Royalty

Six

"Okay, I want you to do a mini circuit. Military pullup, pushup, cable fly, and seated row. Twenty reps for each exercise for a total of three rounds. Got it?"

I nodded my head at Ronnie as I chugged my water bottle. He had been giving me a workout for thirty minutes now, and I was tired as fuck. I was sweating like a mad man. Either I was unknowingly out of shape, or Ronnie was doing his job of wearing me out.

"Get ready, Styles," he held a stopwatch in his hand as he looked at me. "Three, two, one. Go!"

I jumped up and grabbed onto the bar above me. Bending my knees at a ninety degree angle, I crossed my feet over each other. I pulled myself up so my chin was above the bar before lowering myself back down. Ronnie counted each rep out loud, as well as yelling at me to move faster. I was almost out of breath by the time I got to twenty. I let go of the bar and got down to the floor for pushups. I knew how much Ronnie hated when I did regular pushups, so I got straight to the crossfit style pushups. Again, he counted each rep until I hit twenty. Somehow I made it over to the cable fly machine and began the reps. Finally I sat down on the bench and pulled the weight for the seated rows. After all of that, I was given a one minute break before the next round started.

"You're a little sluggish today. What's wrong with you?" Ronnie laughed as I finished the third round.

"Nothing, I'm just fucking tired," I replied through exhausted breaths. I walked over to the water fountain to fill my bottle as I could hear him still laughing at me.

"No way, bro. Your head isn't here. Who's on your mind now? Did you have some memorable sex with some girl last night or something?" he started chuckling before he quickly stopped, giving me a hard stare. "It better not have been Isabella. I thought you guys were done with that shit."

"What? No, it wasn't your sister. And no, I did not sleep with anyone last night," I pushed the bandana on my head a little farther back as I walked back towrads him.

He gave me an accusing stare, "Okay, then what or who is it?"

I sat down on the bench next to him and leaned back. I felt the sweat roll down my back and from my neck down to my chest. I wasn't wearing a shirt because I had thrown it off to the side after the first exercise. I wiped my hand across my forehead and onto my shorts. "It's nothing."

"Fuckin' liar, is what you are. Spill it before I beat it out of you."

Groaning in annoyance, I looked up at Ronnie. "Fine. I've met a girl that I really like, but she is way out of my league."

"How so?"

I took a sip from the water bottle before continuing. "I don't know. She's really really beautiful, way too nice for someone like me, and I can guarantee that she's got a shit load of money."

"What's your point?" he asked, crossing his arms and raising his eybrow.

"I'm not good enough for her!"

Ronnie gave me his signature are-you-kidding-me look as he stared at me. "Just because you don't have as much money as she does doesn't mean you aren't good enough for her. And if you're too concerned about why a girl like her would be spending time with a guy like you, then you need to look past the superficial things. Maybe she likes you for who you are and not what you look like or the things you have."

"You don't understand. She's so far out of my league. I went on a date with her, and everyone around us was staring at me like I wasn't good enough to be with a girl like her," I looked down at my shoes. "She's going to realize one day that she can get someone so much better than me."

"Is she a shallow person?" Ronnie asked me.

I lifted my head to look at him, "No way. Far from it."