The Spotter's Debt

I'm twenty-eight years old and I've spent six months watching a man through a window. That sounds bad. Let me explain before you judge me.

The cardio mezzanine at Iron & Sweat has these floor-to-ceiling windows that look down over the whole gym. Treadmills, bikes, the works. And below, in the weight section, Gus Park trains his clients. Gus is thirty-one, co-owns the place, and has forearms that make me forget what I'm doing on the elliptical half the time.

Anyway. Wednesday night. I finish my cooldown, slowing the treadmill to a walk, and I look down like always.

Gus is spotting a woman on the bench press. His hands hover over her, inches from her chest, not touching, just waiting. Ready to catch the bar if she fails. She pushes the weight up and he steps back and says something that makes her laugh. His whole attention is on her. That's the thing about Gus. When he spots somebody, he watches them like they're the only person in the building.

I want that. Not the bench press. The watching. Somebody looking at me like that when I'm at my most exposed. I've had this itch in my head for about ten years now and I've never done anything about it. Watching him from up here is as close as I've gotten.

I rack my treadmill and head down for a smoothie, telling myself I'm not walking past the free weights on purpose. I absolutely am.

The smoothie bar is one of those fake marble counters with a teenager behind it. I order my usual mango thing and I'm scrolling my phone when a shadow falls over me.

"Hey. Bobbie, right? Loan officer Bobbie?"

I look up. Gus. Standing there in a gray tank top, wiping his hands on a towel like he's nervous.

"You know my job?" I say.

"Small town. You did the loan for the gym's second location. And Miguel from your bank is in here every morning. He talks about you at the front desk all the time." He shifts his weight. "Listen, this is gonna sound weird."

"Those are usually the best pitches."

He laughs, but it comes out strangled. "So there's a rec-league volleyball tournament coming up. Here, on our back court. Every year. And my ex, Tyra, she plays for the rival team, the Smashers, don't ask about the name. She's gonna be there with her new guy."

"Okay."

"And I told her, last time we talked, that I was seeing somebody. Which was a lie. And now she's gonna be standing right there on that court looking at me and I'll be alone with a cooler full of Gatorade."

"Oh no," I say, and I mean it in the fun way, not the sympathetic way.

"So I need a girlfriend for one Saturday. Fake. Just to stand courtside and look happy with me. That's it. That's the whole ask." He rubs the back of his neck. "You'd get free smoothies for a month."

I should have said no. A stranger asking me to fake-date him so his ex gets jealous is a sitcom premise, not a life plan. But I looked at him standing there, all awkward and honest about it, and my brain did that thing it does. The thing where it connects this to the window. To the watching.

"Before I answer," I said, "why me? You've got a whole gym of clients."

"None of them would do it. And you've got a face that looks like it could hold a grudge on my behalf." He paused. "That came out wrong. You look... convincing. Like you'd actually be with me."

"You're terrible at this," I told him, and he nodded like he agreed.

The kid behind the counter slid my smoothie over. I took a long sip to buy time. My heart was doing something stupid.

Here's what I was thinking: I want to be watched. He wants a witness for his fake relationship. What if I flipped it? What if I made my own ask, the real one, the one I'd never said out loud to anybody?

"Counteroffer," I said.

"Okay."

"I'll do your tournament. I'll wear your team shirt. I'll hold your hand and laugh at your serves." I set the smoothie down. "In exchange, you let me watch you have sex."

He blinked. "With who?"

"Anyone. A consenting adult woman of your choosing. Somebody who's fine with an audience."

"An audience of one," he said slowly.

"One. Me. I sit in a dark corner of your apartment and I don't talk. I don't touch. I just observe. That's it. That's my price."

"Why?" And this is the key point: he didn't laugh. He looked genuinely confused, which I respected way more than a laugh.

"Because I've wanted to know what it looks like for ten years," I said. "What it looks like when somebody really pays attention to another person like that. During. You know. I've never seen it from the outside. Only ever been inside it, and when you're inside it you can't see anything."

He stared at me for a long second. Then he pulled out the stool next to mine and sat down like his legs had stopped working.

"You're serious."

"Completely serious."

"That's the weirdest thing anybody's ever asked me, and one time a client asked me to name her cat."

"Then we're even," I said. "Deal or no deal?"

"I don't... I mean, hypothetically, if I said yes, what are the rules? Your rules."

"No talking to me while it happens. Don't check on me. Don't stop because I'm there. Just do what you'd do anyway. And the woman has to actually agree, not agree because you pressured her. If that part's fuzzy, no deal."

"And you just sit in the dark," he said. "Like a peeping Tom with permission."

"Like a peeping Tom with a signed waiver," I said, and that got a real laugh out of him, a big one, and the smoothie kid looked over.

He dragged a hand down his face. "I gotta think about who. And I gotta think about, well, everything. This is insane."

"Take your time. Tournament's not for three weeks."

"Why do you even want this?" he asked again, quieter.

Honestly? Because of the bench press. Because of his hands hovering over that woman, patient and focused, ready to catch her. I'd been watching that for six months through glass and I wanted to know what it turned into when nobody was wearing clothes. But I wasn't going to confess the window thing on day one.

"Curiosity," I said. "The expensive kind. You don't have to understand it. You just have to say yes or no."

He looked at me for a while. I let him. I drank my smoothie and waited, and somewhere in the back of my head a voice said, Bobbie, you just offered a stranger your weirdest secret in exchange for a fake Saturday, and another voice said, yeah, and?

"Give me your number," he said finally. "If I find somebody willing, and that's a big if, I'll text you."

I gave him my number. He typed it in with big clumsy thumbs and then stood there a second longer than necessary.

"Thanks, Bobbie," he said. "You're kind of scary."

"Scary's part of the package," I said.

He went back to the weight floor and I watched him go, and I noticed he glanced back once. Just once. Maybe I wasn't the only one who'd been watched around here.

I texted Miguel from the parking lot because I needed somebody to lose their mind on my behalf, and he did not disappoint. He called me in under thirty seconds.

"You gave Gus Park your NUMBER?" he said, before I even said hello. "Gym Gus? Forearms Gus?"

"It's a business arrangement," I said.

"Bobbie. Sweetie. Nobody texts Gus Park for business. His business is biceps."

"Technically his business is personal training."

"Same thing," Miguel said, and I hung up on him laughing.

A week of nothing. Then, Thursday morning, my phone buzzed at my desk at the bank while I was pretending to review a mortgage application.

Got someone. Saturday. My place, 8pm. You still want this?

I stared at it long enough that the words stopped looking like words. Then I typed back.

Yes. Rules as discussed.

He replied with a thumbs up. A thumbs up. I put the phone face down on my desk and sat there with my pulse in my ears, thinking about what Saturday was going to