Page 18 of Heavy Lifting
“Is there anything we can do boss?” Trallis walked over to me with Shelly right beside her looking at me sadly.
“If you ladies could help me, find garbage bags and tape them to the window to keep the bugs out that would be great. After that you can leave as well. You will still get paid for these two days of work, but it won’t do you any good to stand at thefront desk to watch an empty gym. I’m already paying APD to patrol around the clock, so they will just continue to keep an eye on the place for the next couple of days until the contractors can get this fixed,” I shrugged.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with two free off days?” Shelly laughed humorlessly.
“I’m taking my ass to Miami, getting a room, and taking a mini vacay. You ain’t said nothing but a word boss lady,” Trallis twirled happily.
A few minutes later, Zumo pulled up in his big ugly truck and parked in the space next to me. He got out of the truck and walked up to the window slowly like he was in trouble.
“I’ve been gone for an hour. What the hell happened?” he asked with his eyes wide in confusion.
“MY BROTHER AND HIS WOMAN DRAMA!” I yelled loudly.
“Would you like some help patching this up?” he asked.
I was tempted to say no I got it, but the truth was, I was sick of having it. I was sick of taking care of everyone else around me and not having anyone to take care of me. The strongest people got tired of being strong and just wanted someone to lean on every now and then. How did I say that to him without looking weak?
“We’ve got it.” I lied as I walked over to the front desk and grabbed the clipboard. My hands were trembling, but I needed to go down the list to see all of the members who had been current so I would know who I needed to refund for two days. I also needed to calculate how much it would be to send all of these people that money. Plus, I needed to halt production on the juice bar, and it was just me and two women against a pretty large window.
Zumo walked inside of the window the same way that Kaliyah had walked out of it. He walked over to me, head held high, shoulders back, looking like a warrior on his way to battle. He was sexy, but not in that pretty boy clean cut way like my brother. He was ruggedly handsome. Like he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty. Zumo walked up to me, and I had to lean my eyes back so I could look up at him and see his face. He gently took the clipboard from my hand.
“Go sit down,” he instructed.
“I can’t do that.” I looked at him like he was crazy.
“Why can’t you?” he asked.
“Because this is my gym.”
“And?” he asked with a smug look on his face.
“What do you mean AND? AND I need to handle this! I have so much to do I told all of these people I would refund their money for two days since that is how long the gym will be closed. I need to calculate cost; I need to cover this window. I need to reach out to my brother’s wife and fix things with her. He made her lose her job; she busted the window, who knows what she’ll do next. I have to help her find another job and I need to check on him to make sure he’s ok because he looked really sad. Everybody needs me,” I told him as I rattled off all of my responsibilities without taking a breath. I was sure I sounded like an auctioneer who was calling out biddings at an auction house.
Zumo looked toward the chaos, looked at the clipboard, then looked over at me, “No they don’t,” he shrugged.
“Excuse me?” I asked him again as my eyes burned.
“You said everybody needs you. I said no they don’t. I will take care of the gym stuff, but your brother and his wife issues don’t have shit to do with you. You aren’t going to makethem your problem. You are going to carry your little ass over there and sit down. Take out your phone and do some shopping or something. I will call some guys over to help me patch this window because I don’t want you or these ladies to cut up those pretty hands dealing with all this glass. They will patch the window and get up all this glass, while you sit there and scroll through your favorite designer’s new catalog online. Bonus points for you if you actually buy something,” Zumo smirked.
I looked between Shelly and Trallis expecting them to say something because I was speechless. I wanted Shelly to tell him to go to hell. We aren’t little women; we are big girls that can handle this shit ourselves. I wanted Trallis to tell him we don’t need men. Both women stared up at him like he was Thanos collecting infinity stones. A savior, a hero, a Greek God in a collar shirt.
The truth was I was exhausted. I would never admit it out loud, but maybe for five brief seconds, I wanted somebody to take care of me. The last man that had taken care of me was daddy. Now he was older, he had lost the love of his life, she left him with two bickering twins, and twin grandchildren. He spent his days doing home improvement and fishing out on the lake behind our childhood home. He was barely taking care of himself and keeping his own sadness at bay, he couldn’t take care of me anymore.
For the first time all day, I genuinely smiled.
“You know what boss man, if you want to handle it. Handle it. I’m going to sit over there in that massage chair and scroll Louis Vuitton’s new denim spring collection, and I am definitely going to buy me a bag and a matching pair of sandals. Enjoy your two days off ladies, make sure you stay by the phone because if the contractors can’t get it done in two days, it may be three days off. This is extremely short notice, but it’s not like Iknew my brother’s wife was going to lose her mind,” I shrugged and laughed humorlessly. I then turned away from them and walked over to the massage chair.
I sat back, let the footrest out, and turned on the massage chair. I then pulled out my phone, went away from the contact list and over to my browser and I did exactly what I told Zumo I would do. I scrolled through the catalog, shopping online, and bought two bags and two matching pair of sandals. It felt amazing to not be doing damage control. Every time I was tempted to scroll over to my message thread and check on Co or to send Kaliyah some flowers to apologize on my brother’s behalf, I stopped myself and reminded myself of Zumo’s words. They didn’tneedme. I just wanted to feel like they did.
Chapter Seven
Brichelle “Brick” Walker
I woke up at five in the morning and my feet hit the floor before my brain caught up. I went downstairs to my in-home gym, ran two miles on the treadmill, did a thirty-minute arm workout and thirty-minute leg work out before stopping into the kitchen to make me a muscle recovery smoothie. After mixing up kale, spinach, egg whites, pineapple, and some chia seeds, I poured the concoction into a to-go cup and sat it inside of the refrigerator. I then went upstairs to shower and prepare for the day. When I got out of the shower, I grabbed a pair of slacks, a button down top, and slipped into a pair of Moschino loafers. Grabbing my purse, I walked downstairs and collected my car keys and my smoothie from the refrigerator. I didn’t remember that my gym was closed until I got inside of the car and hit the push start to fire the engine up.
Like a teacher who was on summer vacation after a full school year, I sat in the car not knowing what to do with myself. For once in eight years, there were no clients to check on, no payroll to run, no staff meetings to conduct, no broken machines, no membership complaints, no invoices, no inspections, and no schedule changes. This morning there was nothing but a closed gym and a boarded up-front window. The contractors were scheduled to start work later this evening, themembers had been notified via email, two-day refunds had been calculated and were just waiting for me to hit the button and send them to the bank accounts and credit cards on file. Zumo had taken care of everything like he said he would do and I showed him the purses and shoes I purchased. For the first time in almost a decade, Brick & Co didn’t need me. I felt like Shelly, I had no idea what to do on my day off.
I turned off the car, walked back inside of my house, and went back upstairs to get into bed. I laid there staring at the ceiling fan spinning slowly. Is this what people did on their days off? They just laid in bed and looked at the ceiling? I shrugged and tried to make myself comfortable wrapping up in my blankets and rubbing my feet together. Eventually I was looking at the back of my eyelids as I dozed off into a deep restful nap. The feeling of my phone buzzing against my thigh woke me up.
