“What’s the matter?” he asks me, moving closer.

I back up. “Nothing.” I look around at the equipment, acting like I’m not hurt that he’s already trying to get out of his promise to work out with me. “Where do we start?”

“We’re not starting anything until you tell me what I did wrong.” He’s looking down at me with an expression that tells me he means business.

“It’s nothing. Me being a girl. Silly stuff. Come on, let’s work out.” I really need to stop being such a wiener. I’m starting to get tired of myself.

He stands still for a few seconds but then moves to my right. “Over here is the famous clipboard.” He picks it up from a table and holds it up for me to see. His muscles flex even with just that small movement. Yums.

“Dev has a list here of exercises that need to be executed on certain machines. Each one is done for one minute total, as many reps as you can bang out with good form, with a fifteen-second break in between each one. You can’t rest for more than that or he blows a gasket.”

“How does he know if you followed the plan or not?”

“Because he’s a freak. Trust me, he can tell from looking at you if you’ve been cheating. I don’t know if he secretly counts out the seconds from across the room or what, but he knows. Cheating the circuit is cheating yourself, and cheating yourself is cheating the team. So just don’t cheat. Follow the rules of the clipboard.”

“Sounds ominous,” I say, trying to joke about the fact that I have a Nazi war general in charge of my exercises. I’m not as sure now as I was before that I want to get in shape.

“Nah. You’ll get used to it. Besides . . . it gets results.” He shows me the clipboard. “Here’s the first exercise. Dev numbered the machines. This first exercise is done on number eight. You do pull-downs, behind the head. Pictures of how to do the exercise are on the machines themselves, so you can follow them as you work out.” He points to the paper and then walks to the machine. “Have a seat.”

I sit on the cushioned black mini-bench and wait for Ozzie to do his next thing. He puts a pin in some weights I’ll be moving. In front of me I notice the picture he mentioned that describes how to do the exercise. It’s a drawing of a person pulling the bar down to the back of his neck, just like he said. I nod. It looks easy enough.

“Grab that bar over your head and pull it down behind your neck. Slow, controlled movements, do as many as you can with your hands spread apart wide.” He leans over and presses a button on a timer that’s been stuck to the machine with sticky tape. “Timer’s set.” He presses another button. “Go.” Seconds tick down from sixty.

I pull the bar down and smile when I see that the weight he’s selected for me is manageable. I can do this. I won’t even need to cheat on the seconds.

Ozzie stares at the bar coming down. Then he watches me, focusing on my face.

“You didn’t eat your omelet,” he says in a lower voice, designed not to carry across the warehouse.

“I know.” I wait while I pull the bar down again before continuing. “I didn’t want everyone to see.” Air hisses out of me as I try to keep the bar from flying back up above my head. Okay, so it’s not as easy as I thought.

“Did I embarrass you by making it?”

The weights clang together when I accidentally lose control of the bar.

“Easy,” he says.

I hold the bar better and go for another repetition. “No, you didn’t embarrass me at all. I like that you did it. I just . . . don’t want anyone to know anything you don’t want them to know.”

“And what would that be?” he asks.

I struggle letting the bar go back up slowly. I think the weights are getting heavier somehow, even though I can see Ozzie hasn’t touched them.

“You know.” My face turns red, partially from the exertion, but also from his questions. “Don’t make me say it.”

“You don’t want anyone to know we slept together.”

I let the bar race back up to its position above me. The weights bang together. “I didn’t say that.” I have to rub my hands on my shorts to dry them off. I’m already sweating. I’m not sure if it’s the workout or our conversation at the root of it.

“If you want to keep everything on the down low, we can do that.” Ozzie shrugs.

“I just think that if people know, they’ll think badly of me.”

“And then they’d have me to deal with,” he says. I’m not sure he realizes it, but his chest puffs out a little when he says that.

I smile, seeing that protective instinct coming to the front again. It really is one of his most attractive qualities. “I can fight my own battles, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine. But you tell me if anyone gives you a hard time.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m not going to do that.”

“Cheating!” yells a voice from the other side of the warehouse, making me jump.

Ozzie waves the clipboard at me. “Come on, next exercise.” He walks over to another machine and points at the seat. “Set the timer. One minute. Then rest for fifteen seconds before you start it.”

I push the buttons on this new timer like Ozzie did on the one before and then rest my hands on my legs. I’m actually a little breathless already. How lame.

“Set your weight at sixty pounds.”

“Do I do that on all of them?” I lean forward and pull a metal pin from the stack of weights, sliding into the number sixty.

“No. Dev gives us a list of what we should be lifting. Here’s yours.” Ozzie points to a chart on the top page where everyone’s weights for each machine are listed. Ozzie’s are big numbers, of course. Huge compared to mine. He’s supposed to do one hundred and seventy five pounds on this one. Is that even possible? I look down and see that the weights only go to one-fifty.

“Wow. Is he anal about his workouts or what?”

Ozzie talks in a near whisper. “Let’s just say he takes his job seriously.”

“I see you cheating over there!” Dev yells. “Fifteen-second rest periods! Not fifteen minutes!”

I press the button on the timer and start the exercise, lacking half the strength I need because I’m trying so hard not to laugh.

Ozzie has to turn away from me to not laugh too.

“So what’s Toni’s deal?” I ask, feeling stronger now that my mind is focused on her being mad at me for some mysterious reason. The weights practically fly off the stack.

“About what?”

“About you. Did you sleep together?”

Ozzie’s face scrunches up. “Toni? And me?”

“Yeah.” I pretend not to care, staring at the weights slowly going up and down at my command.

“No. Never.”

“Then why is she mad about me being with you overnight?”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “Maybe she’s overprotective.”

“Of you?” I snort. “That’s funny.”

“Toni’s loyal. She takes it personally when an outsider messes with her family.”

“And I’m the outsider.” It makes me sad to hear myself referred to in that sense. I want to belong here more than anything. I haven’t thought about wedding portraits in, like, forty-eight hours, when for the past seven years that’s all I ever thought about. Freedom! . . . I don’t want it taken from me when I’ve finally gotten a taste for it. I can admit to myself now that I hated what I was doing before. It took Bourbon Street Boys to show me that, to make me be honest with myself.

“I wouldn’t say you’re an outsider, exactly. You’re just on probation in her mind. Don’t worry, though. She’ll accept you eventually.”

“If I measure up.”

“You will.”

I push the handles in front of me for the tenth time as the beep goes off on the timer. I grunt, pushing the weights that now feel four times heavier than they did when I started. “Eeerrrgh!”

“Get it, girl!” Dev yells from across the room.

I laugh and drop the handles before the rep is finished.

Ozzie rests his hand on my shoulder. “Fifteen seconds. Rest up. You’re going to need it.”