Iron Queen (Iron Palace Book 3) Page 3

  “So, do I want dessert? No, I don’t.”

  “Holy Christ, Claire bear. That was the best closing argument I’ve ever heard in my life. I knew you should’ve come to law school with me. I had no idea that a couple bites of dessert had such weighty consequences.”

  “Well, they do. And stop calling me ‘Claire bear’. Okay? I hate that.”

  “Why? That’s your nickname. It has been since college.”

  “No, it’s your little bullshit pet name for me that you use when you’re belittling me or speaking to me or about me in a condescending manner.”

  “If you dislike it so much, why haven’t you said anything before now?”

  “Because I’m too goddamn nice. But this is my ring,” I hold it up, “this is my fiancée,” I squeeze Kellan’s arm, “and this is my shot at something great. Something bigger than I ever imagined. It’s me and Calista Roth. And if I sit around eating deep-fried ice cream and flan, which I’m sorry is like eating sugar-coated snot, I would be doing myself, Kellan, and everyone involved a huge disservice. Especially myself. I’ve got to do everything in my power to make this happen. I’ve got to do everything I can to be ready. If I do that, and I show up looking good—”

  “You already look good,” says Denise. “You look better than I’ve ever seen you. You’ve lost like, what, forty pounds?”

  “I haven’t weighed myself but yeah, something like that.”

  “You look awesome, Claire.”

  “Thank you.” I take a deep breath to calm myself. “Look, sorry I’m being such a bitch. It’s just that if I do everything I can and I don’t get the part, fine. I can live with that. But if I show up and they give it to Calista instead of me because of all the times I ate deep-fried ice cream when I shouldn’t have, that will haunt me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling like a loser who got a big break, a really big break, and blew it because I didn’t have the will power to say no to dessert in a Mexican restaurant. Besides, this is about the four of us having dinner together and celebrating our engagement. The food doesn’t matter.”

  Denise puts down her spoon. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I support you one-hundred-thousand percent. You too, Kellan. So does Mark. Right, babe?”

  “Yeah, of course. If there’s anything you guys need, let us know. I don’t know what that might be, but we’re here for you.”

  “Thank you.” I calm myself and we enjoy the rest of our meal together, but deep down I’m still pissed. I try not to show it. I try to rise above the petty, haughty, whatever bullshit.

  But in the car, driving home with Kellan in his sexy black Corvette Stingray, I’m still angry. It takes a lot to make me angry. But once I’m angry, I’m angry. And I snap. “Fuck.”

  “You okay?”

  “Why do people act like that? Why do people try to sabotage you? Why did I have to get so angry to the point of pretty much yelling at Denise in the middle of a crowded restaurant in order for her to get the fucking message?”

  Kellan reaches over and holds my hand. “It’s because your success is like holding up a mirror in which they see themselves and their own lack of success.”

  “But Denise is very successful. She has her own house, a ridiculously nice car, she’s a partner in a law firm…”

  “I know. But sometimes even talking about going after your dreams is enough to trigger people to try talking you out of it. Misery loves company. The path of least resistance is sitting around doing nothing, bitching about how hard it is and how unfair life is and going on and on about why they can’t do this or why they can’t do that and they have no time to start their own business and they have no time to train and no time to do cardio and they can’t stick to their diet because they have to work and blah blah fucking blah. It’s all excuses and bullshit because they’re scared or lazy or weak or they don’t want it bad enough and they want someone to tell them that it’s okay for them to fail or to not even try. You’re past that now. You have a goal. You have something you want more than dessert. And you illustrated that quite eloquently in the restaurant.”

  “But why aren’t people happier for me? For us? My mom isn’t. My sister isn’t. My dad isn’t. Denise isn’t.”

  “I just told you why. That fact that you’ve lost forty pounds and are auditioning for a Hollywood blockbuster reminds them that they’re not. They haven’t lost any weight. They haven’t gone to L.A. and chatted with Bacon Tits in the ladies room of Paramount Pictures. Look, it doesn’t matter if they’re happy for you or for us. Are you happy?”

  “Yes. I’m thrilled. I literally could not be any happier.”

  “Good. That’s all that matters.” Kellan lifts my hand to his lips and kisses it. His lips are so soft and warm on my skin. “Don’t worry about your parents. They’ll come around. They don’t know me all that well and they’re scared that they’re losing you.”

  “I’m finally living my life the way I’ve always wanted to. I’m finally happy.”

  “I know. And they want you to be happy. But right now they’re struggling with you not being their little Claire bear that was always at their beck and call twenty-four-seven whenever they needed you. It’s going to take some time, that’s all. Don’t worry.”

  I know what Kellan says is true.

  But I’m still pissed.

  WHEN WE GET home, we immediately change clothes and hit the home gym. Kellan asks me what I want to do.

  “I want to get completely shredded so Calista Roth and Denise and my parents and all the douchebag asshole hater motherfuckers on the internet can suck my dick.”

  “Okay.” Kellan surveys the home gym for several moments, thinking. He sets up several stations for us to go through in a circuit. “Station one, clean and press. Station two, bench press. Station three, squats.”

  Kellan demonstrates each movement, completing the entire circuit one time so I know what I’m doing and so I won’t throw my back out or tear a pec or something.

  While he’s putting some music on, I think about Denise in the restaurant, trying to shove a spoon of deep-fried ice cream in my mouth and it pisses me off. I attack the clean-and-press, grabbing the bar and jerking it up to my shoulders and then bending at the knees to press it over my head. I lower it back to the floor and go again. I do fifteen reps, hit the flat bench for fifteen, and then squat 135 fifteen times.

  Kellan tells me to rest one minute and go again.

  I ask how many rounds.

  He says until we can’t do any more, but at least five.

  I ask what if I puke on round three.

  He says then puke, but finish the workout once I’m done.

  Forty minutes later, we’re both thoroughly done. Neither of us pukes; almost, but not quite. But my whole body is a marshmallow noodle.

  We go outside and collapse in the Jacuzzi, protein shakes in hand.

  ONE NIGHT, ABOUT a week later, Kellan and I are putting on our workout clothes for our evening strength-training session. Morning cardio was good (I almost puked), lunch-time cardio was also good (I almost puked again), and I’m ready to lift some heavy-ass weights. Kellan says he can see I’ve gotten leaner in the past week. I’m definitely eating less food in order to maintain a slight caloric deficit, which the cardio is also enhancing. Kellan has it all recorded in the app on his phone. He tracks our food portions and macronutrient quantities of carbs, protein, and fats. The majority of my diet is protein and vegetables, with carbs coming from vegetables and a little oatmeal here and there, and not much fat. Kellan says if you want to encourage your body to mobilize fat for energy and thus get leaner, you can’t eat a bunch of fat to replace the fat you’re burning. It seems to be working because I think I am starting to see my abs. It’s a tiny little baby four-pack, not yet a full six-pack, but if I’m really thirsty and the lighting is just right, I can see some undulations in my abdomen which I’ve never seen before. I’m excited.

  For some reason
I start thinking about our trip to the Lighthouse Hotel. “Kellan, do we have any pot left?”

  “Pot? Yeah. Why?”

  “What happens if you smoke before working out?”

  “It depends on the weed. If you smoke Sativa, it can help you focus and train harder because it also lowers blood pressure, which is why they prescribe it for glaucoma and why athletic organizations like the NCAA and UFC have labeled it a performance enhancing drug and have therefore banned it.”

  “Have you ever done it?”

  “Yeah. It’s been awhile, though. Years. I remember smoking one time but not knowing what I was smoking. It turned out it was an Indica and I wound up sitting on the bench for forty-five minutes listening to music and not training. So I didn’t do it again. Why, do you want to smoke some?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  Kellan gets his little stash can out of the cupboard. It originally contained long, thin, tubular French cookies. It now contains a baggie of pot and the little wooden pipe with the Golden Gate Bridge logo carved into it.

  Kellan tears off a little piece and puts it in the pipe and hands it to me, along with the lighter. “Cherry hit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You get the first hit. It’s called a cherry hit. Remember, I told you that at the lighthouse hotel?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Kellan does have a freakishly good memory.

  I smoke a little and hand it to Kellan. The smoke burns my throat and I cough. “I think we need to get a bong with some water in it.”

  Kellan goes into the bedroom and comes back with a little green plastic bong. The plastic has purple swirls that look very pretty in the light if you look at them at the proper angle.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Somebody left it in my car after a snowboarding trip up to Squaw Valley sophomore year. It’s plastic. That’s makes it good for taking on the road.”

  “Have you ever smoked out of it?”

  “Not in several years. Want to try it?”

  “Will it help me not to cough so much?”

  “It should. It’s not the smoke that makes you cough, it’s the heat. I’ll put some ice in it.”

  Kellan goes to the kitchen while I put on my shoes. He comes back and the bong has ice water in the base. Kellan pinches off a little pot and puts it in the metal bowl.

  This time, when I inhale, the smoke feels cool in my chest and throat. I don’t cough. “Wow, that’s so much better. What are we smoking, anyway? Is this still the Sour stuff?”

  Kellan takes a hit and holds his breath while he answers, which makes me laugh. “Yeah, Sour Diesel. It’s a Sativa blend, so it’s a good head high. Good for working out. Indica, not as much.”

  “What’s the difference again?”

  Kellan exhales. The smoke smells sweet, like candy.

  “There’s two strains of pot: Indica and Sativa. And there are about a million different variations of the two that have been cross-bred together, called blends. Indica gives more of a body high, whereas Sativa gives more of a head high. They’re both good, depending on what you’re looking for. Indica makes your body heavy and relaxed, which is good for watching movies on the couch but lousy for working out. Sativa is good for creativity and for physical activities, but not so good if you want to fall asleep.”

  “Um… Okay. So, which is which?”

  “Indica is for the body, Sativa is for the mind. The way I think of it is Indica gives you a body high that will put you in da couch.”

  “Maybe we should get some, to help us sleep or to smoke after we work out. We could smoke some Sour Diesel before we work out, work out for two or three hours, have mind-blowing sex, and then get in the Jacuzzi and smoke some of the other one. What are some names of Indicas?”

  “Um, gosh… uh, Blueberry Trainwreck, O.G. Kush, Bubblegum… That’s as many as I can remember.”

  Kellan and I take the bong and stash can into the gym and get after it. I hop on the treadmill to warm up for a few minutes while Kellan puts on some music. He cranks up Ritual de lo Habitual, which I haven’t listened to for a while. But it’s perfect. It reminds me of the day I met Calista, because I was wearing my favorite Jane’s Addiction tee shirt which Kellan suggested I tie in a knot in order to accentuate my breasts and show off my midriff. It worked, too, because everyone raved about my outfit and the next thing I knew, Jane’s Addiction was performing on Conan.

  Kellan puts Calista’s movie Chasing Lazer on the big TV mounted on the wall and lets it play with the sound muted, for us to glance at occasionally as we’re working out. Kellan says it’s like when Rocky went to Russia to train for his fight with Ivan Drago, and Rocky had a newspaper clipping of Ivan Drago taped to his mirror for him to look at for motivation every morning. Maybe I’ll put a picture of Calista on our bathroom mirror, a juicy one of her in her bikini, showing off her iconic legs.

  After my warmup, I’m very high and very ready to kick some serious ass. I set up an Olympic bar with a 45-pound plate on each side. One-thirty-five isn’t a ton of weight, but it’s almost my body weight at this point. I do clean-and-presses, lifting the bar off the floor and up to my shoulders, then dropping my butt and shooting one leg back to get under it so I can press it straight up to the ceiling. I super-set this with dumbbell side raises for my lateral deltoids and move quickly to calves and finish the super-set with abs, holding a 25-pound plate in front of my chest while I do sit ups and crunches and twists and V-ups and anything else I can think of.

  Kellan is impressed. I’ve completed two full rotations by the time he gets off the stationary bike and joins me.

  Every now and then Calista’s sexy image catches my eye on the mammoth TV. She’s running around in a cave, the rock glowing with green crystals. She’s carrying a big plasma rifle and is wearing only her little bikini and some black boots. Her body is slick with sweat and her hair is disheveled. She looks tough but sexy and she somehow brings a credibility to the whole movie, despite it being utterly impossible. I can see why so many millions of teenaged boys fantasize about her.

  About an hour into our workout, I’m hungry. I tell Kellan and he goes to the kitchen and comes back with a protein shake for each of us. It’s only one scoop with extra water, so it’s thinner than usual; Kellan says it’s so I don’t barf. I sip on it as I continue the workout. Kellan puts Ritual on repeat, and when Chasing Lazer ends, he restarts it. Each time I see Calista squatting behind some rocks, trying not to get her head blown off by aliens with big guns, all I see is her muscular butt and long legs.

  It motivates me to continue pushing. I thought I was getting tired but with the help of the protein shake and another hit of Sour Diesel, we work out for another two hours, until finally we’re both exhausted.

  Exhausted but horny. Like, really horny. Kellan says it’s the exercise-induced endorphins, which is one of the secret benefits of exercise that non-exercisers are unaware of.

  We wind up making love on one of the flat benches. Kellan is like a machine, giving it to me fast and slow, deep and shallow, varying his pace and intensity, kissing me, kissing me, kissing me, and I am a veritable orgasm-machine. My third orgasm is so intense I get lightheaded and almost pass out.