“Tell me about your goals,” he says.
This one she knows. “I want to get my body back.”
“Okay…” The corners of his mouth tug downward.
“I’m a mom,” she explains.
“Ah, I get lots of mothers in here. Mommy makeovers.”
She doesn’t like the sound of that. She doesn’t feel vain. She feels reasonable. More like something belonged to her, she loaned it out, and now she would like it back, please. That’s all.
“For this initial consultation…” He presses his fingertips together, ready to talk strategy. “We’ll start by doing a physical assessment, just as a benchmark to see where you are today.”
“Oh. Okay. Fair warning. I may be a little out of shape.”
“No warning needed. Trust me, I’ve seen it all.” How old is Cannon? Twenty-two, maybe twenty-four? So she highly doubts he’s seen it all.
However, she’s pleased when he starts by leading her in a series of walking stretches that feel doable; not just doable, but—and this is surprising—enjoyable. She follows his lead, lifting her knee and pulling it across her body, swinging her arms across her chest, lunging and stretching off to the side. Is this what it feels like to stretch? She can’t imagine why she’s been avoiding it so stubbornly. By the end of the walking stretches, she’s feeling downright limber. When she was a kid she could do splits. She won’t try that now, but maybe someday.
Just then, her phone starts ringing at full volume where she left it next to her car keys.
“Sorry,” she says. “I should have turned the ringer off. One second—” She jogs over to her phone to demonstrate some hustle. Griff is calling. The nerve. He hasn’t reached out all day and he chooses now. She sends him to voice mail, returning slightly out of breath and righteously pissed off.
Perhaps it’s that energy that’s the reason she’s able to perform twenty-five passable push-ups from her knees when Cannon asks, marking the result down on some kind of chart she’s not privy to. “Were you an athlete?” he says earnestly.
Darby pushes back onto her heels and swipes sticky hair from her forehead. “Volleyball. In college actually.”
“Thought so. I can tell. You have the muscle tone.”
She tries not to look too pleased with herself. Darby Morton doesn’t just look like a mom; she looks like a former athlete. She completes her lunges without complaint. When—
Her phone bursts into sound again. People turn to look. It’s very passé to have a phone ring these days. “I’m so sorry,” she says. Cannon looks at her sternly. This isn’t just his career, it’s his life, after all!
She scurries to turn off the ringer once more. It’s Griff. She remembers now that she has him on a special setting, so that his call always rings through. It’s supposed to be in case of emergency, but they usually use it so that they can help each other find their phones between couch cushions. Darby turns off her phone entirely. Good riddance.
“All set,” she reports, and hopes that Cannon won’t make the workout harder in retaliation.
She returns to a plank position, and Cannon asks her if she has diastasis recti—which she confirms sheepishly—as well as any other considerations he should be cognizant of, and she very nearly laughs when he looks at her with such gravitas and says, “I don’t allow injuries on my watch,” like he’s Batman. But also, she’s comforted. She thinks maybe all personal trainers would make excellent partners if they know this sort of thing.
Darby is sweating through her vacation T-shirt when Cannon announces, “How about we wrap things up with a mile run?”
She stares at him. “Cannon,” she says. “If you make me run, I’ll go home and never return.”
“Roger that,” he replies cheerily. She’s allowed to sub in jumping jacks instead, which make her pee a little, but she decides not to report this to the trainer.
The funny thing is that by the end of the session, Darby feels like she’s positively glowing, the way people said she would during pregnancy but never managed to. It’s as though her body has been there waiting for her all along, just waiting for someone to dust it off and carry it down from the attic. She remembers suddenly how it felt to run with her teammates, the good hurt of her thighs burning, not the nagging pain of her back when she tightens the buckles of a car seat.
She returns to the front desk manager. “I’d like to book more sessions, please. With Cannon, if possible.” Who would have thought?
“Wonderful,” says the woman. “I’ll just get you entered here in the computer. What’s your name?”
“Darby Morton.” She pulls out a credit card from her wallet. “M-O-R-T-O-N.”
The woman types as she talks. “No relation to Griff Morton, I’m sure?”
Darby tilts her head. “Griff. How do you know—” She almost says my husband. “Griff?”
No one—and this is an actual fact—ever knows Griff. Not even if they’ve met him at a party or something. It’s just not possible that Griff, her husband, Griff, has an acquaintance she doesn’t know about.
“Oh, we first met online,” she says, taking Darby’s credit card from between her fingers. “Through UCB.”
Online. Griff met a woman online. Darby is trying to process. She reads the woman’s name tag. Sarah. Sarah with an h. Sarah and Griff met online.
“And then later we connected at Hideout,” Sarah continues. “When we got serious, though, I had to move on, it just wasn’t a good fit for me. No hard feelings.” She hands Darby back her credit card.
“Right.” She presses her lips together. “UCB.” What on earth is UCB? She’s sure she’s never heard of it. And Hideout? Is that a bar? She could ask, but then, she’s Griff’s wife and she doesn’t want to show anyone, especially not some floozy with great auburn hair and a figure that won’t quit, that she doesn’t know what her husband is doing with his free time, not even a little bit. Not one clue. （Also, she should note that she does regret that first bit. Sarah is probably not a floozy.）
“Well, you’re all set.” Sarah smiles. “Plan to arrive fifteen minutes early each time and bring plenty of water.” She lifts her motivational water bottle. “Look forward to seeing you around the gym.”
Darby thanks her. Thanks for the information. Thanks so much for cracking open my happy marriage, Sarah.
For the first time in as long as she can remember, Darby doesn’t turn on Spotify or a podcast or the radio on the way home. She drives in deafening silence while the thoughts racing through her head roar loud, louder, and louder still.
How has she been so stupid? Of course she’s known that something’s been going on with Griff lately. Or has she? On some subliminal level. At least. She can’t actually decide. It’s like she’s looking back on the last several weeks with a different-colored lens and it’s definitely not rosy. The late nights at work. The primping. Wearing black sweaters back to the “office.” Definitely shady behavior, but she thought his weirdness, his coolness toward her, must have something to do with Lola and how they couldn’t agree on how to parent her. She thought somehow her husband discussed their daughter with Miss Ollie behind her back, against her wishes. Now she doesn’t know what to think.