The Shape of You Read online

  Not for the first time, she wished she had a dog. This would be the perfect time for snuggling. She’d always wanted one, ever since she was young, but her mother was allergic. And then there’d been college, and then she’d lived with two roommates in her first apartment. Then she’d fallen in love and moved in with Stephanie, who didn’t like dogs (which probably should’ve been Spencer’s first clue). By the time she had her own place and had begun thinking about getting one, she’d started dating Marti, who always said they’d get one together when the time was right. Which seemed to be never. But how great would it be to cuddle up right now with a four-legged furball that she could kiss all over and hug and love? That would love her back unconditionally, no matter what kind of shape she was in?

  Spencer sighed, then chuckled to herself as she realized that she’d been doing an awful lot of sighing lately. Doing her best to shake off the feeling of restlessness that seemed to envelop her the past few weeks, she grabbed the People magazine that had come in Marti’s mail today, Katy Perry smiling back at her from the cover. Turning sideways so her head was perched on the arm of the couch, Spencer settled in and began to read.

  The next time she was aware of anything, the lights were off and there was a thick fleece blanket covering her as she lay on the couch. A glance at her watch told her it was nearly 2:00 a.m. The People magazine was back on the coffee table next to her wineglass, which was still half full. Marti must have covered her up and turned the lights off. Spencer tried not to think about the fact that, rather than wake her up and lead her to bed, Marti had left her on the couch.

  Another sigh emanated from her lungs as she turned onto her side and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder.

  It was fine. The couch was much more comfortable than the bed lately anyway.

  Spencer closed her eyes and willed herself back to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  “Really, Nick?” Rebecca McCall stared at her best friend as he handed his menu back to the waiter.

  “What?” he replied, the mischievous expression on his face telling her he knew exactly what she was talking about.

  “Heart attack on a plate. That’s what you just ordered.” Her voice was unintentionally harsh and she grimaced as soon as she heard herself. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated with work. And I worry about you.”

  “I know you do.” It was the truth. Nick Scarfano wasn’t always as big as he was now. Sure, he’d played football in high school more than fifteen years ago and had bulked up as much as the next guy. He’d even played a bit in college. Since then, though, he’d given up on most sports, but not on the way he’d always eaten when playing sports. He was a big guy now. Too big. He knew it. And Rebecca knew it. While she always managed to make him feel a little bit guilty, she also knew he still looked forward to the double cheeseburger and fries that would soon be set in front of him. She’d been trying to change his eating habits for the better part of a decade, and she’d been mostly unsuccessful. He tapped his straw on the table and removed the wrapper, popped it into his Coke. “What’s up with work?” he asked before sipping.

  Rebecca took a slug of her water as she glanced out the window next to their table and watched the lunch rush go by. “Kara Laughlin somehow managed to come down with mono.”

  “That’s good, right? You hate her.”

  Rebecca snorted a laugh. Leave it to Nick to see the bright side of somebody else’s misery. “I dislike her intensely.”

  Nick held up his hands. “Oh. Excuse the fuck out of me. You dislike her. My bad. So, why are you bummed out that she’s sick? Mono should keep her out of the gym—i.e., out of your hair—for quite a while.”

  “It would be awesome except I have to cover her stupid bridal class.”

  Nick shook his head with a shrug, telling her he needed further explanation.

  Rebecca sat back in her chair. “It’s this ridiculous fitness class she thought up. For brides-to-be to get themselves in shape for their upcoming weddings.”

  “Why is that bad?”

  Leaning forward on the table, Rebecca got serious. “It’s not bad in general. What’s bad is the way she’s marketed it. She’s basically saying you have to be as skinny and fit as possible in order for your wedding to be awesome. The ad says things like ‘want to wow your groom?’ As if being thin is the only way you can do that. She’s a fitness instructor, yet she’s constantly perpetuating body image issues for women.” Rebecca had tried to make Kara see how the ad came across, but she refused to. And as one of the most senior fitness instructors at BodyFit, she was rarely questioned. It drove Rebecca crazy. “This is the fourth time she’s run this class, and it’s been pretty successful, so they keep letting her do it again.”

  The waiter came, carrying a tray loaded down with food. He set Rebecca’s salmon salad in front of her, then slid the giant plate of grease and fat in front of Nick. He looked up at her and grinned like an eight-year-old in a toy store. She shook her head but said nothing more about his choice of lunch, and they were quiet for several moments as they ate.

  Nick swallowed a bite, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and said, “You know, instead of being angry, you could maybe use this as an opportunity to run the class the way you think it should be run. I mean, do you have to follow her plan?”

  Rebecca furrowed her brow. “I honestly don’t know.” She’d been so busy being annoyed all morning that Nick’s suggestion hadn’t occurred to her.

  “And who would know if you didn’t?” He popped three fries into his mouth at once.

  “I suppose I could tweak it a bit.” Rebecca chewed some salad, her brain beginning to whir. “I’d have to step carefully. A lot of the clients come due to word of mouth from their friends who’ve already attended a previous class. I couldn’t change it completely.”

  “But you could change the attitude around it.” Nick pointed his fork at her.

  She held his gaze.

  “It’s not a bad idea, is it?” he asked, proud of himself.

  Rebecca grinned at him. “It’s not.” She had known Nick since their junior year of high school. They were probably the two people least likely to maintain a friendship of anybody in their very large school, but here they were, thirty-five now, and nobody knew her better than Nick. She trusted him implicitly, as much as her own family, and he rarely steered her wrong. “But some of the clients who sign up are…difficult.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Bridezillas?”

  She groaned. “You have no idea.”

  “Change the attitude,” he said again. “If anybody can do it, you can. You know your shit.”

  Rebecca was still thinking about Nick’s words two hours later as she finished up with a client. Kara would hate it if Rebecca messed with her class, but she couldn’t really complain if she altered the mindset of it a little bit. Could she? And would it matter? Kara might have been high up on the seniority list at the gym, but Rebecca held her own. She hadn’t been there as long, but she got great feedback from her clients and lots of referrals. And not for nothing, Nick was right: she knew her shit. She’d studied—and continued to study. She wasn’t there to make her clients skinny. She was there to get them healthy. There was a massive difference.

  It was Friday afternoon, which meant the gym was pretty sparsely populated. No classes were held after one o’clock because too few people showed up. Thus, the spinning room was dark, the yoga rooms were empty, and only a few diehard bodybuilders were groaning up a storm and clanging down free weights one floor below.

  Rebecca sat at her desk in the open space that ran along a wall of windows overlooking the weights section below. The gym was set up in two stories. The second story—the main one—housed the front desk, the trainers’ desk spaces, the day care center, the spinning room, and all the cardio equipment. The first floor contained the locker rooms, the yoga rooms, all the weight machines, and the free weights, and part of the second floor opened so that the free weight section of the first floor had a high ceiling.<
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  From her desk, Rebecca could look down and see the free weights and some of the weight machines, and a lot of the time after a long shift, she liked to just sit and watch. Decompress from her day. The clients who knew what they were doing with the free weights were something to behold, and they often captured Rebecca’s attention for moments at a time. The flexing of muscles as they worked had always fascinated her. The bodybuilding men who were enormous, as well as the experienced women who weren’t necessarily bodybuilding but were in amazing shape, both caught and held her attention. She watched technique and form and found herself impressed more often than not.

  “Hi, Rebecca.” The words yanked her back to reality. “Have you had an awesome day? I have.” Bobby Pine stopped pushing the wheeled cart full of dirty towels and held out a fist for Rebecca to bump.

  “It’s been okay, Bob,” she responded with a grin, as she touched her fist to his and they exploded them together. “You working late?”

  He nodded. “I’m gonna make it a great evening.” Bobby was tall and gangly, all limbs. The lenses of his glasses were very thick and made his brown eyes seem much bigger than they were. He’d been hired by the gym’s owner about eight months earlier, part of an outreach program for intellectually disabled adults. He emptied the garbage, washed and dried the towels, mopped the floors, and did odd jobs around the facility. He was easily the friendliest, most cheerful person Rebecca had ever met.

  “You do that,” she said to him, as he resumed his path toward the laundry room, humming a tune as he went.

  Pecking at a couple of keys on her keyboard, Rebecca called up the list of participants for the Be Your Best Bride class, which would start on Monday. Five of them total, so not a huge class.

  Change the attitude.

  She heard Nick’s words again. Maybe a smaller class would make that change a bit easier.

  A few more pecks and she pulled up her boss’s email, along with Kara Laughlin’s “curriculum,” as she called it. It wasn’t bad—Kara might have had a questionable outlook on body image, but she knew fitness pretty well—but there were a few tweaks Rebecca would’ve made had she been designing the program herself. With a little half shrug, she decided she’d make them anyway, so she copied and pasted the outline, then edited it with her own ideas. They would change as the class progressed; she knew that. It was natural. That was another of her issues with Kara’s stance. Rebecca was a big proponent of changing with your client rather than “sticking to the script,” so to speak, no matter what.

  A large shout and the clang of dropped free weights startled Rebecca from her concentration and she looked down to see a couple of very large men laughing and high-fiving. Somebody hit a new goal. She grinned, totally understanding that feeling.

  “Remember that?” The question came from Sherry Vincent, fellow trainer and yoga instructor, who stood next to Rebecca’s desk and gazed down at the weightlifters. “From when you first got into fitness? Remember when you lifted a weight you never thought you’d be able to? What a rush it was?”

  “God, yes,” Rebecca said quietly. And she did remember. The exhilaration. The high. The sense of accomplishment.

  “We thought we could do anything after that.” Sherry blinked rapidly, then turned her gaze to Rebecca. “Well, I did.”

  “Oh, me, too.”

  “You’re taking Kara’s bride class, I hear.” Sherry propped her foot up on a chair and tightened the laces on her cross-trainer.

  Rebecca made no effort to contain the sigh. Sherry understood. “Yes, I am.”

  “Good.”

  A laugh barked out of Rebecca. “As in, better you than me?”

  “No.” Sherry looked at her then, tilted her head as if surprised Rebecca didn’t get what she was saying. “As in, you can put your own spin on it.”

  Brow furrowed, Rebecca said, “You’re the second person to say that to me today. Did I miss a memo?”

  “We all know Kara knows what she’s doing when it comes to fitness. We also all know that she’s rigid and annoying and has questionable…opinions on what it means to be in shape. It would just be nice to see this class be something positive instead of debatable.”

  Sherry was in her late forties and was their main yoga instructor and one of the spin instructors, but she’d been a personal trainer for years before that. An injury to her back—as well as the birth of her children—had shifted her focus a bit, and she’d studied feverishly to get certified in yoga. Her classes were always full, people from all over the city jockeying for a spot on her hardwood floor several times a week. She’d been a sort of mentor for Rebecca when she’d taken a position at the gym, and her opinions were very important.

  Pen in hand, Rebecca pointed to a few things on the computer screen.

  “I was thinking of changing this to this. I want to eliminate this altogether…”

  “Ugh, yes. Useless, that move,” Sherry agreed.

  “Then I thought I’d add these and this.”

  They spent the next twenty minutes going over the tweaks and alterations Rebecca had in mind, Sherry giving suggestions and approvals as they went. By the time they were done, the program was the same, but different. Exactly what Rebecca was going for.

  They high-fived and Rebecca thanked Sherry for her help.

  “Those girls are going to be so happy with this class. You wait.”

  For the first time since being told she was taking over the group, Rebecca was actually looking forward to it.

  Chapter Three

  Spencer held up her hand, flat so her palm faced down, and watched her fingers tremble uncontrollably. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this nervous. She’d actually had a terrifying dream about the Fitness Nazi the night before, complete with tons of shouting and failed attempts at pull-ups and weights Spencer couldn’t even move, let alone lift, and she’d ended up bursting into tears. She’d awoken in a cold sweat, her heart hammering in her chest. Now, with a groan of frustration, she dropped her hand down into her lap and stared out the windshield of her car at the gathering storm clouds that felt much like the inside of her head. It was late July and very humid—too humid to be sitting in her car without it running. Maybe the forecast rain would cool things down a bit, but it was more likely that it would make things worse. Stickier. Thicker. Even less comfortable, if that was possible.

  She knew that if she turned the ignition back on, she could flick on the A/C and be cooler. She also knew if she turned the ignition back on, the chances of her slamming the car into gear and fleeing the gym parking lot were that much higher.

  A glance at her watch told her the class would start in twelve minutes.

  Just enough time to sit in her own sweat and work herself into more of a nervous frenzy.

  “All right. Enough.” Spencer said the words out loud into the silence of the car. “Come on, Spence. Suck it up.” With that, she tugged the car door handle and got out, grabbed her bag from the back seat, and walked toward the BodyFit building, which suddenly looked like some large and ominous brick behemoth that was about to swallow her whole.

  The locker room buzzed with conversation and laughter, punctuated by the whir of blow dryers and the whoosh of running showers, all underscored by a Lady Gaga song piped in through the speakers in the ceiling. Spencer had read someplace that Monday was the busiest day at gyms everywhere, people vowing to start the week right with a class or a workout. By Thursday, things tapered off, and Fridays were dead. Since this class was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, she supposed she’d find out how true that assumption was.

  Never having been comfortable taking her clothes off in front of others, Spencer had given herself time to go home after work and change, so she was pretty much ready for class. She wore a pair of gray sweatpants, a baggy Adidas T-shirt in navy blue, and bright pink Nikes she’d purchased over the weekend specifically for this class. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail, and as she tucked her bag into a locker along with her purse, she pulled
out the empty pink water bottle. The ad had said to wear comfortable workout clothes and bring a water bottle, and Spencer was nothing if not a direction-follower.

  As she closed her locker and clicked the lock, she picked up a snippet of conversation from the row behind her.

  “You’re in that class, too? I’m super excited. I’m so fat right now and I don’t want to have to alter my dress,” one woman said.

  “Oh my God, right? My thighs. Seriously. When’s your wedding date?” another asked.

  “November thirteenth.”

  “Mine’s in November, too!”

  As their voices began to fade, Spencer turned to get a glimpse. Both were wearing skintight nylon black shorts and fitted tank tops, one in bright orange and the other in bright yellow. Neither of them could have been larger than a size small.

  Spencer shook her head and, for the twenty-seventh time, wondered if she should just bail. Run, hop in her car, and go home. Would Marti even know? Would she care?

  But Marti was the one who had wanted her to come, so apparently, she did care.

  Spencer picked up her water bottle, filled it at the sink, and headed for Yoga Room #3, where she’d finally meet the Fitness Nazi in person.

  I hope she doesn’t make me cry.

  It sounded silly in her head, and Spencer knew it stemmed from her dream, but still.

  Sucking in a deep, fortifying breath, she pushed the door open.

  Yoga Room #3 was a large, square room with mirrors on two sides, windows on one, and the door and a storage closet on the fourth. The floor was light-colored hardwood, just like a school gymnasium, and a large and complicated-looking sound system was set up in one corner. The two women from the locker room were talking together, and it looked liked they’d joined a third.