt that probably now clung to her sweat drenched body was out of the question. Just like she could make out every chiseled muscle on
Noah
’s body he’d be sure to make out every roll on hers. No thanks. She’d faint
from
heat exhaustion before that happened.

Thankfully,
Noah
was paged because he had a call in the office. He apologized but told them to keep going. “You guys have ten more minutes on that anyway. I’ll be back before the
n
. Keep up the pace.” He lifted an eyebrow at
Veronica
and she almost growled in response.

No sooner was he out of sight that both
she
and Nellie slowed down to a crawl. The water bottles Nellie had packed were long gone and
their
dry mouth
s were
ach
ing
for
some
now
.
S
oon
,
Nellie got off her treadmill and reached for the gym bag, pulling out her inhaler. After two hits, she was back on the machine.