I Was Here All Along Read Online Free PDF

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    At 5’ 9’’, I always wished I was small and delicate like my sister.  But Rio’s tall, broad and loaded with muscle, and being close to him makes me feel tiny and feminine in comparison, not an easy feat.  It’s all I can do not to pull him closer, bury my head in his neck and inhale the scent of him.  His warm sweaty skin and rich male potency.
     
    “Are you okay?”  he asks.  “Your face looks red.”
     
    “It’s nothing.”  I say, searching for an excuse.  “Just a hot flash.  I get them sometimes.”
     
    He gives me an odd look and presses down on my other leg, sending a pool of liquid heat straight to my sex.  “Okay!” I say, scootching away.  “That’s enough. I think I’m fully stretched now.  Let’s get this workout started.
     
    ***
     
    We’ve just finished a series of squats, lunges, planks, crunches and bicep curls.  I’m gulping down water and catching my breath when he says, “I noticed on your registration that your first name is listed as Ember, but on the driver’s license we have on file, it says December.”
     
    “Yeah, my real name is December but I shortened it to Ember as a kid.”
     
    “A nickname?  Ah, De cember.  I get it now.  What made you change it?”
 
    I shrug.  “Well, my last name is Snowe, so together the whole thing sounds kind of corny.  December Snowe?  My sister’s name is April—April Snowe—and she totally rocks it. But me?”  I shake my head.  “Ember suits me better.”
     
    “You stick with me and I’ll make you into a new woman.  You’re already a very pretty girl.  Even now you could be a plus size model.”
     
    “Uh, thanks.  I think.”
     
    “Or maybe not a plus size model, not yet,” he continues.  “I think you need to lose a little weight before that could happen.”
     
    I give him a sharp look and he holds up his hands.  “I only say that because most plus size models are thin.  Regular models are unnaturally thin.  No one looks like that, and most of them aren’t healthy.  Plus size models tend to look like ordinary girls—most of them don’t even look overweight, so I find it strange that they’re called plus size.  But if you lose some weight, you can look like an ordinary girl who models—a plus size model—that’s what I’m trying to say.”
     
    “Okay,” I say, deciding to take it as a poorly worded compliment.  “I know it’s going to take some work, but what I want, what I really, really want, is to be a size four.”  I think of the tiffany blue dress my sister wore to the wedding.  When I moved into April’s apartment, I found it in her closet.  I checked the tag and saw that it was a size four, then just to torture myself, I held it against myself in the mirror.  It was so small in comparison to my body that it might as well have been a child’s size.
     
    But now, standing in the gym in my new workout clothes, my limbs feeling like jelly after an hour of intense exercise, the thought of asking my sister to borrow her dress someday doesn’t seem completely impossible.
     
    Rio is standing with his hands on his hips, nodding at me thoughtfully.  “I’ve trained a lot of people, and I can usually tell right away if they have what it takes to meet their goals.  And you?”  He nods.  “I believe in you—you have what it takes.  You know why?”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “Because just yesterday, you fell off that treadmill right over there and passed out on the floor.”
     
    “Yeah, I really didn’t need to be reminded of that.”
     
    “Yet you came back the very next morning and pushed yourself to the limit without one complaint.  I saw in your face how hard this was for you—especially the plank—and yet you pushed yourself all the way through it.”
     
    I’ve seen enough episodes of The Biggest Loser to know that the fat people always cried when they first started working out, and it’s not attractive, so I tried to power through it without