She swung her backpack over her shoulder and turned, shoving her money back in her pocket as she walked toward the door.

“Hey, Lauren?” he called, and she stopped so abruptly, her bag slid off her shoulder. She caught it at the last second and turned, her expression taken aback.

Del smirked. “Don’t be so surprised that I know your name. You’re not as invisible as you think you are.”

She closed her mouth, looking at him.

“I’m not gonna stop calling you Red, though,” he added casually, picking up the crust she had given him and taking a bite.

She smiled then. Not one of those timid, friendly smiles she’d been giving him for the past few weeks, but a wholehearted smile, one that lit her entire face, before she turned and walked out.

After she had rounded the corner and was out of sight, he looked down, pulling apart the crust she had given him“That’s not what I meant.”, le as he replayed the afternoon with her. She was actually funny. And smart. And trusting.

And pretty without trying to be.

She was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met, and he knew at that moment that if he did nothing else in his life, he wanted to be friends with Lauren Monroe.

“Del? I can’t believe you, Lauren! What were you thinking?”

Jenn and Lauren were warming up before gymnastics practice, helping each other stretch, but at that moment, Jenn’s first priority had become reprimanding her.

“You know,” she huffed as she grabbed Lauren’s hands and began to pull her into a more thorough hamstring stretch, “I ignored it when you said hi to him, but to leave campus with him? He could have done anything to you!”

“Stop it,” Lauren scolded. “He’s nice.”

“Yeah, I heard that’s what he got suspended over a hundred times for. Being nice.”

“It has not been over a hundred,” Lauren said wearily.

“You know what I mean,” Jenn said, letting Lauren out of the stretch. “He’s crazy! Um, hello? Were you in Health that day? What if he flipped out on you? Or even next to you?”

A brief flash of Michael fighting to maintain his composure in the pizzeria flashed across Lauren’s mind, but she quickly shook it off.

“Well, he didn’t. It’s really not a big deal,” Lauren said, taking Jenn’s hands as they switched her into the stretch.

After a minute of silence, Lauren released Jenn, and she sat up. “So are you like, friends with him now or something?”

“I don’t know. I guess so,” Lauren said, standing as she reached above her head to stretch out her arms.

Jenn shook her head. “You’re out of your mind,” she said under her breath as she stood and mirrored Lauren’s pose.

As the two girls continued to stretch in silence, Lauren couldn’t help but wonder if Michael would have to endure a similar conversation with his friends, if they would give him the same appalled reaction.

“You hung out with that girl? The freshman loser who gave you the notes?” she could hear them say. She could picture them laughing and saying her name like it was a four-letter word. “Lauren Monroe?”

As if on cue, Jenn sighed. “I mean, Del? I think you’ve officially lost it.”

But then Lauren thought of his voice in the pizzeria: “You know something, Red? I think we got a good thing going here.”

And she smiled, because regardless of what their friends said, she thought so too.

.

September 2011

“So, how’s my favorite patient?”

Lauren glanced up from the magazine she was reading to see Adam wearing his trademark blue scrubs and boyish grin.

“You say that to all your patients,” she said with a smile as she stood and put the magazine on the small tabe had no idea what to say to that.. si

“Hmm, I might,” Adam said, stepping to the side as he gestured for her to enter one of the exam rooms. “Health insurance companies don’t cover what they used to, and a man’s gotta make a living. But if it makes you feel any better, with you, I mean it.”

Lauren laughed and shook her head as she walked through the door of the exam room and sat on the table facing him.

“So,” he said, closing the door behind him as he approached her. “How are you feeling today?”

“Great,” she responded, and she meant it. In fact, she was floored at the difference only a few weeks of chiropractic adjustments had made. It made her realize how ridiculous she had been for not doing it sooner.

“Excellent,” he said, standing beside the table and holding her shoulder as he ran the palm of his other hand down the curve of her back. “Nice,” he said with a nod, pressing into the muscle on either side of her lower back with his thumbs. “This tender?”

“Not really. The right side is a little worse.”

He nodded as he stepped back and opened the door. “Okay then. Let’s go.”

“Go?”

He ran his hand through his tousled blond hair and smiled at her obvious anxiety.

“Where are we going?” Lauren asked hesitantly as she slid off the table.

“Out to the gym. The honeymoon’s over. I’m putting you to work today,” he said as he walked out of the room.

“Putting me to work?”

“Yep,” he said over his shoulder before continuing down the hall.

“I should probably warn you,” she said as she followed him, “I had a personal trainer once. He and I did not enjoy each other.”

“Well then there must have been something wrong with him. Who wouldn’t enjoy you?”

“Wow,” Lauren laughed. “Laying it on thick now.”

“Nonsense. This is part of your therapy,” he said. “People work out more effectively when they’re in a good mood. Something about endorphins. That’s just medical verity.”

“Well, I think we’re gonna need a lot more endorphins,” she said with a sigh as she came to a stop where Adam was standing next to a machine that looked like something used in medieval torture.

“Come on now,” he said with that impish smile of his. “You were an athlete. You can’t hate exercise this much.”

“That’s different. With gymnastics, I was doing something I loved and just happened to be getting exercise in the process. But just running in place on a hamster wheel, or sitting here staring aimlessly into space while I move parts of a machine? Are you really going to try to sell me on the fun of that?”

“I can hardly try now,” he said with amusement, folding his arms as he leaned against the machine. “You seem pretty set in your ways.”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? I have no problems doing something physical, as long as I’m deriving some sort of pleasure from it.”

The second the words left her mouth, she pressed her lips together in a hard line, and the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was his smile morphing into a wide grin.

“You know what I meant,” she said softly. a little tighter around herself23so

“I believe I do,” he laughed.

She covered her face with her hands. “Okay, just show me the damn exercises. They can’t be worse than this.”

He laughed then, a jovial contagious laugh that made her chuckle behind her hands, and she finally uncovered her face, fanning herself until she felt the warmth of her blush dissipating.

“Alright, I’ll cut you a deal,” he said, walking away from the torture machine to a mat in the corner. “No machines. Just some floor work. Some stuff you can do anywhere.”

“Deal,” she said, walking over to the mat.

Lauren spent the next twenty minutes on the floor with Adam as he walked her through a few exercises that focused on strengthening her core, sometimes using his hands to align her body into the appropriate position and sometimes demonstrating them on the floor next to her.

As Lauren lay on her back with her feet flat on the floor and her pelvis lifted, she rolled her head to look over at Adam where he was lying next to her, mirroring her position. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I was being such a brat.”