Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

Nik wished Kiki and Natalie’s mom were there so she could hug them, too.

Natalie opened a drawer and pulled out two bottles of water.

“Want one? I’m thirsty after all of this crying.” Nik took one and took a long sip. After that story, she would have even taken green juice.

“I guess that got kind of far away from why I started this gym. Except that I can’t really tell one part of it without telling the whole of it. I lived with my parents for a while afterward—working at a local gym, getting more comfortable with myself, and going to lots of therapy. I let all of the money from my divorce settlement sit in the bank. Luckily for me, my mom is a lawyer and called in a favor with one of her divorce lawyer friends who took my case.”

Nik smiled.

“Good job, Mom. Okay, let’s go back to my initial question: where did you get the idea to start this gym?”

Natalie grinned at her.

“One day, I had an appointment with a client, and she came in spitting mad. She’d been on the treadmill before meeting me, and the guy next to her started lecturing her about her form. She was a marathon runner, mind you. And I thought of how great it could be if we had a gym for women of all shapes and sizes, where we could learn about our bodies and how strong we are without having to be on display to men while we did it. A place for all women: black and white; gay and straight; Latina and Asian; cis and trans; athletes and couch potatoes; and everything in between. And then I thought about the money I had in the bank. And after about a year of research and planning, Natalie’s Gym was born.”

This story was going to be so good. Her editor at O magazine was going to love it.

“What about the boxing classes? Did you teach those before? Did you always know you wanted them when you decided to start the gym?”

Natalie nodded.

“I never taught them before coming here, but I took them at a few different gyms after the breakup and really loved them. They were one of the first things I knew I wanted at this place.”

“What was your goal in teaching these classes? Why were they important to you?”

Natalie made a fist, flexed her hand, and made a fist again.

“Women who know how to fight hold themselves differently. I’ve seen that in the women who’ve taught me, in the women who’ve taken my classes, and especially in myself. You walk into any situation with an attitude that you’ve got this, you can defend yourself, you are strong. My marriage sapped me of a lot of my strength, and what made it worse were the constant messages I got from society that women are weak, women should be afraid, women should settle for whatever they can get. And I want the women who walk into this gym to know that women have power and agency and deserve great things in life.”

“Amen,” Nik said.

Natalie high-fived her.

“And it starts so young!” she said. “I really want to do a program for teenage girls. They need more things to counteract the messages that they get that there’s something wrong with being a girl, that they should hide the things about themselves that make them unique and fun and strong.” She grinned. “That’s why I called the class ‘Punch Like a Girl’—there’s this constant message that to do anything like a girl is weak. I wanted to turn that on its head.”

Carlos’s teen clinic would probably be really into the idea of partnering with Natalie’s Gym on a program like that, especially after things he’d told her about some of his patients and the abuse that they’d suffered.

She tried to shake off thoughts of him, but it was impossible. She had to ask Natalie the question she’d been wondering the entire time they’d been talking.

“This is a personal question, and I understand if you don’t want to answer, especially since Dana is my friend. But how did you learn to trust people again after what happened to you?”

Natalie shook her head slowly.

“It was really hard. I beat myself up for a while after my marriage ended. I blamed myself for trusting my ex, for letting him control me, for giving in to everything. I didn’t trust my own judgment for a long time. The whole time I was researching the idea for this gym, I kept second-guessing myself, thinking it was a terrible idea. But I was right; I did have a good idea, and even just doing all of that research was me learning to trust myself. Once I learned to trust myself, my instincts, and my emotions, trusting other people was a lot easier.”

Nik drove home a few hours later, after lots of time hanging around the gym, and even taking one of those cycling classes that she always mocked Dana for loving. She couldn’t stop thinking about everything that Natalie had said, but especially that last part. Did she trust herself? With her work, definitely. With anything else? She had no idea.

Chapter Twenty-one

. . . . . . .

When Carlos’s phone rang on the way home from the hospital on Saturday night, he grabbed for it.

Drew. Not Nik. Why did he keep doing this to himself? She wasn’t going to call him. Not after what he’d said to her.

He sighed and answered the phone.

“Hey, man, what’s up?”

“Hey,” Drew said. “How’s the baby?”

He’d texted Drew right before he had left the hospital on the night the baby was born but hadn’t talked to him since. He hadn’t really been in the mood to hear stories of relationship bliss. And he really hadn’t wanted to deal with telling him about Nik. But he couldn’t avoid his best friend forever.

“Still in the NICU, but doing pretty well. I’m on the way home from the hospital right now, just spent a few hours hanging out with her and Jessie.” Jessie had been released on Wednesday. Her blood pressure wasn’t quite normal, but it was getting lower every day. But little Eva still had at least another few days in the hospital so her tiny lungs could improve and she could gain weight.

“I’m on my way to the hospital. I’m on call and just got called back in. How’s Jessie?”

“She got released on Wednesday, but she’s only left the hospital to sleep. She’s at Eva’s side all day. But all of the signs are good. Such a relief.”

“Great. I bet Jessie won’t relax until Eva’s at home, though.”

He thought of Jessie’s anxious face and how Jon kept trying to force her to eat.

“Not one bit.”

Drew coughed.

“So I have some news.”

Uh-oh. That could be anything.

“Okay . . .”

Drew laughed.

“You sound so suspicious. We have a wedding date! Mark it on your calendar in bright red, et cetera.”

A wedding date, of course. He should have expected that.

“Great, when is it?”

Drew laughed.

“Here’s the thing: it’s in October.”

He counted the months in his head.

“This October? Four months from now October?” He grinned. “Wait. Do you have other news to tell me?”

“What do you . . . oh God, no, Alexa isn’t pregnant! We’re moving fast, but not that fast. Our favorite venue had a cancellation, and after Alexa had pulled some strings to get us to the top of the waiting list, we couldn’t say no. Alexa’s already been frantically looking for wedding dresses with her friend Maddie. And apparently, I need to start frantically doing something—I’m just not sure what that something is. So I figured I’d call you, because you’re really good at telling me what to do.”

Carlos laughed. He was indeed really good at telling Drew what to do.

“You finally acknowledge this now. You spent years complaining about it.”

“Look, I always did what you said . . . eventually. Anyway, I think we need to find tuxes or something? You want to come up again some weekend soon and we can sort that out?”