Another Door Opens

20 - Let her down easy, heartbreaker

- MILES -

Based on how many people are regularly rocking up to the gym in the days after Christmas, I'm presuming there's more than a few who regret third helpings and many plates of leftovers. 

I'm not one of them, seeing as my parents and I only really made enough for us and Nan, leaving any leftovers we had with her to balance out the shitty nursing home food for a few days at least. But Wolfe is apparently, claiming that Luna’s parents are forever trying to bulk him up by insisting he 'mangia.' 

"Seriously, Miles. It's like they think I don't eat when I'm not with them, or like they don't trust Luna to keep me fed without them," he said, while we worked on partner drills. Wolfe hit me up asking if I had time to work out with him a few days after Christmas, but we’ve been so swamped that I haven’t had a second to block out some time for him to come in and box with me until New Years Eve.

I laughed, looking Wolfe up and down. He's not steroid-enhanced or bodybuilder huge by any stretch of the imagination, but he's a strong, solid guy for all the exercise and manual labour he does, and if I had to take a stab in the dark at his body fat percentage, it wouldn't be much at all. "Given the size of you, that's kind of insane."

"Oh, I've told them. Many, many times," he rolled his eyes before focussing back on the drill pads I was holding. "And Luna wonders why I have to spend so long training at the gym."

"Here I was thinking it was just to get some alone time with me," I joked, causing Wolfe to stop mid-jab to my hand and laugh. "I'm crushed."

"That too," Wolfe matched my joke, caressing the outside of my arm with one of his gloved hands and blowing me a kiss with the other, earning us some interesting looks from some of the other blokes nearby. "But don't tell Lune."

"Your secret is safe with me, baby," I chuckled, redirecting Wolfe back to the pads. "How is the missus going?"

"Yeah, good, man. She's getting a lot more tired lately, so I'm hoping she'll wind down at work soon and just rest before the baby comes," he said in between jabs. "But you know her. Stubborn as a mule. She'll probably keep working up until her waters break just to spite me for trying to get her to slow down and relax. I don't think she likes the idea of me being the sole breadwinner for our family in the very near future. She loves her work and it will be hard for her to hand that over to someone else for a while."

"Well, I guess, as a business owner myself, I can appreciate that," I said, imagining Wolfe too knows what I mean considering he's now started his own bricklaying business after stepping away from Nella's husband's carpentry work, which he'd been doing for a couple months when he first got here. He's trained and qualified in bricklaying after all, and was just doing the labouring work with Mason while he found his feet here in Byron, which he obviously has now. "You work so hard building something of your own into a success, and being so independent for so long, it would be hard to rely on another person."

Wolfe nodded. "Oh, hundred percent. I understand it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I just want to take care of my family and have her not worry about anything and just focus on keeping herself and the baby well and happy. But this is the challenge you face when you marry the most hard-headed and hard-working woman imaginable."

We laughed, me mostly because I know that Luna has Wolfe wrapped around her little finger as much as he'd deny it, and that he is perfectly happy being so and admires how strong and independent she is, despite all his complaining. 

"One day I might know what that's like," I said, wiping the sweat off my brow both literally and metaphorically. 

"How's all that going? You still seeing that friend of yours?" Why does it feel like he's fishing for info on me now?