Excerpt from Sesame Swallow, Private Investigator
In this excerpt from chapter 12, Sesame hits the gym before she heads over to meet her mentor and former college professor, Smokey. #normalgirlshit
I started my day off at the Downtown Athletic Club. The place was pretty amazing, and I loved working out there. What I didn’t like was that the spin class studios were all on the east side of the building, which meant the morning sun was streaming into the rooms. They were always a little too bright, and I was always a little too dark, grumpy, moody — call it what you will, but I liked to work out angry and sullen, listen to something that matched my mood — Nine Inch Nails or some West Coast rap from before I was born. I needed something high powered to get me through spin, something that helped me block out most of what the instructor was saying. All the sunshine and rainbows (coming out of Angie the instructor’s ass) just wasn’t cool. I skipped my coffee on spin days, so I was already giving everyone the death stare. Spinderella the Unicorn Princess up there on the bike in front of us wasn’t making me love life at all.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the big, industrial floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over I-83, Baltimore’s most dangerous roadway, and over to the city jail. Talk about motivation.
The weight room was better. Even with the massive mirrors and a few too many dudes staring at my ass, I vibed through the whole free weight workout, head bobbing, my hands tapping my hips in rhythm to the smooth beats. What was better than the right music when doing some barbell squats or backward dumbbell lunges? By the time I was done, I’d been there an hour and a half and gotten through three sets of deadlifts, two sets of assisted bench press, some hammer machine work and lots of shoulders with the kettle bells.
Suck on that, gym bros!
I tapped pause on the music and dabbed at the sweat on my forehead. Staring into the mirror, feeling like a job well done, I flexed a tricep, felt the lingering burn and gave myself a satisfied nod. Then I tapped my earbuds back on and spun away just as a rando gym rat was about to roll up and tell me he was admiring my glutes or wanted to offer to spot my vagina during a heavy squat.
Ain’t nobody got time for that, as the saying went. I was busy enough without gym entanglements, and Instafart was full of sob stories of gym romances gone wrong and people having to cancel their memberships and move to Canada to escape the shame of having to see an ex working through leg day with someone else.
I hit the locker room to grab a shower and my bag, and I was already out the door when I got Smokey’s text.
Meet me at the Engineer’s Club. Lunch on me. Wear something casual, not too slutty.
I giggled and hit him back with my reply. Fuck you and your $100 🥪. 🙃🤤🥰
