Gym partners

Part 1

Jade's POV

It has been two years now since Josh and I started our gym business. Today was Tuesday, January 26 and I had just gotten to our gym "strike back", it was around 4:30 am and I was fumbling through my gym back trying to reach for the keys. We open at 5 am and normally I'm first to open up the doors. Whereas Josh likes to show up as early as 12 pm. I finally grab my keys and unlock the gym door. I switch on the lights and the neon colors of the gym reflect back to my eyes and I squint. It was Josh's "brilliant" idea to have a neon themed gym and the only reason I gave it to him was because he let me add an all women's only side to part of the gym. I made it to our joint office which towers down on the gym so we could keep an eye on everyone. A few months after we started a fight broke out and we thought it would be smart to make that less likely if we could stop the argument before it happened. 4:50 am rolled around and 3 out of our 4 morning employees had already walked in and started getting ready for the day. The fourth one who hadn't shown up yet was Sadie, great for morale and keeping our customers happy. She could talk up a storm and compliment you to the point of blushing but other than that she was terrible. She never did her job, never listened to me, and only showed up on time for work when Josh was the opener. And everytime I wanted to fire her she would give Josh a sob story and he would fall for it. Every. Time.

7:32 am and here she came. I sat in my rollie chair and spinned a pen in between my fingers as I looked down towards the front desk where she greeted the other three employees and every single other person in the gym before even clocking in. Sadie always got on my nerves but I did my best to stay away from her and I'm pretty sure she did the same thing. The only time I had to deal with her is when I was with Josh and she'd try to flirt with him. But I knew she had no shot in a serious relationship with him, no one did. Josh liked being single, no responsibility, no commitment (he couldn't even commit to showing up on time to his own business). And most importantly he was a whore, he loved the chase a girl gave him, he'd be sweet and charming to get them in bed then ditch them. He was a really nice dude to his friends and respected women in his life but if you meant nothing to him, in his eyes you were just another body to his list.

10am finally came and I had finished filling out new membership forms and inputting them into the computer. I placed the pen on the table and closed my eyes leaning back on the chair. Seconds later pushing through those doors the one and only Josh Kilhms. He was wearing all black like usual. Black joggers, black band tee that had the sleeves cut off, black Nikes I bought him for Christmas, and his black Apple Watch that left the worst tan mark anyone has ever seen because he never takes it off. As he walks in he greets all the males with some fist numbs and bro handshakes and for the females he throws his famous flirty smirk. I get out of my chair and out of the office to meet him downstairs and as I start walking down the stairs I see Sadie fixing herself up and reaching into her sports bra pulling up her boobs, and pulling her spandex up to make her ass look bigger. I huff at the effort, knowing damn well all she's going to get from Josh is a one night stand and a coffee the next morning at most. Josh passed by the front desk as I was making it to the last steps of the stairs. Sadie had called him over to the front desk and I stopped in my tracks (knowing she wouldn't try anything while I was close). "Hi Joshy", if only she knew how much he hated being called joshy. I snickered to myself at her attempt to act cute.  "Morning Sadie" he had placed the two coffees he had in his hands down in order to grab the mail and looked through it. He had been waiting for this athletic wear to answer him back on a sponsorship. "Who is the other coffee for, you know I love iced coffee also". "Yeah I know you've told me before", you could tell he could care less. He then continued to shuffle through the mail and stopped at a white envelope with blue lines across the edges. He placed it under his arm and grabbed the coffee again. "So how is your mor......", "hey Josh, coffee for me?" I pointed at the drinks in his hand, proud that I was able to interrupt her. "Of course who else would it be for" he stretched his hand out passing me the coffee before continuing, "large Caramel macchiato with oat milk and extra Caramel only around the side for the gorgeous co-owner". "Why thank you, you muscly god shaped man". Now don't get me wrong we loved each other but not in a romantic way whatsoever. We had known each other our entire lives since our mothers were best friends. We dated once and it didn't work out, it lasted a complete 29 hours. But we were very comfortable in front of each other.

I took a sip of the coffee just so happy for the caffeine, "is that what I think it is" a huge smile landed on Josh's face, "oh yeah, I'm going to head upstairs and read it". "Want to workout in about an hour?" And before he could even open his mouth... "Can I join? For social media purposes. I haven't posted a workout video I'm a while and did you know Joshy? I'm pretty media famous" Sadie had turned all her attention to Josh at this point and was moving a piece of hair behind her ear giving him flirty eyes. I had become physically nauseous at this point. She had also made her way a little too close for comfort on Josh's side. "Ummm yeah sure, you know what you ladies go get ready and I'm going to go out my stuff in the office" he marched off before either one of us could say anything. It was quiet for a few seconds. We looked at each, both turned and walked away. I don't think in the four months she has worked here we had a conversation. I wasn't even the one who hired her, Josh was the one who brought her in.

45 minutes had passed and Josh and I were both sitting in the office. Our desks faced each other and two one side the window showing our gym and the other side the door. "You almost ready to head downstairs?"Josh commented, making me look up from the paperwork I was filling out. "Oh yeah almost I just need to change", I stood up from the desk and walked to close the blinds of our wall sized window. I walked back to my desk and reached down into my bag and grabbed my workout outfit. I was about to start stripping when I felt a presence staring at me. I looked over at Josh and motioned with my finger for him to turn his chair around. He groaned and did as I asked, causing me to let out a chuckle. I changed my shirt into a bright green sports bra and matching shorts, finishing off with my white vans. "Okay now I'm ready, ready." Knock knock, we both faced the door wondering who knocked. Josh  stood before saying, "who is it?" "Me silly, I'm ready to workout" "o..okay we'll be right out", I rolled my eyes, landing them on Josh with a frown. "What?" "Oh you know what" "what did you want me to tell her, no?" "Yea that's exactly what you should have said" At this point we turned into a yelling whisper. "Are you guys coming out yet?!" Sadie yelled outside the door. Good thing we locked it otherwise she would have most likely just stormed into the office. "We'll be right there" you could hear the frustration in my voice at this point. "Be nice." Josh was stern with that statement and he pointed to the door for me to start heading out. I rolled my eyes and made my way past his desk but noticed he hadn't opened the envelope yet. I made it a point to ask him about it when we finished our workout. I made it to the door, grabbed the handle and huffed before opening the door. "Ahh Sadie so glad you could join us", she pushed her way past me and into the office, "of course you are. Wow I've never been in your office, this is so nice" she scanned the room and stopped when her eyes landed on Josh, "oh and Joshy your desk is so rustic and handsome" she had made her way to sitting on his desk with her hand across the middle of the desk. Josh clapped his hands together before saying, "so shall we make our way down to start". She hadn't stopped eyeing him like she was ready to take him right there and then and the worst part she didn't care I was still in the room. "Sadie mind leading the way" she turned her head to face me, "sure why not" she said through gritted teeth. And with that she made her way out of the office and down the stairs as we followed.