The Trainer Read online

  THE TRAINER

  By Jamie Lake

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  Prologue

  Chris knew he shouldn’t be doing it, but he couldn’t help himself.

  He held his breath as thick soap slid from the man’s tanned, muscular shoulders to delve between his ample bubble butt and then swirled down the drain below.

  Just moments before, Chris had been drinking coffee with his assistant and friend Jessica in the cool morning Costa Rican air. She had gotten up to take a phone call, and Chris was left to peer around his new neighborhood from his third floor balcony; he never expected to end up spying on what had to be one of the hottest naked men in all of Costa Rica.

  Even the hot steam coming from the shower couldn’t shield his perfectly-sculpted torso and every bronzed knob of his abs. The distance did nothing to diminish the size and shape of his behemoth tool and full lips.

  Chris licked his lips as the man, whoever he was, soaped up his armpits, his square pecs, and his thick, sexy neck. He had shaggy light brown hair that clung wetly to his shoulders and over his ears.

  The man began soaping up and fondling his big balls. It was a little difficult to tell: was he getting an erection? Oh, God yes, definitely.

  The thick meat lengthened and drooped downward in the hot water and steam, and he gave it a few teasing jerks until it was fully stiff, arching up and over; but the cock was far too big and heavy to point anywhere but down at the ground. Chris was, by now, also hard as a rock, his own cock aching to be released.

  He felt wrong doing it, watching this perfect stranger jerking off; but in all honesty, it was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. And God, it’d been so long since he’d had anybody.

  He needed someone: he craved for someone. How he longed to be in that shower with him, shoved against the shower walls or bent over while he slid his tool in between his cheeks.

  The palm trees and ferns that grew all around the houses in his neighborhood gave him a little bit of cover from being spotted, or so he thought. The macaws and finches flashing their bright wings and squawking in the branches made a neighbor on a balcony the least interesting of all the things to see out the window. Chris felt as if he was hidden, even though he was in plain sight.

  He watched as the man continued to gently stroke himself, throwing his neck back, moaning, almost ready to explode. His eyes squeezed shut, ready to ... but then suddenly, he opened his eyes and looked up, out the window, directly at Chris.

  Chris felt a chill run up his spine.

  “Fuck.” he cursed, and dashed out of the sight.

  Had he been caught watching him?

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  THE TRAINER

  CHAPTER ONE

  “What’s wrong with him? Is he a special kind of stupid or somethin’?” she said. Chris laughed, mainly at how well her lilting Cuban accent hid the true rancor behind her words. He leaned back in his desk chair and looked out the window, shaking his head. Jessica, his assistant, had a way of bluntly saying what everyone else wanted to, but in an unfiltered way: she was talking about Chris’ ex, Tim.

  “Seriously, he’s so stupid for dumping you, Chris.”

  She sipped her cafe con leche and twisted a freed lock of her hair around one finger. Barely five foot, Jessica was no taller than she was wide, but she didn’t hide her figure: a tight black skirt wrapped her Venus-statue thighs and giant hoops hung from her earlobes. Many people in the writing profession would have their assistant tidy up and dress a little more conservatively, but Chris liked her flair. She had a way of being unapologetically herself, and she flaunted a bravery that he wished was more common in people, including himself.

  She stretched back on his office couch and let out a yawn, her feet barely reaching the floor when she sank back into the furniture. They looked out the window at the clear, tropical sky and the palms gleaming in the Costa Rican sunshine.

  “You need anything else, honey? I gotta run in a few minutes.”

  Chris took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his strawberry blonde hair as he swiveled in the chair to look at his sticky notes neatly lined on the bottom of his computer screen. His second-to-final revision of his endless novel was due today at his publisher’s. Her question forgotten for a moment, he remembered for the tenth time that week that he really did need to get a haircut: yet another clamoring task for which he had no time. Realistically, he’d be spending every hour between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. drafting, revising, and polishing his novel until its publication deadline in three weeks.

  “Yes. One thing, Jess. I’ve been having a hell of time looking for a personal trainer who speaks English. Know anyone?” Chris asked, brushing the lint off his pressed shirt. Even though he worked at home, he still liked to keep a professional work ethic; in spite of all of his ex, Tim’s poo-pooing his potential as a writer, he dressed as if he was working at a firm or something so that he could treat his work as professionally as if he was in the office. As Wayne Dyer said, our intention creates our reality.

  “Why don’t you just go to the gym down the street?” Jessica asked.

  Chris shook his head. “I don’t like people staring at me and seeing how out of shape I am.”

  Jessica cackled in her typically sardonic way. “Oh, yeah, cause you're such a fat ass.”

  “Look, I’m straight skinny, but gay fat,” Chris murmured. “You still don’t believe me? Go look around next time you’re at Peachies gay bar,” he started.

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she said, waving a long-nailed hand.

  He stared out the window again. God, it was a beautiful day. Not that any day here wasn’t. This time of year, Costa Rica was especially bright and lush. Green mountains surrounded his condo, their narrow spines cutting into a stainless, cloudless, ocean blue sky. The perfume of lime and mango trees wafted in the windows, and the chatter of tropical birds could be heard muffled in the verdant gardens below.

  Jessica said nothing, staring at her feet a while chomping on her gum.

  “Oh, I know.” she suddenly shouted. Someday, her sudden outbursts might give him a heart attack.

  “I’ll ask my neighbor down the street. Mason. Old friend. He’s been next door for like 400 years. He’s got a killer body and he was a futbol coach for a while. He also trained a few people over the years, too. You know, like 30-minute Abs or Buns of Iron or whatever you gringos call it. Me? I like my ass. More cushion for the pushin’, baby.”

  Chris laughed.

  “Alright,” Chris said. “How much does he cost? You think he’s expensive?”

  She shrugged, “Don’t know. Can’t cost that much. Besides, he just lost his job ‘cause of his fucked-up ex girlfriend. Don’t get me started on her. I know he could use a little extra money.”

  “Okay, ask him, please,” he said, patting his tummy.

  “Okey-dokey,” she said, popping another bubble. “See ya, babe.”

  She gave him a peck on cheek as she headed out the door.

  “Bye hun,” Chris said absentmindedly.

  Jessica came over to help him with his writing when really, all she just wanted was to gossip and talk shop for hours. He supposed he needed some kind of social connection, even if she was the only type he could find. How had he built an entire life around one person?

  Three years he’d been with Tim--a century in gay years--and it had ended miserably. Chris had been heartbroken, and even though everybody said each day would get easier and easier, the opposite had been happening. He had been spiralling, each day succumbing more and more to a feeling of spun-glass fragility and inner emptiness. He put up a brave front when he was out in public, which was rare nowadays; however
, when his assistant was gone and his housekeeper wasn’t in the house, he often found himself stuffing his face with chocolate or fried plantains or ice cream: any indulgence was better than crying all the time as he had been. Tim had slowly beaten him down over the years, abused him verbally, destroyed whatever natural confidence he had.

  He'd started as Tim’s houseboy when he was in college. The older man was a successful freelance programmer who made his first million soon after Chris moved into his large townhouse in southeast Portland. Tim had utterly controlled him: his blue eyes mystified people and lit up like starry skies when he spoke. He was tall, broad-shouldered, strapping with a very natural-looking musculature, and blessed with a thick head of wavy brown hair. He looked like he walked out of a damned shampoo commercial half the time.

  When they moved to Costa Rica, contrary to anything Chris could have imagined, hot, eager boys of all sorts of races and nationalities seemed to line the streets of San Jose just waiting for a strapping gringo sugar daddy like Tim. In spite of his awareness that it wasn’t helpful, Chris felt his jealousy growing as soon as they moved there, and his insecurity and suspicion irritated Tim to no end.

  The condo, his parting “gift” to Chris (at least until the end of the year), was nothing to him.

  After losing the tone and perfect youth of his undergraduate body, the breakup not only left him beaten down, but isolated. He had moved to Costa Rica but did not have any real friends here; nor could he speak Spanish well enough to hold a conversation to make them. Months had passed, and although he wondered at first if he and Tim could somehow mend things and come back together, each week that passed seemed more and more like the lifeblood of that possibility draining into a gutter.

  Chris cleared his throat, shook his head, and tried to focus on the page of his novel in front of him: it was a thriller set in Portland, where he was originally from. Wet, cold, dreary: nothing like the tropical paradise around him, but the perfect setting for a hard-boiled thriller. No love story. He had enough romantic drama going in his own mental storylines. As he stared at the glowing page, however, his hope of being distracted by his work was once again foiled. Chris found himself replaying the old tapes: scenes of the life he lived with Tim, memories of all his expectations, and of all his hopes and dreams.

  He thought about just moving back to the States and trying to break out on his own, but Chris was as stubborn as he was skeptical of his own chances. He wasn’t a quitter, and promised himself one more year just to see if things got any better. However, his hopes of meeting somebody new seemed to be getting slimmer as he was getting fatter; he’d really let himself go the last few months, and Tim’s constant acidic criticisms of his body weight, appearance, and even his face had left him with a completely skewed and horrendous picture of himself.

  Although Chris was still a sensitive, bright, beautiful young man in the prime of his youth, he could see none of those things in himself. His self-image had been poisoned, and he sought the cure in all the wrong places, including the dust at the bottom of the bag of potato chips that he was one step away from turning inside out and licking clean. He absolutely couldn’t avoid it: he had to go to the grocery store.

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  CHAPTER 2

  Chris would walk. He needed to lose every pound, burn every calorie he could, starting today. Costa Rica was hot, though. Really hot. He remembered it every time he stepped out the door and felt that humid, blast-furnace heat. On their shared landing of the condominium, of course, Mrs. Berliner was sweeping. Sweeping the landing. She was always sweeping the landing. Once, Chris had even caught her holding the broom in one hand and a glass in the other. The thing is, the glass was upside down. She had been listening through the door to Chris and Tim fighting.

  “Oh Chrisss.” she said, as if she was surprised to see him. Her German accent made her sound like a villain from a children’s cartoon. She was always wearing a stunningly-dated outfit: usually a pastel pantsuit with huge lapels, an ascot, and a pair of cat-eye sunglasses. Where on earth did one find cat-eye sunglasses in this day and age?

  “Good morning, Mrs. Berliner.”

  “Ohhh Chris, You look so goot,” she said, peering over her sunglasses.

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Listen, I’m going out to the shop. Do you and Herman need anything?”

  “Oh no. Oh no, no, no,” the German expatriate said, laughing as if the idea that Chris could help her was absurd. “But listen, we were goink to have dinner Thursday with a lot of coworkers of Herman’s. We want to know if you and Timothy vould like to come by.”

  “No thanks,” Chris said, “I don’t think Timothy will be able to make it.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course,” she chuckled. “he’s still away on business?” she asked,

  suppressing a little giggle. God, she was such a hateful old bitch. She needled him about Tim every single time she saw him, even though she knew very well that they were broken up.

  “Listen, Mrs. Berliner, he’s not away on business,” Chris said.

  “Oh, really?.” she said, with a mocking tone of false surprise.

  “No. He’s gone. He’s gone forever. He’s dumped me and he’s not coming back.”

  “Oh, how terrible.” she said.

  “I’m sure you give a flying fuck,” Chris muttered. She grasped both hands, covering her mouth as he stamped down the stairs without looking back.

  He walked down the sidewalks of his suburb, and it was a mile-and-a-half to the closest grocery store. It had sounded like a great idea when he left the house. He even spotted a big green macaw in the palm tree; it crowed at him and he took it as a good omen. However, his enthusiasm for the walk was quickly fizzling out in the noontide heat. Most native Costa Ricans would avoid being outside, or even standing up at this time of day, and he was feeling the punishment of the humidity, sunshine, and heat baking off the sidewalks and tarmac of the parking lots he crossed.

  By the time he got into the grocery store, he was hot, drenched in sweat, and exhausted. He smelled the cool air and the fragrance of the mountains of bananas in the produce section before him. He felt awkward to be so sweaty and red-faced in public, but he was alright as long as he could hide behind his baseball cap and sunglasses. No one would recognize him anyway, he told himself, as he surveyed the colorful variety of heads of lettuce.

  The only people he really knew in Escazu, the San Jose suburb where he lived, were a handful of American friends of his ex’s, and they were far too catty for him. For example, Justin and Alec, Tim’s two best friends, were queens of the most spiteful variety. He blamed them for fueling the fire, encouraging Tim to leave him instead of working things out. He wanted to pound them in their faces, but he took a deep breath and thought about something else.

  As he trailed the cool veggie section of the store, Chris had no idea there were that many varieties of root vegetables. All the titles were in Spanish, too, doubly compounding his ignorance. What the hell was a chirivía, anyway? It looked like a white carrot. He threw some into the cart. Lettuce, the iceberg variety, was the only fresh vegetable that graced his family’s white bread table growing up, and as he rarely cooked, he generally found most of his meals frozen, fried, or fast.

  Shopping was Tim’s department, especially for what he affectionately called, “The healthy shit.” What the hell should he do with all these leafy greens? How do you cook kale? Or do you eat it raw? He thought about asking the clerk for some suggestions, but his Spanish was limited, to say the least. The thought of it made his stomach sink, but he ignored it by pulling out his mp3 player and drowning his thoughts in a Wayne Dyer motivational talk. Tim used to call it ‘dumb shit', but to Chris, Dyer had helped him through some really difficult times before, and he hoped he’d get him through this time in his life.

  Chris’s cart was strewn with random exotic vegetables he would have to Google later. But then Chris felt a flicker of motivation. Today would be the day he started to turn t
hings around.

  He found himself in the cartoon mascot-lined children’s sugar cereal section of the breakfast aisle. He knew he should have picked something much more healthy, but then he saw the Cocoa Puffs and figured if he was going to be eating all this healthy food, it didn’t hurt to get himself a treat as a way to reward himself, so he piled it inside the cart.

  His health-conscious efforts quickly dissolved as he walked around the grocery store. Chris found justification after justification for grabbing whatever garbage junk food he saw that was on sale, too tantalizing, or he swore would only be for houseguests. Through this process of self-deception, he soon had a pile of cocoa krispies, frozen pizza bites, super-sized bags of Doritos, mini Snickers bars, and Twix bars burying all the healthy food on the bottom of the cart.

  He was just about to reach for a bag of Skittles when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around and felt his jaw clench immediately, and his heart leapt into his throat. Anxiety, anger, lust, exasperation, and joy all coursed through him in a confusing wave of overwhelmed emotion, all in a little less than a second.

  No wonder: his ex, Tim, was standing right in front of him. It was the first time they’d seen each other in months. He was wearing a shredded, ancient tank top: the lemon yellow one that he used to always wear on the beach so Chris could see his abs and toned biceps through the hanging armholes. He might as well go topless, Chris thought, but then there would be no tantalizing packaging over those perky nipples, refined collar bones, and broad shoulders.

  Chris took a deep breath and pulled the earphones out of his ear.

  “I’ve been trying to get your attention since I saw you in the produce section. You were off in your own little world, huh?” Tim chuckled, and Chris felt himself blushing in spite of himself. He had a way of making him feel like an ashamed little boy.

  “Yeah, sorry. I was listening to...”