Chapter 13

Celeste

The gym echoed with a constant symphony of footsteps, clanging weights, and stifled conversation.

“Hey. Celeste.” Fiona nudged me with her elbow, breaking me out of my short-lived reverie with Matt, who had now returned to his conversation with his friends. “Come on.”

I nodded and followed her, feeling my face turning a deep shade of red—both from Matt’s unexpected presence and the other people around me, who were no doubt staring at the chubby newcomer in her baggy sweatpants and men’s t-shirt.

As Fiona and I walked over to the treadmills, I caught snippets of whispered conversations that seemed to have one thing in common: me.

"...can't believe she's here..."

"...does she think she can keep up?"

I felt a nudge. Fiona rolled her eyes, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Sounds like you're the talk of the town. Congrats.”

I sighed. “Yeah, for all the wrong reasons.”

Under so-called ‘normal’ circumstances, maybe I would have listened to the advice of others who said that people in the gym were too busy focusing on themselves to focus on anyone else, and that it was all in my head.

But I had been the ‘weird girl’ ever since I could remember. In high school, no one ever wanted to talk to me unless they had something nasty to say. And now, in college in the same godforsaken town, it was just as bad.

Of course their eyes were on me; I was the strange freshman with ugly, frizzy hair, bad posture, and fogged up glasses. And now here I was, standing in the midst of the gym with a red face, wearing men’s clothes that were three sizes too big for me.

Fiona, always the voice of reason, just grabbed my hand and pulled me along behind her. “Ignore them and keep your chin up. We're here for us, not anyone else. Now, let's get those legs moving.”

We started off our workout with some stretching, then climbed up onto the daunting treadmills to begin our cardio.

I felt the weight of the other gym goers' eyes on me as I awkwardly jabbed my stubby finger at the buttons on the treadmill. Finally, Fiona, realizing my struggle, helped me figure out how to use it.

As we began, Fiona's pace quickly transitioned into a confident jog, while my own was more...hesitant. I ran for a solid two minutes while holding onto the handles in front of me, and it was all I could do not to stumble over my own two feet.

“Just keep going,” I panted out after only those couple of minutes, struggling to catch my breath.

Fiona smirked. “That's the plan. But hey, if you need to walk, walk. It's all about your pace.”

“I thought the idea was not to walk.”

She laughed. “Celeste, if we ran based on what other people thought, we'd all be sprinting. Your journey, your pace.”

I shifted the treadmill to a slower speed, finding a comfortable yet speedy walking pace as Fiona kept her jog steady.

It felt awkward to be walking while so many others around me were effortlessly running, but I kept my head down, bobbed along to the music playing in my headphones, and tried to focus on myself.

This was my journey, and I was only just beginning.

After fifteen minutes on the treadmill, Fiona reduced her speed and came to a stop. She looked over at me with a smile on her face; her forehead was covered with little beads of sweat that only made her look like she was glowing.

Meanwhile, I was a sweaty mess. My hair was caked to every inch of skin that it could reach, and there was a large, wet triangle of sweat on my shirt, right in the middle of my breasts.

“You did a great job,” Fiona said, punching my arm lightly. “Onto the next activity!”

Now that we were finished with our cardio warm-up, we approached the weights section. My nerves spiked as I saw Matt and his friends. They looked so...effortless.

I was completely awestruck by the amount of weight that they were lifting, and none of them were even out of breath.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that something about them was… supernatural. Inhuman.

But that was ridiculous.

“Okay, deep breaths,” Fiona said, sensing my anxiety. “We got this.”

“Why weights? Can't we just, I don't know, do more cardio?” I whispered.

“Oh Celeste, you sweet, innocent little thing,” Fiona said with a laugh. “Cardio is good for you and it’s a great way to warm up, but lifting weights is important, too. Did you know that muscle actually burns more calories, even when you’re resting?”

I raised my eyebrows. It didn’t make sense to me, but Fiona seemed to know what she was talking about.

“Besides…” she leaned closer, her voice dropping to a mischievous whisper. “Matt's here. Maybe he'll see you pushing yourself. Could be a good icebreaker.”

I groaned. “Because nothing says ‘date me’ like sweaty, red-faced exertion.”

She chuckled. “You never know.”

Choosing a machine near Matt's group, we tried to act natural, as though we used these machines all the time. We slowly worked our way around to all of the different machines; Fiona, who had more experience than I did, obviously lifted more.

I, however, found myself stuck on the lowest weights that the machines allowed.

Every so often, I'd steal a glance towards Matt, wondering if he'd noticed me. Secretly, I hoped that if he did notice me, he didn’t notice how little I was lifting.

Suddenly, Matt’s gaze wandered over to me. Our eyes caught one another again; he squinted slightly, as though trying to focus his eyes on me. Recognition came over his face, and it was in that instant that I felt my heart drop.

“Hey!” Fiona nudged me, grinning. “Focus on your form, not on the male form.”

“I am focusing on my form!” I protested, though my blush probably gave me away. Tearing my attention away from Matt, I quickly returned to my workout and gripped the handles of the leg press as I pushed my legs outward.

She grinned. “That’s better. Remember to exhale when you lift, and brace your core.”

As we settled into our routine, I felt myself growing slightly in confidence. Conversation between Fiona and I flowed freely, and soon we found ourselves laughing and joking.

I didn’t feel everyone’s eyes on me anymore, and in fact, the longer that we worked out the more I realized that maybe the unwanted attention was all in my head to begin with, a simple machination of my anxiety.

But that thought was fleeting, and was broken by an unexpected tap on my shoulder.

Hope surged as I thought, for one fleeting moment, that it might be Matt.

I turned, and my heart plummeted.

There stood Sabrina, her sneer making her pretty features look almost venomous. “Celeste,” she drawled. “Fancy seeing you here. Trying to fit in with the gym crowd now?”

Caught off guard, words escaped me. The chapter of my newfound confidence closed abruptly, with Sabrina’s disdainful smirk the final punctuation to end it all.