Being Invisible by Penny Baldwin Read Free Book Online

that since we only knew each
other a couple days, I really shouldn’t waste my time thinking about him. Only
I wasn't sure how to go about not wasting my time thinking about him.
    By Friday, I was really starting
to tick myself off.   I had prided
myself on not being the kind of girl to swoon over a guy- any guy, but especially
the general population of douche canoes. Even when my ex-boyfriend cheated on
me, I gave myself a few days to mourn, chalked it up to lesson learned, and
moved on.
    So why did I keep checking for him
when I ran in the mornings? And why, when the phone rang, did my heart jump a
little, thinking that maybe he was calling to tell me that after he left my
house he was hit by a truck, and therefore unable to plan our date?
      By the time Liz and Annie arrived home
from class on Friday afternoon, I couldn’t take another minute of myself.
    “We’re going out tonight.” I
barely let my roommates get through the door before I pounced on them.
    “Ladies’ night?” Annie asked.
    “Yep.” I was already heading
towards the stairs to get ready.
    “I’ll tell James that I’m not coming
over.”
    By the time I got upstairs, Liz
was already changing.
    I love my roommates.
    After we got ready, we grabbed a
light dinner at home, then headed out. We didn’t want to be too early, so we
took a leisurely walk, making sure to stop at all of our favorite shops along
the way. At about 10:00, we arrived at Firm.
    While most of the campus was out
partying at the local bars, we were at our favorite girls' night spot,
kickboxing at the only 24-hour fitness location near campus.
    We discovered it when one of
Annie’s friends was robbed while walking home late one night. We decided that
we were going to learn to protect ourselves. At first we just took a couple
self-defense classes, but over time we started trying out anything that looked
like fun or could help us become major ass kickers.
    One night, on a whim, we decided
to check it out on our way to meet some friends at a bar, just to see what it
was like at midnight. We discovered that since everyone was pretty much at a
bar or a kegger that late on the weekend, we could have the entire place to
ourselves.
    After that, whenever we needed a
night out, we headed to the gym and hung out for hours, trying out all of the
equipment and making up challenges.
    We had already warmed-up and used
the Nautilus equipment by the time we got to the punching bags. We were
debating on whether to have a competition to see who could kick the bag the
highest, or who could punch every bag in the room in the fastest time, when we
heard a noise that made us all jump.
    “Is someone else here?” Annie
almost whispered, surprise etched on her face.
    “No one else is ever here at this
time.” I echoed her bewilderment.
    “Well,” Liz said slowly, “This
isn’t just our gym. And it’s a 24-hour
gym. We were bound to run into another member sometime.”
    “At 11:00 at night?” Annie asked.
    “Well, maybe word got out that all
the hot chicks work out here at this time.” Liz clearly thought we were crazy
for being concerned.
    “Probably.” I agreed, “But we
should be careful, just in case. Someone might have seen us come in and
followed us to steal our stuff or something.”
    “Fine.” Liz conceded. “We can sneak
up on them instead. Maybe we can do it while hiding behind gym equipment until
we get close enough to take a look. If it looks suspicious we can call security
on our cells.”
    As we wove through the bench
presses and butterfly machines, we realized that we looked like a bunch of
idiots acting like we knew what we were doing. While we were pretty freaked out
about who was invading our gym time, we were also breaking out into quiet fits
of laughter over how we would make the worst Charlie’s Angels.
    At one point Annie got her
shoelace caught on one of the machines, then tried to save herself from getting
hurt. She ended up falling into a half split, half