Chapter Two

“Do you have to climb up to the summit? Seriously?” Brandt asked, settling back in his chair and giving her a searching look.

“He’s my brother, B. I think he’s going to notice if I’m absent. It’s not like we have a lot of family to go hoofin’ up there…” Lucy trailed off, thinking of her parents who had died in a car accident a decade before, leaving Lionel and Lucy as the only family the other had. “I think Wendy even said something about me being the maid of honor for her, which is weird since we aren’t exactly close, but I’m guessing she doesn’t have a passel of sorority sisters or anything to draw on…”

Brandt bit back a grin. Wendy – she of the unshaved legs and up-with-people attitude definitely didn’t strike him as a squealy sorority sister type. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have friends, though. At least a best friend to take on maid of honor duties.”

Lucy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, probably not. I think Lionel is her only person, you know?”

“Huh,” Brandt said. “Weird.”

“I have to climb this fucking mountain, B. I have to,” Lucy said after a moment, her voice small. “And I’m…”

Brandt waited, silent, his eyes on the horizon.

“I’m huge. And out of shape. And not in any way conditioned to hike up Kilimanjaro. I can’t even hike up a hill. A small hill. A mole hill, even.”

“You aren’t huge,” Brandt said gently. “You’re just a bit heavier than you used to be. With good reason,” he hastened to add. “I mean, Luce… the last two years alone…”

Lucy swallowed and nodded, her eyes filling with tears despite her rapid blinking to keep them at bay.

Lucy had met Ryan their senior year of high school and fallen head over heels with the cocky football jock, despite her nerdtastic demeanor and their lack of common interests. Still, love had blossomed between them and they had stayed together all through college. After graduation, Ryan joined the Army and immediately he had proposed to Lucy so she could move into married quarters at the Army base in San Diego. She had agreed – ecstatically – and they had been married and moved within just a few months. Ryan was her only family except her brother – she devoted her life to making his as easy as possible. In fact, she pursued her massage license in part because after boot camp and hard training days, she could help relieve some of his pain and muscle ache.

After basic training, Ryan trained, traveled, trained some more, then came home one day to tell Lucy that he had deployment orders – for Iraq.

Once he shipped out, she had begun cooking and cooking to stay busy and to keep the loneliness at bay – and then eating and eating to not think about what Ryan was going through on the other side of the world. She had no support system, no family or friends in San Diego, except for those meals she lovingly created…

And the weight had started to accumulate.

When a chaplain knocked on her door one sunny Tuesday morning to tell her that Ryan had been killed by an IED on a dusty road in Iraq, the bottom fell out of her Lucy’s world. She cried and cried and cried some more, pulled it together long enough to organize a funeral, then basically hid in her house and ate away her grief and confusion and loneliness. She was all alone in the world – Lionel was in Cambodia at the time – without a husband, without friends, in a town that wasn’t her own.

It had taken her nearly a year to realize she had to get away from San Diego – she just had to come home. Brandt had driven down himself, helped her load up her meager belongings into a U-Haul, and brought her home – to his own home – in Monterey.

And here she had stayed, at Brandt’s urging.

And though she had settled in and gotten her feet back under her, the weight had remained stubbornly in place. She knew she was probably a hundred pounds overweight – no way was she getting on a scale to confirm it, though – but couldn’t seem to find a way to get going again on anything other than cooking for comfort or the occasional walk on the beach at dusk, just because she liked the sound of the waves.

It had been a long two years. She didn’t even know how to start again…

“I know, but it’s time. I gotta do something, right? I mean, this the perfect reason to buckle down and be miserable, I guess,” Lucy said glumly.

“Being healthy doesn’t have to mean being miserable…” Brandt ventured.

“If it means eating rice cakes and quinoa or something like that for the rest of my natural born life, it means being miserable.”

Brandt laughed. “I might have an idea for you. Now, this is just a suggestion, but I had a client a month or so back who was a personal trainer here in town. You could maybe work with him to get you started back on the quinoa trail? Get some conditioning going?”

Brandt was an incredibly successful realtor in the Monterey area, and always seem to know somebody for whatever they needed, whether it was an investment banker, a bellydancer or in this case, a personal trainer.

“Is he… mean?”

Brandt laughed. “He seemed really nice to me, but then again, he needed me to negotiate for a sweet house up the coast. His grandmother died and left him some money, so he wanted to put it into a nice home. Sold him a dandy three bedroom that was all kitted out and had a great view. Anyway, as for being a trainer… for all I know he’s meaner than Jillian Michaels in the gym, but I doubt it. He seemed like a really nice, really sincere guy.”

“I just don’t think I could do it. I have, like, no physical ability right now, Brandt. A trainer is just going to laugh at me. And then run away,” Lucy argued.

“He’s not going to laugh. He’s there to help – it might be good to have someone to get you started and motivated, and to show you how to use all the machines and stuff.”

“Machines?” Lucy squeaked, her cheeks draining of color at the thought. “I can’t do those crazy weight machines. I was thinking maybe some treadmill action, maybe a bike ride… a really slow bike ride…”

“See, he could help with all that stuff. He could figure out what you could do and help you. You might even like the crazy weight machines if he shows you how to use them.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Lucy said, her voice steely.

Brandt gave her an encouraging smile despite her tone. “You could at least meet with him, see what he has in mind. He’s really nice, Lucy. And, though I wasn’t going to mention this, incredibly, super hot. I mean, wow.”

“Is he gay hot, or hot hot?”

“Hot hot. But he is definitely a hetero male… if he was swingin’ for the other team, or just wanted to ‘experiment’ and not tell anyone, I would be all over that.  I mean, yowza. Seriously. But no, totally straight. Sadly,” Brandt said, his voice mockingly full of lament.

“Okay, that solves it. I’m absolutely not calling him,” Lucy said definitively. “No way.”

“What? Why?” Brandt squeaked.

“A hot trainer? He’d be so embarrassed by the state of me, he probably wouldn’t even take me on as a client! I mean, god, how awful…”

Brandt snorted. “You know you’re a hottie deep down with that awesome red hair and those crazy bright eyes, you just need some conditioning. Give Thor the Gym God a chance. He might be just what you need. If nothing else, he’s something pretty to look at while you’re on the crazy weight machines,” he wheedled and Lucy grinned.

“Okay, if you are seriously going to try and talk me into this, we’re going to need more wine,” she said, gesturing to the empty bottle on the table between them.

“Your wish is my command,” Brandt said, leaping up and heading inside to the wine cabinet.

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