Me: Nothing bad, but I need to tell you something, and it’ll be easier in person.

That time there was only a one-minute delay in getting a reply.

Luna: Tell me now please.

Me: I didn’t pee myself again, if that’s what you’re about to ask.

I only partially regretted telling her that I’d peed myself a month ago because I’d sneezed too hard after holding it in too long.

Only thirty seconds passed before I got another text.

Luna: I thought for sure that’s what it was going to be!

Me: WTF is that exclamation mark for, bish? Don’t sound so disappointed.

Luna: It’s been a long day. A girl can dream.

Luna: I can come over tonight.

Me: [middle finger emoji]

Me: You okay?

Luna: [laughing emoji] I’ll text you when Rip gets home so he can stay with my shortcake. I’m taking her to the doctor in an hour. She’s been pulling at her ear and crying. I feel so guilty she’s feeling bad is all.

The fact that we were talking about her baby, planning around a little thing named Ava, was just another reminder of how quickly life could change. Just two years ago, everything had been normal. Or at least what normal had been for us at that point. She’d had a guy in her life—not that her now-husband was a guy; he was a big hunk of a man—but things had changed.

Once upon a time, I had been a nineteen-year-old with maybe two friends who were girls, and Luna had been an eighteen-year-old who had smiled her way through a self-defense class that I had taught at Maio House for a little extra cash. I had asked her out to eat because I had liked how nice she had been to the other women in the class. I didn’t like judgy-ass people, and that was why I had invited her. I was competitive enough, but I didn’t give a fuck what other people did or didn’t do, and Luna hadn’t given me a single vibe that said she was anything but easygoing. And, as I learned, she really was about as laidback as you could get.

I fell in love with her within a month. She was kind, patient, optimistic, and was so chill, it relaxed me. Luna was a whole lot of shit that I wasn’t. We spent the next eight years navigating through life together. Two girls with a lot in common but at the same time nothing in common, trying to survive and grow up. Then she got a boyfriend—and again, not that there was any boy in him—and right around that time, everything changed.

The next thing I knew, I was thirty-one years old, and the only thing in my life that was the same was my grandfather and Peter existing in it. Even my relationship with Luna had changed a little. I no longer knew who the hell this new person in my body and in my mind was. Not that it was bad or that I didn’t like myself, but… I was just different. Everything was different. Circumstances had changed. I had changed. Everything about life had too. Like when you lose weight or gain it and aren’t sure how you fit in your own skin anymore.

You aren’t who you used to be.

And you aren’t totally sure how it happened or when it happened, but it did.

And that was supposed to be okay. At least that was my grandpa’s sage-ass advice. God knows he made up shit all the time, but it made sense… in a way. Like how, by the time every seven years rolls around, every cell in your body has been replaced by new ones. You’re different. You’re supposed to be. It’s inevitable. It’s natural.

Life keeps evolving whether you want it to or not.

And I wasn’t about to whine about it.

Me: Okay. I’ll text you when I get home, but it should be at the same time. Hope my goddaughter feels better, and chill out. It’s not your fault she’s sick.

I pushed all those thoughts aside: about needing to tell her the truth, about being different, about my worries, about my fucking regrets too, and cast one last look at the frame sitting on my desk. I focused back on the spreadsheet I needed to go through so I could send it off to the gym’s accountant by the end of the week.

Jonah Collins was going to call, or he wasn’t. He was going to come here, or he wasn’t. There was nothing I could do to stop it other than calling someone in immigration and claiming he was smuggling drugs in his butthole. So….

I glanced at the picture on my desk then got back to work, turning the playlist on my phone on, which pushed it through a small Bluetooth speaker. Somewhere in the background, I heard the sound of voices coming back into the gym. Heard the sound of bodies colliding. I thought about whether I should go out on the floor and take advantage of Peter working on Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills today since my shoulder wasn’t aching more than normal, unlike the day before. It had been at least a couple weeks since the last time I’d gotten on the mats with anyone, and even then, that had only been for about fifteen minutes to show one of the new girls how to do a submission choke she had been struggling with.

Meh.

Or maybe I’d just hop on an elliptical later and get a few miles of HIIT—high-intensity interval training—in to get my heart rate nice and elevated and burn some calories. Yeah, that sounded like a better idea.

I got back to work on cataloging expenses. Everything familiar and usual, or at least that was what I thought. I had my head full of numbers as I copied some expenses into the computer and was just lightly mumbling along to my 90s playlist when I heard the knock, knock on my opened door. Two lazy, light knocks.

Nothing special. Nothing to warn me.

“Come in,” I called out, trying to hold back a sigh because, to be fair, it was nobody’s fault I was in a shitty mood other than my own.

So when the footsteps treaded across the floor, I was still trying to tell myself to snap the hell out of it. Maybe I didn’t need to be in a good mood, but I didn’t need to be in a bad one either. Nobody deserved me being a bitch today. Not even my own body deserved that kind of stress.

Things were going to happen, or they weren’t. It was that simple, and I knew it. I just couldn’t convince the rest of me that that was the case.

So when the footsteps stopped and a throat was cleared, I took my sweet time looking away from my computer screen to take in the poor idiot who was being brave by coming into the office.

And that’s when everything went to fucking shit.

At least that was what it felt like.

Like someone saw me living my life, minding my own business, trying my goddamn best, then decided to pick it up and throw it into a fire, just to watch it go up in flames.

I wasn’t ready for the wide shoulders taking up the width of the hallway that separated the office from the rest of this part of the gym. I wasn’t ready for the long, strong legs, that had led up to a body wrapped in nothing but layers of muscle, in my space. That body that out of so, so, so many I had seen over the years had done something to my internal organs—including my heart, if I was going to be honest.

I had seen so many half-naked men in my life that I had become desensitized to six-packs, ripped arms, and good-looking faces. I had never put any weight into physical beauty, honestly. I remember once, when I had been about fifteen or sixteen, telling Peter that I was worried about how much I didn’t really care about boys. Or girls. I knew that some guys were attractive, but it didn’t do anything to me. I hadn’t found myself wishing for a fucking boyfriend. Most people I knew wanted to be in relationships, and I just hadn’t given a fuck. Peter, though, had told me that there was nothing wrong with me.