The strap of my gym bag pressed down hard on my shoulder. It wasn’t heavy. But I was too drained to carry the small amount of weight concealed inside. I should’ve taken out my hockey gear before Brian had picked me up for our killer workout. He seemed to have survived the hour and a half of body blasting fine. I, on the other hand, felt like I had aged a hundred years. The walk to Brian’s car was like hiking a mountain in the middle of a storm.

Brian was a few steps ahead of me. He scanned the parking lot for his car. I envied his confident strides, displaying that gluing himself to the weight lifting machines was nothing for him. At forty-eight, he had a physique most twenty-year olds would kill for. Women frequently eyed him while he worked out. That was the trouble with scoring dates at the gym. It was hard to hit on a hot guy when he’s in his body sculpting zone. “Hey Lorro, you feel like getting a shake?” he asked. “I know this hipster vegan place that makes imitation drinks. It won’t undo our workout.”

I was still a little breathless and tired, but I needed some fun to make me forget the pain I put myself through. “Sure. Where is it?”

“Not too far. I’ll take us, as soon as I can spot my car.”

“I told you to park on the street. I knew the lot was going to get full,” I said, rolling my eyes slightly.

“We both know all these people didn’t come here for the gym. Otherwise, it would be packed,” Brian joked.

“They’re probably using these spaces for the movie theater,” I groused.

Brian scoffed. “Loading up on garbage. They should hang their heads in shame when they come back here to get their cars. Parking them in front of a gym is an insult to anyone who regularly goes to one.”

“Maybe they should start selling those vegan drinks at the concession area,” I suggested.

Brian laughed. “You’re the one working in the world of startups. Make it happen.”

He finally spotted his car. “Don’t be a gym snob. Remember, not all people have the same flexibility as us with their work lives,” I said, walking with him to his Four-Runner.

“Make the damn time. It’s not that hard. Keep weights by your desk.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that’s not a weird sight. Doing deadlifts while having a conference call.”

Brian flashed a big smile while slipping between two small cars parked a little too close together. “You’re too much, Lorro. I should be more positive like you. It’s just so damn hard. I can’t help but plug into the news and see planet Earth falling apart. It makes me clam up. That’s why I don’t have many friends.”

“You don’t have many friends because this town is a walking graveyard. Half the population is over sixty, and the rest pretend as if they’re eighty.”

Brian reached into his pocket for his car keys. He pressed unlock, and the lights of his SUV blinked on accordingly. “How is that? The rest of the Bay Area is getting all hipster with mega-billionaires who aren’t old enough to drink, throwing money around like beer at a frat party. Why doesn’t that end up here?”

I tossed my bag into the backseat. “The world can’t be Vegas. Families have to settle somewhere. Walnut Creek happens to be the capital of it for this region. As for the younger people...well, let’s just say they’re here to do their internship in domestic life.”

Brian turned on the car and carefully maneuvered the car out of its tight space. “You’re in a community of people who devote their lives to bettering the world with sci-fi-level innovation, and you’re still going to live like Leave It to Beaver?”

“Babies are the best thing to combat the coldness of computers.”

“You should have your own app. It would be called Lorro’s Answers for Everything. It’ll be modeled after your mind and dish advice to all the problems,” Brian teased.

“Or the ranting of a snobby muscle head.”

This was turning out to be another guy’s night out, rather than a simple, friendly workout. Once again, I’d be putting off a lot of work. These ventures to strange places together had become more frequent and ascended our friendship to a very odd place. Over the last few months, we had transitioned from two guys who hung out once in awhile to combat loneliness, to a pair of pathetic idiots with an addiction to whining at each other. I didn’t know what was happening to us.

I thought about the predicament Brian was in. One of Brian’s clients was being arrested for embezzlement and was trying to throw the blame on him with shark lawyers. His days were becoming more compacted with phone calls and paperwork. He needed his own legal team to block his ex-client from throwing him in jail. The legal fees seemed to be the most anxiety-inducing.