beautiful mistake - joe burrow

54

After the conversation with Nick, it was already after seven o'clock and Elle had to hurry a bit because she had an date with Celine at the gym at 7:30. They had agreed to work out together because Elle wanted to bring Celine up to date again and Celine also wanted to work on her fitness.

When they had lived in the dorms together, their first two years of college, they had gone to the gym together at least twice a week. Elle had put together workout plans for them back then, and they had both gotten pretty athletic.

It had become less frequent when they lived apart, as Elle couldn't motivate Celine to do it as much and Celine was more likely to spend time with Javier. For a while, Elle had been going more and more often with her boyfriend, but even that had only lasted six months.

At some point, she had had no problem going to the gym alone. Here, she could just forget about her stress and problems while she pushed herself to her limit and pushed her body to a level of fitness it had never had before.

In her final months of college, with stress mounting, the gym was Elle's daily stress reliever, and Celine was sure Elle had even become addicted to sports. Her therapist, however, had said at the time that he was glad Elle was exercising rather than doing drugs and had thus encouraged her to keep going.

When she had started working for the Bengals, the first week she had been far too overworked to even think about exercising after work, but she had missed it and by the second week she had tried to go at least twice a week so as not to lose her fitness.

Celine had also been there once or twice, just to have a change from her daily routine in front of the camera and computer, but mostly Elle had been alone.

When Celine had finished her photo shoot in front of the mirror in the locker room and had posted the most beautiful photo on her Instagram Story, after all, her nearly 90k followers that she had gotten in the last few months since she had started on TV had to know that she also worked out and looked pretty good doing it in her two-piece from Gymshark, they could finally make their way to the gym gear.

Elle just shook her head. She would never think of presenting her everyday life to her 5k followers, most of whom were relatives, acquaintances or some people she knew from college plus a few hardcore fans who had found her through Celine's account, the way Celine did.

She loved Instagram and all the other social media platforms, but at the same time, all the inauthenticity and perfection that the influencers on those platforms stood for really upset her.

Unlike Celine, who provided her followers with a new post at least twice a week about outfits, trips, or behind-the-scenes from the studio, Elle's last post was a picture of her and Celine at her graduation from college, which had also been over four months ago now.

Celine handed Elle one of her AirPods before they hit the treadmills. With Celine's playlist put together especially for the work out, which was actually pretty unnecessary considering how often she went to work out in the first place, they started running at a slow pace on the treadmills.

"So go for it. What's new?" Celine asked as she swayed her arms along to the music. Elle immediately had to start grinning and started talking about Sunday night, while in between she kept giving instructions to speed up the pace.

"...and then I asked him if he could sleep over..." she beamed at Celine, who was already struggling quite a bit with the pace, while Elle was still jogging quite easily.

"And...you...fucked?" Celine gasped between fairly rapid inhales and exhales. Elle looked at her in confusion. "What? No! What makes you think that?" she asked confused. "And speed up" she added, to which Celine just groaned in annoyance.

"You...look like...you've been...well...fucked again" Celine pressed out. Elle looked at her, offended. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked indignantly. "You...glow, so....positive" Celine moaned. "Can we stop already?"

Elle nodded and they both turned off the treadmills before Elle tossed Celine a towel. Celine dabbed the sweat from her forehead before nearly draining her water bottle.

"I meant you just look kinda....happy" Celine explained as she regained her breath to some extent before leaning against the cold wall with a groan. "You almost killed me"

Elle had to grin. "Come on, that was nothing. We just warmed up. Now it's on to the strength exercises" she held out her hand to Celine, who took it with a sigh and let Elle pull her to her feet.

"Please remember that I'm not an NFL athlete and I don't spend half my life here like you do, ok? I should be able to stand in front of a camera tomorrow, alive!" Celine groaned as she followed Elle.

They started with a little stretching before moving on to leg press and then pull-up bars. Celine barely managed a third of the exercises Elle did, but it was pretty good by her standards.

After that, they got on the big mat and Elle got some small weights and rubber bands. They would now do some ab, legs, butt work before doing a cooldown phase, stretching out and being done for the day.

"Have you actually told him about...you-know-who yet?" Celine asked cautiously with a mixture of effort as they were doing squats with the rubber bands around their thighs.

Elle silently shook her head as she squatted for a few seconds, controlling her breathing. "My thighs are on fire" Celine grumbled, which caused Elle to stand back up and Celine to follow suit.

"I just...haven't found a good situation to tell him yet. It's not something you can just do when we're lying on the couch together at night" Elle sighed absently.

"So you want to tell him?" Celine asked. Elle shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. He deserved it, but...I don't know if I can talk about it. You know me, my best coping is displacement until it's no longer possible"

"So you're going to wait until it comes out somehow?" "we'll see. I don't think I should plan for something like this. Sooner or later it will come out anyway" Elle sighed.

When they were back in the locker room after the work out, Celine laid down exhausted over the bench in the middle of the room. "You should show that to your followers sometime. Then they'd know you sweat too" Elle commented with a grin and got a dirty look from Celine before moaning and putting her hands over her head.

Amused, Elle pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened her camera. She made sure she got herself in the photo with the exhausted Celine in the background and pressed the shutter.

The picture was great and without thinking she sent it to Javier, writing that she had just almost killed his girlfriend.

She briefly considered sending it to Joe as well, then just decided not to think about it too much and sent it off.

Work Out is done. I'm good, Celine is dead. Wanna hang out?

Joe's reply came quickly.

Looking good! In half an hour at your place?

I will not be able to post tomorrow so i will probably post to chapters on Friday!

Question: what's your favorite season of the year?

My answer: my favorite season is summer because I like the sun and going for a swim, long nights outside with some friends and eating ice cream in the sun.

Comment your answer and leave a like!

WHO-DEY 🧡