Free Thread of Hope (The Joe Tyler Series, #1) by Jeff Shelby Page B

wasn’t Jon Jordan's house.  It was a gym and the only thing it was missing was a membership desk.  Lots of gleaming dumbbells and high-end machines, mirrors on the walls.  Cool air-conditioning washed over me as I shut the door.
     
    “I was in the middle of lifting when you showed up,” she said.  “You mind if I finish?”
     
    I shook my head.
     
    She slid onto a bench and lowered herself beneath a bar that held a large plate and a small plate on each end.  A hundred-and-ten pounds by my count.  She wrapped her fingers carefully around the bar.  “When he told me they were moving, it was like the end of the world.  You know, everything is bigger and exaggerated at that point in your life and it was awful.  He was my best friend, my first boyfriend and it broke my heart.”
     
    She lifted the bar out of the rack and went up and down with it eight times, the muscles in her arms and shoulders expanding and contracting with each movement, quiet grunts of exertion echoing in the room.  She wasn’t doing it for show, but I was impressed.
     
    “So you stayed in touch over the years?” I asked.
     
    She set the bar back in the rack, but kept her hands on it and exhaled several times, staring upward.  “Not really.  When he first moved, we called each other and stuff the first couple of weeks.  But then it was just...different.  High school and everything.  There was no email or IMs back then.  Neither of us could drive and it felt like he was a million miles away.”  Her hands tightened around the bar.  “Then about three months ago, he called me.  Don’t know how he found me, how he got the number and I didn’t care.  It was like we picked up right where we’d left off.”  She lifted the bar out of the rack and held it high.  “And that’s silly, because it was junior freaking high.  But still, I heard his voice and he didn’t even have to say his name.  I knew it was him.”
     
    It was strange to hear about Chuck’s life from someone else.  We’d been best friends for twenty years, but hearing her story made me feel like I’d only known a fraction of him.
     
    She knocked out eight more reps, set the bar back in the rack and sat up, her face pink.  “It was really good to see him.”  She nodded again, reaffirming her words, and took a deep breath, staring at her hands.  “Really good.  We started hanging out, dinner, things like that.”  She glanced in my direction.  “He told me about you.  About Lauren and Elizabeth.”  She paused.  “I’m sorry.”
     
    The familiar awkwardness and hurt hit me square in the stomach.  “Thanks.”
     
    She stood and pulled the plates off the bar, re-stacking them on the pegs on the side of the rack.  “He really missed you,” she said.  “He understood, but he missed you.  And he looked for Elizabeth, too.”
     
    Something jabbed in my gut.  Lauren had said the same thing. 
     
    She placed smaller plates on the bar.  She adjusted the back of the bench upward, so instead of flat, it was on an incline.  “Every morning.  Checked websites, message boards, things like that.  I think he really wanted to be the one to call you and say he’d found her.”
     
    My mouth went dry.  I couldn’t think of anything to say.
     
    “Anyway, he was working construction, but he was bored,” Gina said, sliding onto the inclined bench.  “He wanted to do something else, but he wasn’t sure what.  I had just talked with Kelly and knew she needed a coach.  I thought he’d be perfect.”
     
    “And he liked it?” I asked, happy to steer the conversation away from me.
     
    “No,” she said, grabbing the bar and lifting it out of the rack.  “He loved it.”
     

TWENTY
     
     
     
     
     
    Gina spent twenty more minutes working her way around the gym, her intensity constant as she moved from machine to machine.  I watched her, sitting there quietly, still thinking about Chuck, wondering what had caused him to call