Rival's Grip

I've been a chef for six years now, and I'm twenty-eight, and people always ask why I don't just sleep in after a fourteen-hour shift. The answer is the gym. Not the gym at two in the afternoon, with the moms and the guys doing curls in the squat rack. I mean Iron & Oak after close, when the lights buzz and nobody's wiping down anything but me. That quiet is the only quiet I get. In the kitchen there's always somebody yelling about a ticket or a sauce that broke, and my brain never gets to just sit. But an empty gym at eleven at night, smelling like chalk and old rubber mats, that's my church.

So that's where I was on a Tuesday in March, deadlifting on the one good platform, when I heard the side door beep and in came Zack.

Zack is twenty-nine, one of the trainers here, and we've had a thing going since about January. Not a romantic thing. A leaderboard thing. There's a whiteboard in the hallway where guys write their best lifts, unofficial, mostly ego, and Zack's deadlift number has been sitting at the top all winter. I'd been chipping at the gap for two months and he knew it, and he loved it, and I hated that he loved it.

"Back again," he said, dropping his bag by the rack. "You know they have daylight, right?"

"Not for me," I said. "What's the number this week?"

"You know what the number is. You check it every time you walk in. I've seen you do it."

He wasn't wrong. 425. I was at 415 as of last Thursday, and it had moved slow, like pulling a truck through mud. "I was going for form tonight," I said, which was a lie and he knew it was a lie.

"Sure. Form." He started sliding plates on. "What's the kitchen got you at this week, sixty hours?"

"Fifty-eight, and don't start. My deadlift doesn't care about my day job."

"Your deadlift absolutely cares about your day job. You look fried, Pia."

"Wow. Motivational speaker of the year over here."

He laughed and did his warmup sets while I did mine, and we did what we always do, which is narrate each other's reps in the most annoying way possible. He counts out loud on my last set, which should be illegal. By the time I pulled 405 for a triple and my hands were burning, we were both sweating and loose and talking trash like usual. He hit 405 easy after me, just to be a jerk about it, and racked it with a little flourish on the bar like he was hanging a picture.

"Show-off," I said.

"Artistry," he said. "There's a difference."

Then he went to his bag for his water bottle, and he zipped it open, and I saw it. Purple silicone, lying right on top of the towel. You didn't have to guess what it was. It was shaped exactly like what it was.

I don't know why I said anything. I could have let it go. But I was tired and loose and it was just sitting there.

"Zack. What is that?"

He looked down, and I want to be fair to him, he didn't even flinch. He picked it up like it was a car key. "Glute activation," he said, with the straightest face I have ever seen on a human being.

"Glute activation."

"Very common. Elite lifters use them. Look it up."

"You're full of it." I crossed my arms. "Your grin is saying something different than your mouth, just so you know."

The grin got worse. He held it up, this purple thing, about eight inches, and looked at it like he was evaluating a club head. "Okay, fine. It's what it looks like. Long shift, weird hobby, don't judge me."

"I'm not judging. I'm a chef. I've seen worse in a walk-in." That got a real laugh out of him. And then something happened in my head that I still can't fully explain, except that I'm competitive in a way that some people would call a problem. "Okay, here's a thought. You're always saying you can outlast me at everything. Let's test that for real."

He tilted his head. "Test how?"

"A different kind of pull. You and me, one of those each, sitting across from each other, and whoever loses their composure first loses. Whoever keeps a straight face and their breathing normal the longest wins. Winner gets bragging rights and that's all. Nothing on the whiteboard, no money, no favors, nothing owed. It has nothing to do with the lifts."

"You want to settle who outlasts who in a masturbation contest."

"When you say it like that it sounds weird. When I say it, it's a competition."

"Pia." He set the toy down on the bench and looked at me properly, and his voice went a little more careful. "I'm in. Obviously I'm in, I've been trying to get you to look at me sideways for two months. But I want to state it plainly first. You're asking me, right? This is you asking me?"

"Yes. That's me asking. This is a very embarrassing sentence and I'm still saying it. Yes, I'm asking."

"Good. And if either of us says stop, it stops. Deal?"

"Deal. That was going to be my rule anyway."

He dug in the bag and came out with a second one, same purple, same size, and held it up. "Twin pack. Don't ask why I bought a twin pack."

"You bought a twin pack for exactly this."

"I bought a twin pack because it was on sale, and tonight it's destiny. Lube's in the side pocket. Condoms over them if we're being an adult about hygiene here, and we are, because gym."