They meet at the gym, lifting at neighboring squat racks. She has just been dumped by Miranda; he has been dumped by Clay. They’re wearing the same compression knee braces, black with gray circles. She compliments his shoes—Vans with Spongebob Squarepants airbrushed on the sides—and he compliments her deadlift form (her shoes are plain Nikes, all white to match her ankle socks). At the end of their workouts, they grab smoothies at the gym’s bar.

          She invites him over to watch a tennis match—she caught him looking up at the television, following the action on the lawns of Wimbledon between sets—and eat hard-boiled eggs. He hesitates because he isn’t sure what she wants, but he says yes. When he arrives he sees that she’s barely cleaned up, her hardwood floors dusted with clumps of cat hair, the kitchen counter a mess of unopened junk mail. When she talks nonstop about Miranda, how broken she was by the ending of their relationship, how she couldn’t believe that Miranda found her obsessive and unfocused and aimless and ambitious, all at the same time, he feels at ease. She cuts her eggs in half, salts them, and eats each in a single bite, her throat long and elegant and undulating as she swallows. She reminds him of some animal, but he can’t remember which one. He tells her how Clay called him suffocating, demanding, compared him—unfavorably—to being pinned beneath one of those heavy blankets meant to help you sleep.

          They discover that they have many friends in common; his accountant pals went to college with her, and several of her friends on the club volleyball coaching circuit had gone to his university. They start hanging out with the same mixed group, attending house parties, going out to bars where they each order low-carb beers and seltzers. They sit next to each other, whispering about new protein powders and their max reps while their friends take shots and complain about children and mortgages. Their friends start whispering about them, wondering if they are carrying on a love affair.

          But theirs is not that. There is no romance.

          They decide to train for competitions. Both know they’ll never make it to the world stage, won’t appear on ESPN during Strongman—“Or Strongwoman!” she says—competitions. But they research the local circuit and think they could hang with the other nobodies that ramrod their muscles with Zottman curls and lunges and hack squats and barbell presses all day long. They write up a nutrition plan, buy bulk packs of kidney beans, huge tubs of cottage cheese, parachute-sized bags of bok choy and mustard greens. They spread sunflower oil on protein breads, bake turkey breasts, stuff edamame and sweet potatoes down their throats until they feel sick. They ignore the treadmills, the allure of HIITs and mile runs, and although they both feel a sluggish pull at their bellies as the extra calories sit waiting to be strung into triceps and pecs and gastrocnemius growth, they persevere. They buy matching Moleskines in which to track their progress, writing down each set, its reps, its weight. He has better handwriting, blocky and clear and precise while hers is whirly and smudges when her hand brushes over the pages, pencil lead smearing like drizzling mascara.

          They discuss bronzers and razors and water intake. They study quick fixes for vascularity deficiencies and practice posing together in front of her mirrored closet doors. She shaves the small of his back and giggles when he asks her to also get his ass while she’s at it. He adjudicates which bikini she should wear—the white one, to make her look tanner. They swallow more eggs and protein shakes and bananas.

          Their friends raise eyebrows at their transformations. But they come to their first competition, held in a tired-looking assembly hall owned by the city. He finishes third out of eleven, she fourth out of ten. Their friends agree they were robbed, but each of them sees where improvements can be made. They research tricks to increasing calf muscle mass, how to lose water weight on the fly. They will be ready next time.

          When Clay texts him, weepy and drunk and lonely, she takes his phone and blocks his number. She tells him he is too good for that man, that Clay has lost something he didn’t deserve to find. She pokes at his chest as she speaks, each word a tiny gun shot. When Clay sends him a DM on Twitter, then on Instagram, he has the wherewithal to block him all on his own, even though he aches for some kind of reconciliation because secretly all he’s ever really wanted is to live the life of a romantic comedy with all its ups and downs and turnarounds and glorious gestural endings.

          Instead, he lifts more weights. He cuts out the beer and seltzers. He becomes stronger, leaner, bronzer. She applauds his dedication. Their skin smooths out, dark circles under their eyes vanishing, puffiness eradicated. They study sleep schedules, hone their bulking-cutting phases, improve their one-rep maxes. They add two-a-days on the weekends and Wednesday nights. His friends are unsure, displeased. Hers are, too. They wonder if this is healthy, if either of them has consulted a physician. Are they eating enough vegetables,

avoiding dehydration? Are all those protein powders good for the intestinal track?

          He understands, but he also loves the shape of his body, the strength in his legs and arms. She spends hours examining her stomach, her upper back, not for flaws but for perfection. They agree they will be optimistic, positive-minded, not the sort to fall into dysmorphic, impossible expectations that could lead to brittle bones and snapped ligaments. They refuse to be tragic.

          And then she wins her next competition. He comes in fifth. Their friends clap and hoot and so does he, finding her afterward and offering a hug, her gold medal chilly against his flesh. But he feels an unavoidable sting: by winning, she has left him behind just a smidge, when they’d before been in such lockstep. She is a winner now; her work has paid off in this heavy, tangible way. He knows his smile is wobbly, not exactly with jealousy, he doesn’t think, but something else, something more nebulous and complicated. Desire, but not for her. Desire, but not for what she has. Desire for something as amorphous and cloudy as a handful of sand.

          They continue their workouts. She doesn’t bring up her win. She doesn’t tell him—but he knows—that she is eligible for the next level of competition, that she is moving one rung up the ladder they’ve been barely climbing. For a while it doesn’t matter. They buy each other new squat belts, fresh moisture-wicking t-shirts. He wins a tub of creatine in a giveaway and shares scoops when they eat breakfast together before leg day. They talk about her next competition, somewhere a hundred miles away. He agrees to ride with her, to support her, to be her backstage coach. She gets seventh out of ten, not bad, all things considered. But a small piece of him is glad she doesn’t do better. He isn’t ready to be left behind.

          But then she shows up haggard to a workout. She says nothing, but she racks lighter weights than usual, pushes through fewer reps. Her eyes are bagged, and eventually she admits that Miranda showed up at her door, blubbering and recalcitrant—that’s the word she uses, recalcitrant, which he has to look up later—and wanting to talk. She let her in, and they did, just talk, for hours and hours. When he wonders if they’re getting back together, she shrugs, after a set of shoulder shrugs, and says she doesn’t know. She asks if they can finish up early, and he says yes. But when she leaves, he pounds through an extra shoulder circuit, hitting all three heads for another twenty minutes, relishing the acidic exhaustion in the threads of his muscles, the way he can hardly lift his arms after.

          He signs up for a competition and tells no one, manages the prep all by himself even though he knows that a close inspection would show that his shave isn’t entirely smooth and his tan is slightly streaked, but he works with the light and angles so the judges sitting at the front of the empty auditorium don’t notice. He doesn’t win, but his second place ribbon gives him a squeeze in his chest better than any pump. He says nothing about it, storing the ribbon away in the back of his dresser. But he can feel it there, the ribbon like tendrils reaching out, curling up his nose as he sleeps, tinkering with the curls and divots of his brain.

          She asks if Miranda can come along on a night out, and he has no reason to say no. She’s a hit with their friends, though it will strike him later that he must have been the only one who didn’t know her, this tiny red-head with a boisterous voice and ridiculous cat-eye glasses bedazzled with half a dozen jewels. She makes jokes all night, her voice going raspy by the end, everyone enamored and laughing. He is unconvinced. He watches them leave, hands entangled, bodies leaning into one another. The next morning, she’s late to the gym, glowing and giddy and ready to share every detail. He pretends to listen while they warm up, jumping rope, stretching their calves, rolling their outer quads along foam cylinders. But he tunes her out, the cutting happiness in her voice. He manages, through their squat pyramid and the following ten minutes of walking lunges, not to say anything.

          He calls Clay. Stupid, idiotic. The call goes to voicemail. He doesn’t leave a message. He roots through his fridge for something unhealthy, slapping aside the bok choy and the carton of eggs. He wants a hamburger, a huge beer. So he walks to a terrible chain restaurant and orders both, then a second beer and a third. No one, he realizes, has any idea where he is. Tipsy, he orders a plate of chicken wings. He lifts each one off the plate, hot and spicy and full of juice, gnawing at gristle and meat and bone, imagining the chicken from which each drum and flat came from, picturing the twitch and movement of muscle as he cuts his incisors through each bite. He swallows them down and can practically feel the flutter of movement, the course of energy, the effort and flex. He orders one more beer and pays his tab, slams down the frothy, cold liquid and, bloated in a way he hasn’t been in months, walks home.

          Halfway there, his phone: Clay. He answers, and there is that familiar voice, stone-deep and scratchy like an old vinyl record. He can tell immediately that Clay is, himself, drunk; loud voices and music pummel in the background, Clay’s voice screeching to out-volume them. They sort out where the other is, eventually, each of them tender-footed about the idea of seeing one another but intoxicated enough not to care about the implications, the long-term, the cloudy future. It turns out Clay is close. He heads in Clay’s direction—the direction he’s already headed—and soon enough there he is, slouchy-shouldered and mop-headed, his hair longer than he remembers, but Clay looks at him the same way he always did, as if their grisly breakup has evaporated from his memory.

          Clay stares at him with an awed hunger. He relishes the way Clay scans his new and improved body, the licking lust over his broader back, his bulging shoulders, the plates of his chest. Soon enough they’re walking together, a silent slouch toward his apartment, where everything feels more familiar with Clay there. They grope and kiss and shed clothing. Clay’s body is as it always was, just a little loose but still strong and desirable. Their mouths are hot on one another, everything stiff but quick to melt into a steady, knowing rhythm.

          In the morning, Clay is gone, a headache in his wake.

          He doesn’t go to the gym. He doesn’t send her a text. He stares up at the ceiling, body tingling and taut, dried out. For once, he doesn’t want to lift. So he ignores her calls, hugging himself, waiting for Clay to come back to hold his body, this new body, once again. To be pulled and tugged like a barbell, used for the sake of someone else’s growth.