Justine

Friday, seven p.m. Foundry Strength Co. smells of chalk and rubber flooring, and somebody's portable speaker is losing a fight with the house playlist.

Justine is on the pull-up bar. Dead hangs, strict, slow. The bar flexes at the top of every rep. Two guys at the cable stack have stopped mid-set to watch, and a kid by the water fountain has his phone out, angled sideways.

Her father's watch slides on her wrist as she works. She has had the band resized twice since the funeral.

From over in the corner, voices drift over. "Look at them," Megan says from the hip-thrust bench, not quietly.

"Aww, it's cute that they is still trying to keep up," Dani says.

Justine drops from the bar and crosses the floor toward you. People move for her. She is still catching her breath when she arrives.

"Hey, you." She hooks a finger in the hem of your shirt. "Mom texted. Sunday's still on. She's making your lasagna." A beat. "Your lasagna. I grew up in that house and I don't have a lasagna."

"Jus!" Megan comes over from the hip-thrust bench, holding her phone out — a shirtless magazine cover fills the screen. "Apex Fuel needs an answer on tomorrow. They want to pair you with Derek. THE Derek." She tilts the phone toward Dani. "God, he's hot. If you don't do this shoot, I will."

"So hot," Dani says.

"I told them I'd think about it." Justine keeps her eyes on you. "It's our anniversary weekend. We're doing something special. Right?"

Then something hits your shoulder, hard, and you catch yourself on the dumbbell rack while your water bottle rolls under a bench.

"Whoa. Didn't see you there."

Ace Kowalczyk stands where you were standing. Six-foot-five, fight shorts, a cauliflower ear. He does not look at you again.

"Ace." Justine's voice drops. "We were talking."

"Been 'talking' to you all week in the DMs, babe. Sent you some primo pics, too. Figured it was time we took it to the next level. Maybe with some one-on-one training?"

Justine looks at the floor.

He puts a hand on her waist and pulls her against his chest. She stiffens. She does not step back.

"I have a trainer," she says. "And I'm married. You know I'm married."

"Sure." Ace laughs loud enough to turn heads. "And all the DMs you left on read, babe? You've outgrown your whole situation and everybody in this building knows it. Hard to get is cute, but come on."

The kid by the fountain has his phone up properly now. Megan has hers out too. Dani is chewing her thumbnail and watching you instead of Justine.

Justine stands in his grip, not leaning in, not pulling free.

"He thinks I've outgrown you," she says. "What do you think?"

Saturday, four-forty p.m. The Apex Fuel shoot is in a converted warehouse where the strobes have been recycling all afternoon and the air has gone thick with it. The call sheet taped by the door says TALENT WRAP: 2:00 PM.

Justine's father's watch is in your pocket. She handed it to you at ten this morning — wardrobe said it didn't fit the brand — and she has looked over at that pocket eleven times since lunch.

She is on the seamless paper in an Apex Fuel crop top and shorts, holding a loaded barbell that everyone on set has confirmed, twice, is real. Derek stands behind her, spray-tanned, veneered, positioned by the photographer's hands like furniture.

"Chin down, big girl. There it is." Derek is not looking at her face. "See what happens when you shoot with professionals? Last girl they paired me with needed forty frames to find one. You found it in six."

"Because they're gorgeous together!" Marisol fires the shutter without lowering the camera. "This chemistry. You cannot fake this. I hope you two go make some perfect babies after this."

Justine's eyes come off the lens and find you by the craft table. She taps her bare wrist. You feel the watch in your pocket. The reservation at Aurelio's is at seven.

"I know, I know," Marisol says to no one. "Two more setups. The window light is about to do something incredible and I would be committing a crime."

Justine opens her mouth.

"She's fine," Derek says. "Pros don't watch the clock. That's the difference."

Justine closes her mouth.

Beside you, someone refills your coffee without being asked. Quinn — the photographer's assistant, gaffer tape on both wrists, a pen behind her ear. She has been finding reasons to be at the craft table all afternoon.

"You've been a really good sport," she says, quietly, so it stays at the table. "Most people bail by lunch. Marisol calls them plus-ones. She's had me throw out three today." She peels the sleeve off a fresh cup and doesn't quite look at you. "There's an actual coffee place around the corner that isn't... this. I get cut loose at six."

Across the studio, wardrobe swaps Justine's crop top for a smaller one. Derek takes her chin in two fingers and tilts her face toward the key light, the way a man adjusts a lamp. "There she is."

Justine is not looking at the lens anymore. She is looking at the craft table. At Quinn. At you.

"Perfect!" Marisol calls. "Hold that — whatever you're feeling right now, hold exactly that!"

For the couples set, Derek lifts Justine's hand and presses it flat against his own chest, holding it there by the wrist. "Sell it, big girl." The shutter starts again.

"So," Quinn says, still quiet, pen coming out from behind her ear to write on the coffee sleeve. "Are you her manager? Um... are you busy after the shoot?"

Wednesday, six-forty p.m. The curb outside your building, in the middle of the crosswalk's countdown, is where your ankle folds sideways off the concrete and puts you down onto one knee between two grocery bags.

Justine is at the door of the building, forty feet away, holding the other four bags.

She covers the forty feet fast enough that a man walking a schnauzer says "Jesus" and steps into the bike lane.

"Don't stand on it." She is already crouched, groceries abandoned behind her on the sidewalk, her hands moving down your ankle like she's checking a barbell for a bent sleeve. "Okay. Not the bone. That's the ATFL — same thing Dani did in March, she was fine. You're fine. It's just not... load-bearing."

She looks up at you. Something arrives in her face slightly ahead of the sentence it belongs to.

"The elevator's still out," she says.

The sign has been taped in the lobby for nine days. She knows it's out. You know it's out. She says it the way people announce lottery numbers.

"Four flights," she says. "With a bad ankle. That's... no. No, could go from a grade one to a grade two, that's six extra weeks, and..."

She stops negotiating with your ankle and picks you up.

One arm under your knees, one behind your back, and then the sidewalk is somewhere below and the streetlight is very close and Justine is walking toward the door with her chin up, not looking at you, breathing through her nose.

The grocery bags stay on the sidewalk.

Mrs. Grabowski from 2B is coming out as you reach the door. She holds it open with one arm, housecoat sleeve swaying, and watches the full procession pass at eye level.

"Henryk carried me like that," she says. "Nineteen sixty-eight."

"Thank you, Mrs. Grabowski," Justine says, in a voice two notes higher than her voice.

She takes the stairs two at a time. She is not winded. That is not what's happening with her breathing. Your ear is against her collarbone, and her heart is going like she's on the last rep of a max attempt, and the stairs are not the max attempt. At the third-floor landing she slows down. Not because she needs to. The opposite. She takes the last flight like someone making her dessert last longer.

At your door she stops. Doesn't set you down. Her keys are in her jacket pocket, and her jacket is on her, and both of her arms are extremely accounted for.

She looks at the door. She looks at you. This close, her pupils have eaten most of the amber.

"I could put you down," she says, and does not put you down. "Or you could get the keys from my pocket. They're in my left pocket. And then... I mean, the couch. Or the bedroom. The bedroom is farther." Her heart, against your ear, files its objection. "Ice. We have ice in... we don't have ice. I'll go back down for ice. Later. Much later."

She clears her throat.

"Where am I taking you?"