You racked the last plate and walked back to the lockers because your shirt was soaked through and you wanted out of it. The clock above the door said five past seven. Cole had bailed on the warmup again. Whatever. You'd done the lifts alone. The hall to the locker room was empty. Your trap was twitching from the deadlifts. Your knee popped once when you stepped over the bench. You pulled the shirt over your head one-handed and dropped it in the open locker.
You stood with your forehead against the cool metal of the locker because the lift had left you a little dizzy. When you straightened up your shoulders did not. The shoulders sat lower, narrower. The lat that had been pumped sixty seconds ago was gone. You looked down at your chest. It was still wet but the chest itself was different. There was weight on it. Real weight. Pulled forward by gravity in a way your pecs had never done.
Your shorts felt looser around the waist and tighter across the seat. You hooked a thumb into the band and pulled it forward to look. The hipbones had moved outward. The skin between the band and the bone was smooth in a way it had not been an hour ago. The hair on your arms was gone. The blue band the gym had given you at the door was still there on your wrist. The hair on your head felt cooler against your scalp and you put a hand up. Short, still. But softer. Wet.
The sports bra came out of nowhere and you didn't even feel it arrive. Black. White trim. Already snug across the new weight on your chest. Your stomach had stayed cut but the cut had changed shape, the obliques pulled in tighter against a narrower waist. The light from the high window was hot on your right shoulder. You smelled the chlorine from the pool through the wall. The bench across the aisle had a pink towel on it that hadn't been there before.
You hooked both thumbs into the waistband again and started to pull the shorts down because the body underneath them was not the one you had dressed this morning. You stopped halfway. You let them sit there at the top of your thighs. The mirror at the end of the row of lockers was three feet away. You did not look at it yet. You wanted one more second of not knowing for sure.
The door at the end of the row banged open.
It was Cole. Twenty minutes late, like always, gym bag still over his shoulder. He stopped a step inside the door when he saw you. He had walked into the wrong locker room and he knew it the second he was in.
He didn't leave.
"Sorry," he said. "Wrong side."
You did not pull the shorts up. You did not turn away. The mirror at the end of the row caught both of you and you finally looked into it. You did not recognize the woman the mirror gave back. He did not either.
"I don't know you," he said.
"No."
The locker room had emptied an hour ago. You had counted the doors closing on the way in. He set the bag down on the bench and crossed the tile and stopped a foot away from you. You did not move. The skin on the inside of your forearm raised goosebumps before he touched you.
He put his hand at the back of your neck the way he had never put his hand on you before. His thumb was at the line of your jaw. He bent and his mouth went to your collarbone first. You closed your eyes. His other hand went to your hip and pushed the shorts the rest of the way down. The fabric pooled around your ankles and you stepped out of it.
He laid you back onto the bench. The wood was warm where the sun from the high window had been hitting it. He went down between your knees first. You bit the inside of your wrist. He took his time there. The pipe in the wall behind your head began to tick because someone had turned on the showers in the next room. You felt your hips start to lift off the bench on their own and he pressed a flat hand against your stomach to hold you down.
He stood up between your knees. He undid the belt and the shorts and the rest in two motions. He left his shirt on. He hooked an arm under your right thigh, lifted it onto his shoulder, and pushed into you with one slow movement that did not stop until he was against you.
You made a sound that was not a word. He held still for a second. Then he started to move. The bench was just wide enough for your shoulder blades and you had to keep one hand pressed against the lockers behind your head to stay on it. He worked with the rhythm of a man who had not done this in a while and was deciding not to be in a hurry about it.
You felt him slow when he thought he was about to and then start up again. He did this twice. The third time he did not slow. He bent down and put his teeth against the cord in your neck and you arched off the bench under him. Your free hand went into his hair and twisted there. The locker door behind him rang once when your heel hit it.
You came with both feet flat against the metal. He pressed his face into the side of your neck and laughed once, quiet, like he could not believe he was here. He finished a few seconds later, low in his throat, and stayed inside you for a long moment afterward without moving.
He pulled out and sat on the floor with his back against the bench and his shirt still on. You stayed where you were. The pipe was still ticking. After a minute he reached up without looking and put his palm flat on your stomach again. He kept it there.
You watched the door slide most of the way closed behind him when he finally left, and watched it bounce once on the rubber stop, and stay open.