Slices of Life (13 page)

He was quiet for long moments, furrowing his brow, pressing his lips together. Finally, he asked, “Why do you constantly feel the need to change yourself?”

She simply blinked at him. Finally, truthfully, she answered. “I don’t know.”

“That’s what we need to work on.”

Peter was right. She knew that. Somewhere deep down in her being, she knew that. Why couldn’t she just be happy with herself? With who she was? She was a good person inside, she knew that. Inside. Outside? That was the problem. Her reflection threw so much back at her and she had no idea why. Her hips were too wide, her hair was too dull, her eyes were too small, her tummy was too round, her skin was too pale, her ass was too large. There was always something to change. Always. Again, she knew deep down that this was not a healthy outlook, but she had no idea why she felt the way she did or how to fix it.

So she joined a gym. And tomorrow morning would be the first step in the, hopefully, not too long journey of Julia Hastings making her beautiful.

***

The next morning, Liv checked in at the gym’s front desk filled with nervous anticipation. The atmosphere was what she’d hoped: energetic and exciting. The smell wasn’t as awful as she’d feared: a little sweaty, but with a tinge of new plastic and leather. The pop of a racquetball hitting the wall and bouncing back to its server seemed almost cheerful to her, and she peeked through the Plexiglas wall to the court one floor below. Doing her level best, she willed herself not to be intimidated by the buzz of liveliness or the sheer volume of people, all panting and perspiring at seven a.m.

Liv had never joined a gym before, but this one came with a big, gay thumbs up. Danny and all his friends worked out here. So did many of the lesbians she knew.

And don’t know
, she thought, as a woman with short, dark hair and the body of a professional athlete passed by and smiled, setting off Liv’s gaydar.

The gym was located downtown and was easily accessible from half a dozen office buildings, several bars and restaurants, and the museum. Because of that, Danny said it didn’t have a ton of down time and was almost always at least half-full. Liv wondered if maybe she’d meet some new people.

“Olivia Keegan?” Liv was pulled back to the moment by an affable-looking woman. Her blonde hair was short and tucked behind her ears, and her brown eyes held warmth and gentleness. “I’m Julia Hastings,” she said as she held out her hand.

“Liv. Please.” Liv shook the hand firmly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Come with me to my office and we’ll talk about what you’re hoping to accomplish here.”

The first thing that struck Liv as they walked was that Julia wasn’t a twig. She was by no means overweight or even a little chubby, but she was not painfully skinny. Liv liked that. A lot. Julia was obviously toned and femininely muscular, but she had curves—round hips, ample breasts, and a tummy that was not flat. Somehow, those characteristics made her seem more real to Liv, more human, and would go a long way in helping her follow Julia’s guidelines.

Julia’s office was more like a shared closet, small to the point of being claustrophobic and made even more so by the second body seated at the other desk. Thankfully, that second body excused himself and left them the room, such as it was. Liv thanked her lucky stars she wasn’t any bigger as she shimmied sideways and plopped into the plastic chair that seemed like the room must have been built around.

“It’s a little small in here,” Julia said, apology in her voice.

“Yeah, way to make people feel like they
need
to join a gym.”

Julia laughed, a deeper sound than Liv expected. “You figured out our dastardly plan.”

Danny was right; she was instantly comfortable with Julia. Even when the questions got a bit personal or embarrassing, like admitting the number of times per week that she exercised was actually zero. Even when Julia asked her to step on the scale. Even when they sat down to go over all the results and possible solutions. She never once felt judged or scolded or condescended to. Julia was funny, gentle, and kind. Shockingly, Liv found herself not depressed over the information they’d come up with, but rather, excited to get started on some sort of program.

“Now,” Julia said, setting aside computer printouts and red pen, “this is where I get to play a little bit of psychologist.”

“Okay,” Liv drew out, her eyebrows almost meeting above her nose.

“The first thing I want you to do is ease up on yourself.”

Liv blinked at her.

“What’s going on at home?”

“What do you mean?”

Julia sat forward, her elbows on the desk, and looked Liv in the eye. “The majority of women like you who come to me—who have never seen the inside of a gym in their lives—usually have had something happen to give them a kick. Class reunion is coming up, they got dumped, their significant other is cheating on them…” Something on Liv’s face must have given her away because Julia stopped there. “Is that it? Your girlfriend cheated on you?”

Liv was too mortified by the tears that pooled in her eyes to take a moment and wonder how Julia knew her sexual preference—though it made sense that Danny probably spilled the beans. She gazed down at her hands in her lap, but Julia ducked her head to recapture Liv’s eyes.

“Hey,” Julia said, her voice a bit sharper. When Liv looked up, she continued. “Screw her. You’re tough on yourself. I can see it. And I bet she’s made you that way. So you listen to me right now: you are
not
in terrible shape. You are
not
overweight. You are
not
unattractive. I want you to put all of that out of your head right now. Just because—what’s her name?”

“Diane.”

“Just because Diane was stupid enough to let you go doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. You need to understand that and accept it. There is no judgment coming from me, and I don’t want there to be any from you either. You are a beautiful person. Now let’s make you into a
physically fit,
beautiful person. What do you say?”

Liv nodded, not trusting her own voice. She pressed her lips together and went back to studying her hands in her lap while she fumbled to regain her composure. When she finally looked back up at Julia, the silent question must have been more obvious than she thought because Julia smiled at her and said, “I’ve been doing this for a long time and like I said, I get a lot of women in here like you. I’ve gotten to the point where I can read you all like books. We’re so hard on ourselves, us women. You know? The media says we need to be thinner, thinner, thinner, and our significant others can sometimes make us feel like we need to be more like what the media says, and frankly, the look the media touts is pretty much impossible for all but a really small percentage of us to reach. So…we’re working on a futile task, like washing a floor that we’ll never finish or shopping for groceries from a list that will never end. It’s so unfair.” She stopped, took a deep breath, looked at Liv for a long moment. “My goal is to teach every woman that comes to me unhappy with her body how to be not only physically fit, but mentally fit…to accept who she is and to love herself for that. We’re all beautiful.”

“We’re kind of stubborn,” Liv pointed out, her voice throaty.

“I didn’t say it was an easy goal.” Julia laughed that deep sound again and in that moment, Liv knew this was going to be different.

“So?” Julia repeated her earlier question. “What do you say? Are you ready to get started?”

Liv gave one determined nod. “I am.”

“Great. Follow me.”

For the next hour, Julia escorted Liv through the gym, showed her how to work various equipment, talked about the benefits of each one. They peeked in at the racquetball courts, Liv briefly wondering if she’d ever feel confident enough to play, thinking that hitting the ball against the wall all by herself actually looked like it might be fun. There was a pool, a regular gym in which basketball games were played, among other things. The yoga room was filled with spandex-clad women twisted like pretzels and Liv almost laughed out loud when she tried to picture herself attempting any of the moves. Another room contained a kickboxing class—“Great for taking out your frustrations!” Julia informed her—and still another held a spinning class with thirty-five people pedaling bikes to nowhere. But the music was pumpingly energetic and Liv stopped to watch, tickled by a tiny desire to maybe give it a try.

“It’s more fun than you might think,” Julia said, standing close. “And you can burn a ton of calories once you get going.”

Liv nodded, and her head kept bobbing to the beat of the song, a popular dance mix she loved.

By the time they finished with the tour and overall instructions and gone over Julia’s proposed exercise plan for her, Liv was utterly pumped.

“I don’t think I can leave without doing something,” she said, her grin wide. “I want to start on the treadmill. Can I do that? Is that dumb?”

Julia’s expression was that of a teacher’s pride in her favorite student. “No physical activity is dumb. Come on. I’ll get you all set up.”

Forty-five minutes worth of brisk walking later (and an episode and a half of
Friends
), sweating, heart pumping like crazy, Liv felt more alive and energetic than she had in—she couldn’t remember when. There was a skip in her step as she crossed the parking lot to her car, again feeling that this was a step for her, that this was going to be different. She felt almost reborn, like she was a new person—or would be once she got herself on a schedule and into a habit. Maybe this was the change she’d been needing for so long. She could almost see Peter rolling his eyes at her, but she didn’t care, because she also felt excited anticipation rather than paralyzing fear about meeting up with Dorian Garrison later.

Oh, yeah. This was going to change her life.

When Julia Hastings first began her career as a fitness instructor, women like Olivia Keegan used to piss her off. She’d get so annoyed with the whining, the self-doubt, the oh-I’m-so-fat-woe-is-me crap, it was all she could do to keep from screaming at them to suck it up and stop the blubbering, to shout in their faces, “Nobody can make you feel crummy about yourself but you! So cut it out!” She’d finish with an appointment, retreat to her tiny office, and drop her forehead onto her desk with a tooth-clattering thump and a frustrated groan.

Julia was only twenty-five then and certainly hadn’t seen enough life at that point to have any clue how a woman’s mind worked.

As she got older and dealt with more female clients, she learned to accept them for who they were and she tried to steer them—as gently as possible—in the right direction as far as how they looked at themselves in the mirror. It was not an easy task at all. The things she said to Liv were all true. The media was not only unhelpful, it was alarmingly harmful. TV shows and movies and magazines all told women they weren’t skinny enough, they weren’t pretty enough, they weren’t tan enough, change your hair color, change your eye color, pay for fake nails and fake eyelashes and fake hair, for extensions and fake boobs. Julia did not envy anybody trying to raise a teenage girl in this day and age. Healthy self-esteem seemed next to impossible to grasp, and Julia learned quickly that sympathy was sorely needed as she did her best to guide her female clients toward confidence. Not at all an easy feat, what with the media and society and men all working against her.

Self-confidence. That was the key to a healthy outlook on life. Hell, it was the key to actually
enjoying
life, at least in Julia’s opinion. If she could get a woman to be confident in herself, there was nothing she couldn’t do. Julia told her clients that all the time. Confidence in a woman was damn sexy.

After all, that’s how she’d first been drawn to Christine.

A scoff escaped her lips as she thought about how funny it was—except not really—that something initially so awesome and wonderful could do a complete one-eighty and bite you right in the ass. How ironic that it was Christine’s self-confidence that sent Julia’s right into the crapper. Here she spent her working hours doing her best to help women feel better about themselves…if they only knew she barely had the ability to help herself anymore.

But thank god for my job
, she thought, heading to the spinning room. The fact that it was physical helped a great deal. Even if her brain had become crippled by worry and doubt, her muscles stayed hard and toned. In order to take up more time, she picked up extra classes, and covered for her coworkers who needed time off. She was especially fond of teaching the spinning classes because the blasting, pumping music was perfect for shutting the maddeningly circular thoughts out of her head, at least for fifty minutes. And fifty minutes was better than nothing. So she donned the microphone, plugged in her iPod, chose a wickedly fast-paced playlist, and drove the crap out of the class—and herself—for nearly an hour. When it was over and the last attendee dragged his sweaty ass out the door on rubbery legs, Julia took her time wiping down her bike, as her own quads trembled from the exertion of the class.

“Wow. Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?” Tommy T stood in the doorway leaning on the doorjamb, arms folded across his chest, and looking like a Greek sculpture. His last name was Polish and virtually unpronounceable, so he’d simply become Tommy T.

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Jules. How long have we known each other?” He was right. Tommy probably knew her better than almost anybody; they’d been coworkers and friends for more than a decade. He was her confidante and he gave surprisingly good advice for a straight man who looked like an Adonis and had a name that should belong to a porn star. He walked into the room and ducked his head, trying to catch her eye. She avoided his gaze, afraid he’d see right into her head. “You just about killed your class. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.” Julia mopped the perspiration from her forehead and glanced at Tommy, then made a show of gathering her things.