The Proposal(82)

“Oh God, I feel like I’ve spent my life in gyms,” Natalie said. “I was a cheerleader in college, which meant I worked out a ton.”

Nik laughed.

“Of course you were a cheerleader in college. I should have known.” She paused. “That’s a compliment of your teaching style, by the way. I’ve never had someone cheer me on so well for anything.”

Natalie’s cheeks got bright red, but she looked pleased. She was more relaxed now. Maybe it had been just nerves about being interviewed.

“That’s so good to hear. Thank you. And then I graduated from college during a time when it was impossible to find a job. I was a math major.” Nik managed to keep her face from looking surprised, but barely. And then she wanted to smack herself. Why was she still underestimating this woman, just because of what she looked like? “And I was looking for jobs in business or consulting or even teaching, and there was nothing. So to pay my rent, I got a job working at the front desk of the gym near me. After a while, I got curious about what the personal trainers did, so I started asking one of them a bunch of questions about her job: how she got it, what the certification was like, all that stuff. And eventually, I took the plunge.”

As Natalie told her all about her personal training certification she seemed to be getting more relaxed.

“I was one of the top trainers by the time I left. My parents kept asking me if I was going to get a different job, go corporate, maybe go to business school. But I really loved my job. And I was good at it.”

Nik nodded.

“I bet you were. I’ve had trainers before, and none of them were even half as good as one of your classes.” It helped to flatter sources during interviews, but this had the benefit of being true. “Why did you leave the gym?”

Natalie turned to her glass of green juice again, but not before Nik saw that her eyes had filled with tears.

“I got married. One of my clients.” She shrugged. She still looked down at her juice. “Such a cliché, I know.”

Nik shrugged along with her.

“Clichés wouldn’t be clichés if they didn’t happen all the time.” Of course the whole problem was the husband. “So . . . why did you leave the gym after getting married? Did you decide to go to grad school after all?”

She shook her head. She still had tears in her eyes, but she was looking straight ahead now.

“No. My husband didn’t think it was appropriate for me to keep working as a trainer after we were married. He said there would be too much touching other people; he knew I was bi, and he said he didn’t have a problem with it, but it meant that working with women was a problem for him, too. So I quit.” Nik raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask a question. Natalie answered it anyway. “I know what you’re going to say. Before I met him, I would have said the same thing. I didn’t . . . by the time we were married, he’d convinced me of a lot of things. He said my job now was to take care of our house and him and that he’d take care of supporting me. I thought that was so sweet.”

Sweet was one word for that.

“When did you stop thinking it was sweet?” she asked.

Natalie put her hand over her eyes for a second. She put it down and sat up straighter.

“I’m sorry. I don’t usually talk about this.”

Nik reached across the table and touched her hand.

“No need to apologize. You’re doing great, so great.”

Natalie smiled faintly.

“You sound like me when you say that.”

Nik squeezed her hand, then let go.

“What can I say? I learned from the best.”

Natalie’s smile got a little bigger and then faded.

“What did you ask? When did I stop thinking it was sweet? It took a while.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. I don’t think I ever thought it was sweet. But somehow I’d stopped trusting myself and my feelings.”

Nik let out a deep breath. That sounded all too familiar.

“When I told him I missed the gym, he yelled at me for being ungrateful, and I thought he was right. But I really hated not having my own money. We had a joint bank account, and whenever I bought anything, he asked me a million questions about it, so eventually I just stopped buying things other than groceries. Sometimes I would get cash back and hide the cash.”

Natalie picked up a piece of paper from her desk, crumpled it into a ball, and straightened it out.

“But I thought all of that was normal and showed how much he loved me. There are all of those commercials and things in women’s magazines about hiding things you buy from your husband. They always make it seem like a thing all women do, that it’s a joke we’re all in together. So I didn’t think having to sneak around to buy new sports bras was a big deal.”

She sighed and took a deep breath. Nik thought about all of the articles and ads she’d seen that had made that exact joke. Good God, sometimes it felt like all of society was complicit in trying to make life harder for women.

“Even when he made it harder and harder for me to see my friends, I thought it was normal. People didn’t see their friends that much after they got married, right? He said people who loved each other shouldn’t have anything to hide from each other, so he should be able to read all of my emails and texts. So I stopped texting my friends very much. I didn’t really see them much, either. Sometimes I would sneak out and get coffee with my best friend, Kiki. But I just thought he was acting like that because he loved me so much.”