"Playing Footsie"

Hazel's bookshop closed at six, which gave her exactly forty minutes to get to the little gym above the laundromat before her trainer gave her spot away. Two years of leg days had turned the mirror into a stranger who wore her glasses, and tonight, tonight she'd worn the purple dress on purpose, because Daniel was coming over afterward and Daniel liked the purple dress.

The dress had been a gift from her sister, back when "stretchy" meant something very different. The lace-up front still fit, barely, but the straps strained over shoulders gone round and full, and the fabric across her chest pulled tight over pecs that pushed the neckline into a shape the tailor had never imagined. The skirt split high on one side whenever she lifted her leg, which was often, because her quads had decided long ago that modesty was a suggestion.

At the leg press she set her foot on the plate and the skirt did its thing. The teardrop of her quad rolled down her thigh in a thick sweep from hip to knee, inner sweep deep enough to cast its own shadow, veins tracing lazy rivers over the top. Her calves were diamond-cut, the kind that made strangers at the bus stop forget what they were going to say. And her feet, her feet were strong in a way that had surprised even her, arches high, tendons visible under the skin, long toes that gripped the platform like she was about to launch herself at the ceiling. Every time she drove the weight up, the ball of her foot flexed and the arch hollowed and a fan of tendons flickered across the top like piano strings.

She caught herself staring at them in the mirror between sets. Who does that, she thought, and laughed at herself, and did another set anyway.

Daniel was already on her bed when she got home, shoes off, back against the headboard, a book open in his lap that he had clearly not been reading. He looked up when she came in with her hair damp from the shower and the purple nightdress half-laced, and he did the thing he always did, which was pretend very hard not to react.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi yourself." She padded across the lavender carpet barefoot. The room was small and warm, a single lamp burning on the nightstand, the evening light through the window turning everything soft. She flopped onto the bed opposite him, not beside him, opposite, and arranged herself against the footboard with her back propped on a pillow.

"Long day?" he asked.

"Leg day."

"Ah." He closed the book entirely. "So I'm in danger."

"You're in danger." She said it cheerfully, grinning with teeth, green eyes bright behind lopsided frames. The little black choker at her throat with its green stone caught the lamplight. "Petar had me doing calf raises until I cried. Look."

She lifted one leg straight up into the air between them.

It was, she had to admit, a ridiculous thing to do to a man who had been trying to read. The calf that rose above her was a heavy split diamond, inner head bulging farther than the outer, the skin stretched tight and faintly glossy from the shower. Her hamstring flexed to hold the leg up and the cord of it ran visible along the back of her thigh. Her quad, even relaxed, still carried the pump from the gym, the sweep down the inside of her leg looked carved.

And at the end of it all, hovering in the warm air of the bedroom, was her foot.

"Exhibit A," she said.

Daniel looked at the foot. The foot was long and pink-soled from the walk across the carpet, the arch high enough to slip a finger under, the tendons on top fanned out in a delicate architecture that flexed every time she wiggled her toes. Which she did, slowly, one at a time, because she knew exactly what she was doing.

"That's not a calf," Daniel said.

"I know."

"I was told this would be about calves."

"I lied." She let the leg drift sideways until her foot came to rest against his knee. Not pressing. Just resting. The sole of her foot was warm against the denim. "You're in my spot, by the way."

"You have a spot?"

"I have a spot and you're in it." She flexed her foot slowly, and the arch deepened, and the ball of her foot pressed gently into his thigh. The tendons along the top of her foot rose and fell like something breathing. "I was going to lie there and stare at the ceiling and feel sorry for my legs."

"I can move."

"Don't you dare."

She brought her other leg up and crossed one ankle over the other, the way she used to as a kid, except now the stack of muscle folding against itself was heavy enough that the mattress dipped under the weight. Her quads rested on top of each other, a double column of warm marble; her calves pressed together and made a single enormous diamond; and her feet, crossed at the ankle, hung in the air between her and Daniel like an offering neither of them was going to acknowledge out loud.

He reached out, eventually, and ran a single cautious fingertip along the arch of the top foot.

She made a small noise that was not dignified.

"Ticklish?" he asked.

"Tired," she corrected, eyes closing behind her glasses. "There is a difference and you will learn it."

"Noted." His thumb moved slowly along the hollow under her arch, where the muscle was heaviest, and she felt the tension of two hours of leg presses unspool one vertebra at a time. Her toes curled without her permission. The glossy band of her calf pressed more firmly against her other leg. Somewhere above her own chest she could feel her pecs rising and falling under the lace front of the nightdress, the straps loose on her round shoulders, the whole heavy architecture of her finally, finally allowed to just be heavy.

"This is playing footsie," Daniel said, after a while.

"No," she murmured, without opening her eyes. A lazy grin tugged at one corner of her mouth. "Playing footsie is under the table at dinner. This is, " she flexed her arch against his palm and the entire calf above it rippled, " this is a massage, Daniel, and if you stop I will cry real tears."

"I wasn't going to stop."

"Good."

Outside, the city was starting its evening hum. Inside, the lamp was warm and the sheets smelled like lavender detergent, and the stranger in the mirror was, for once, lying very still, one ankle crossed over the other, one man's careful hand working slow circles into the arch of a foot that had carried an awful lot of weight today, and a small, private smile behind a pair of slightly crooked glasses.