Chapter 5

Wrenly

The campus gym at four in the afternoon is the probably the worst possible place to be having a crisis about Aurel Castell's arms, but here I am doing just that.

The place is loud; from the clanking of the metal plates, somebody's bad playlist leaking out of the corner speaker, two guys near the dumbbells arguing about a game, a cluster of girls by the mats who are very obviously here to watch the hockey team train and not to work out. 

The whole room smells like testosterone, sweat and someone's too-strong body spray. And in the middle of it, at the rack against the mirrors, is Aurel, pushing a loaded bar up over his chest in a cutoff shirt with his hair pulled back, and I am sitting at a machine I'm supposed to be using, pretending to scroll my phone, occasionally stealing glances at the way his biceps bulges like it's my job.

“Pull yourself together,” I coaxed myself because I hate this. I came here to train and mind my business, instead I'm thinking about the fact that this morning that same shirtless idiot was eating eggs out of a pan twelve feet from the man I'm scheming to date, in a house where I now sleep, in an arrangement so stupid it loops back around to feeling like a trap. 

I'm supposed to be focused on Jerry, the one who lives across the hall, who I made an entire deal to win, who is the entire reason I'm tangled up with the boy currently bench-pressing my concentration into dust.

I drag my eyes back to my phone. After the eviction, I decided to pursue a skill I long abandoned because I felt I had no need for.

 Three students have texted about alterations, one for her date night dress, the order is a formal wear that needs its last fitting by Friday. 

The pay isn't glamorous but I'm determined to move out of his house as soon as I possibly can.

My mind is still on this when his shadow falls over me, and I feel the heat radiating off of him before he speaks.

"You're doing it wrong," Aurel says.

"What do you mean? I'm just sitting down. There's no wrong way to sit."

"I meant before. The pull-down thing." He drops onto the bench across from me, towel around his neck, insufferably pleased. "You were yanking the bar with your arms. You're going to hurt your shoulders, and then who's going to keep me from failing out?"

"My shoulders are fine." I involuntarily touch them.

"The way you exercise is a crime against the human body."

"Uh, excuse you?! I'm perfectly fine, okay?"

"Whatever you say," he has that stupid grin on his face. The one that apparently charms the girls on campus. "Ok Red, let me show you before you injure yourself and tank my GPA in the process."

I frown at the name but that only fuels him the more. I should stop letting the name get to me or else, he's never going to stop calling me that ridiculous name.

"Fine, whatever,” I roll my eyes. “Two minutes."

That's my first mistake. Because showing me means he stands behind me at the machine until our bodies touch, and I can painfully feel every muscle outline on his body.

One of his hands wraps around my elbow and the other flattens against my back, even as his voice drops into this low murmur right against my ear, under the noise of the room.

"Pull from here, not your arms. Drive the elbows down before slowly coming back up." His palm presses flat between my shoulder blades. "There. Feel the difference?"

What I feel is every nerve in my spine come alive, and a heat climbing my neck that for once has nothing to do with what I am. I pull the bar down harder than I need to, just to give the wanting in my chest somewhere to go.

Over by the mats, one of the watching girls says something to another, before they both look at us, and I hear the word roommate travel.

"Got it," I say. "Time's up."

"A little thank you doesn't kill you knoe" He still hasn't moved his hand. We're both looking at the mirror, at the two of us framed in it, and for one stupid second the gym goes quiet.

"Are you serious right now?"

The voice cuts the whole room in half.

Elise is in the doorway in her warm-ups, gym bag sliding off her shoulder, her face white and tight. Heads immediately turn toward her, before turning toward us like they are remote controlled.

 Aurel's hand drops off my back in a flash like the machine went hot. Too late. She saw it. Forty people saw it.

"Elise…" he starts.

"Don't you dare," She crosses the floor fast and the room shifts to watch, phones forgotten in laps, the dumbbell argument going silent. 

She stops right in front of me close enough that I can see her pulse jumping in her throat, and her voice comes out low and shaking. "I warned you, didn't I? I told you to stay away from him. And here you are with his hands all over you in front of everyone with absolutely no shame at all. Like the whole campus doesn't already know you moved into his house."

Somewhere behind me a guy goes "ohhh," soft, the sound of someone settling in to watch a fight.

"I'm tutoring him," I say, flat. "And I needed a place to live."

"Right. Tutoring." Her laugh is ugly. "The little charity case sleeps her way into the nice house and calls it studying."

"Ooh," goes the crowd, quieter, a few of them wincing, because that one was meant to draw blood.

Aurel steps forward, his whole body moving to put himself between us. For one second he's about to defend me, and some traitor part of me leans toward it before I can stop it.

Then he stops.

I watch it happen. I watch him look at Elise's white face and her shaking hands, watch something flicker behind his eyes and the words die in his throat.

He pulls back. "Elise, please stop making a scene. Come outside, let's just talk."

So that's what he is. I should've seen it. Golden boy, everybody's favorite, and he folds like wet paper the second his girlfriend raises her voice. All that warmth and not one bone of spine underneath it.

I turn to Elise myself, since nobody else is going to, and I let my voice go cold and loud enough to reach the back of the room.

"I'll say this once. I don't want your boyfriend. I want to not be homeless, a problem you've clearly never had, so I won't expect you to follow it." A couple of phones tilt up now; I don't care. "You want to call me a charity case? At least I earn what I've got instead of being handed it. And next time you threaten somebody, don't do it with your voice shaking in a room full of people. It just tells everyone you already know you lost."

"OHHH…" the crowd goes, openly now, somebody actually laughing, the burn landing in real time.

Elise's mouth opens but nothing comes out.

I pick up my water bottle and walk past both of them toward the door.

I'm almost out when Elise finds her voice again.

"Enjoy the house while it lasts," she growls. "You have no idea who you're dealing with. Give it time but I promise you, there won't be one person on this campus who would look at you without laughing once I'm done with you."

I don't turn around. I push out into the cold and let the door swing shut on all of it.

But my hands are shaking, and it's not from the cold. Underneath the anger, the very thing I've been trying to suppress lifts its head.

“If only you would just let me out once,” the voice in my head whispered. “I promise to make her go away.”