Paranoia (Zayn Malik) (editing)

Chapter 2: And He Leaves

                                          LUNA

Exercise is one of the only ways I keep my body functioning. While it doesn't make much sense to me either, how I manage to not only stay up-right but exert energy to burn calories, I think it's the chemicals in my brain that convince me it's a good thing to do. The sweet release of endorphins is my drug of choice, because I can't afford actual drugs. 

I arrive at the gym around seven-fifteen pm, I am late but I have worked here long enough to get away with it. I nod in greeting to my manager, a burly man in his mid-thirties with tattoos crawling up his limbs and neck named Gavin. He shakes his head as I walk past him.

"You're late." He informs me.

"Sorry, Gaz." I half-smile, it is the most I can muster but it is enough, and when I reach the clock in sheet, I see he has already marked me in and left me a sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper with my name written across in his signature blue ink. 

Gavin was a friend of my mother's, he worked in the bakery she used to own when he was younger and a lot less burly. I think he has some misplaced feeling of responsibility to me because she died and the bakery closed. I don't like pity, but I liked the idea of a job when he offered it to me. I was a big kid, but I began to drop weight rapidly when my mother died, I was too sad to eat and my father was too sad to see if I was eating. Gavin noticed, however, and one night took my siblings and I for burgers. He offered Tiago and I jobs at the gym, initially as bench cleaners and floor sweepers, claiming he needed extra hands, but I know he just wanted to keep tabs on us, and to leave me food by the clock in sheet every shift. I accept it silently, and he never asks for a thank you. It works. 

Eventually, he began training us to be personal trainers, meaning he could give us courses on nutrition, and unofficially how to use exercise as a form of therapy. I don't like to admit that it worked, gave my life some purpose that I had been lacking until that point. 

Besides, I like to people watch and I've found the gym is the perfect place to do that. Here, everyone is so concerned about how they're being perceived by others, that they don't bother to actually perceive anyone else. They don't notice the Luna Ghosts of the world, the eighteen-year-old in the corner, who started her shift late but is wiping down a bench nonetheless. I like to think about where everyone is coming from and going to when they enter the gym. Some tell me, of course, some people can't go one hour without proclaiming every thought they have ever had, some people come and say nothing but show everything in what they do here, but there are some people who show nothing on their faces. They come, they strain and train their body in any way they choose and they leave. They leave nothing behind for me to theorise with, nothing to distract my imagination from my own existence for even five minutes and if I'm honest, I resent them for it. 

I long to be one of those people, the ones who don't seep sadness into every room they enter. The ones who just exist without obvious baggage and trauma written across their faces. I don't recognise myself nowadays, eyebags have been cemented on my face for a while now, but I feel I became a woman without realising, I don't know when I started looking so old, and I'm reminded of it every time I walk past a gym mirror. 

For the first time in a long time, I notice someone noticing me. A tall man on the other side of the gym, by the lockers. I am usually quite good at ignoring people, men in gyms aren't exactly subtle with the way they undress me with their eyes, but this is different. He is looking at me like my head is a book and he is leafing through the pages of my thoughts, with eyes a deep umber brown, so brown they are almost red and I can't break contact with them. His lips are plump, slightly pink like he had been nervously gnawing at them, but I can't ever imagine a man like this would get nervous. He is strikingly attractive, strangely so. He glows with something indescribable. I can't see one pore, spot, or even a freckle across the entirety of the cool-tawny skin on his symmetrical face. We still haven't broken eye contact and he cracks a small smirk and that is when I notice I am blushing, the burning of my cheeks combatting the air conditioning of the gym. There is chemistry in our silence and I don't know why. Is this what it is to form connections? My brain feels like it is gushing hormones at me, and I don't know whether I am supposed to be terrified or intrigued.

He pushes his raven tufts of hair out of his face, grabbing his bag from a locker and slinging it over his large shoulders. As he leaves, I find myself wanting to follow him, I find the pull to find out where he is going stronger than any urge I've ever had before. But I don't. 

I stay where I am, watching him from the glass windows.

And he leaves.

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