The B Line runs underground between Vermont/Beverly and 7th Street in about thirty minutes, give or take how long it sits between stops. I take it when I can. It's faster than driving, and on the Metro I can read or I can look at people. Both beat being stuck behind a Prius on Wilshire for forty-five minutes having opinions about my life.

Tuesday morning I was doing the second one.

The woman by the doors had a thin top on with nothing under it. Nice tits pressing through the fabric, nipples showing. I was looking before I decided to. I redirected to the overhead map like I had genuine opinions about the Expo Line.

Then I looked back.

Dark hair past her shoulders. Long legs under tight jeans, and when she shifted her weight one hip cocked out and the denim pulled tight across her thigh. When I got to her face she was already watching me. Dark eyes, full mouth. Not surprised. She held it a second and one corner of her mouth moved. I produced the smoothest response available to me, which was to look at my phone and keep my eyes there until 7th Street.

I thought about the look for two blocks after I came up out of the ground. Then the workday started and I forgot about it.

---

Hartwell Solutions occupies the sixth and seventh floors of a building on 6th Street. I've been there six months, which is longer than I planned, which is how it goes. IT Support sits at the far end of the open floor nearest the printer because whoever designs offices understands IT and the printer are going to develop a relationship, and proximity beats distance. The chair is destroying my lower back. I've submitted three facilities tickets about it. They remain open.

At twenty-one I had plans that didn't involve this chair. At twenty-three I have a ticket queue. I can reconstruct the series of reasonable decisions that got me here. I don't reconstruct it often. It ends in the same place every time.

Fourteen tickets in the queue Tuesday morning.

The good one was a developer in accounting who'd reformatted his own hard drive Thursday trying to fix a browser issue. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd gotten from browser issue to reformat. I restored from backup, walked him through what was gone for good, sent him the recovery checklist. He thanked me with the energy of someone who knows they made a choice they can't take back. I see that energy a lot. It's the one IT interaction that makes me feel briefly fine about my own decisions.

Eleven tickets closed by eleven. Then lunch.

---

My lunch place has a sign I've never read.

It's in Korean, like most of the signage on this block. Two blocks from Hartwell on 6th. I've been coming here since my first week. I know what's inside.

Mia was already moving when I came through the door.

Not when I reached the counter. When I walked in. She looked up from behind the register, her hand went to the order pad, and I was still on the far side of the room. Galbi combo, soup on the side, barley tea not water. Thirty-something Tuesdays and she had me down.

I paid at the counter. She rang me up without looking at the screen and waved me toward the tables — sit, she'd bring the tea over.

I took my usual two-top by the window. A minute later she came out from behind the counter with the tea on a small tray.

Fit frame, dark hair up, and tits her work shirt was losing an argument with — buttons straining, bra showing white through the gaps. Mixed Korean-American, the cheekbones from one side and a fuller mouth and softer jaw from the other. She set the tea down in front of me and the lean pulled the shirt taut and widened the gap between her buttons. I focused on the tea. Then she straightened up and looked at me. Brown eyes, wide-set, full mouth I'd spent too many Tuesdays looking at. The smile she gave me had more in it than the one she gave the door.

I told myself friendly. She does this with everyone. It's her job. I kept that version because the alternative meant sitting with how many times I'd thought about her counter. Bending her over it. Hands flat on the surface, fucking her from behind while she tried to stay quiet during the lunch rush. Whether she'd be loud anyway. Her on her knees after, that mouth, what she'd do with it. I'd had opinions about this for months. A lot of Tuesdays is a lot of time to think.

Friendly. She was being friendly.

She brought the galbi out a few minutes later, set the plates down between us like she had time to sit, then went back to the register because she didn't. I ate.

---

Wednesday and Thursday passed. Seventeen tickets across the two days. Thursday morning I made it to the gym because I'd missed Tuesday. Not intentionally. It just hadn't happened.

PeakForm is two blocks from the Metro stop, between a smoothie place and a dry cleaner. I've been going three mornings a week for three months. After the chair started rearranging the base of my spine my doctor said "L4" (the lumbar vertebra at the small of the back, exactly where a desk chair applies pressure across a workday) and paused for a beat before he moved on. I joined the following week. My back hasn't gotten worse. I'm calling that a win.

The squat rack was open and I loaded the bar.

My form has been broken for six weeks. At the bottom of the movement my knees track inward and my lower back rounds, which undoes most of what the exercise is supposed to do. I can watch it happen. The mirror is right there. I did three sets and watched my knees do the wrong thing three times. Knowing has not produced fixing.

I racked the bar and sat down on the bench with a towel over my neck.

The session was in two days.

---

Two weeks back the PeakForm app had pushed me a notification while I was at my desk.

*Amber has offered you a complimentary session.*

Not assigned. Offered. PeakForm has a thing where trainers flag members with form issues and reach out directly. Marketing. Get people into the free session, sell them a package. I know this. The signs are near the front desk.

What I also knew: she could have flagged anyone in the gym. The room is not short of people with bad form. She flagged me.

I'd tapped her profile right there at my desk, ticket queue forgotten. Gym shot, waist up, sports bra, weights behind her. Pale blonde, almost white, the kind of platinum that doesn't come from a bottle. High cheekbones, clean jaw, full mouth. Tanned skin, visible abs, and tits the sports bra was working overtime to contain, round and high and straining the fabric. I looked at the photo longer than I needed to evaluate her qualifications as a personal trainer.

She was smiling in the photo. Not the big fitness-influencer smile. Something smaller, like she knew something about the person looking at the picture. Deep blue eyes straight into the camera, and I had the brief stupid feeling she was looking at me specifically.

I'd looked at the photo for a while.

Then I'd booked it before I could talk myself out of it.

---

Saturday morning. Nine AM. Two days away. Trainer: Amber. The squat was getting fixed. That was what this was about.