"No girl is training me!"
Frederick "Freddie" Dukes stomped around the gym like a spoiled child. A large, spoiled child. His agent, Edward, had just told him that he had hired a woman named Michelle Wright to train him and get him back into shape. While the fact that Freddie needed to lose a great amount of weight before the big fight was obvious, he was not too thrilled with the idea of a woman training him.
"Listen Freddie, I went through hell to get you into this fight. No one is exactly willing to take on a 620-pound man, and I had to get on my hands and knees to convince these people. If you don't take place in this fight, then your career is gone."
"I'll fight. I just won't have a woman train me."
Edward ran his hand down his face and smoothed back his gray hair. "She is one of the best."
"I was much happier with Wraith." Freddie murmured.
"Well, Wraith isn't here, is he?"
There was a moment of silence. Edward knew that he had struck a nerve with Freddie. John Wraith was Freddie's former trainer and seemed to be his only friend. He was killed in New Orleans eight months ago and Edward didn't think he would ever find a trainer for Freddie, until he met Michelle
"You miss John. Everyone here misses him. He's gone and that's the end of it. Now, either you train with Miss Wright, or I'm letting you go."
Freddie stopped his stomping around and faced Edward. "You're threatening me?"
"No. I'm giving you a choice. Your pride or your career."
Freddie gave a deep sigh. "I have one condition."
"Which is?"
"She stays out of the ring. I'm not hurting a girl."
Edward and Freddie shook hands to seal the deal. The next morning, Freddie had to wake up early because Edward said that Michelle always liked to train right after dawn. When Freddie arrived at the gym, the first thing he saw was a young woman wearing an exercise outfit and doing chin-ups. When she finally noticed Freddie, she got to her feet quickly.
"Hi, you must be Frederick." The woman smiled and extended her hand to Freddie.
"Freddie. I like being called Freddie."
"Well, I think I can handle that. I'm Michelle Wright, your new trainer."
"Nice to meet you."
"Well, you are certainly more polite than Edward said. He told me that you can be the meanest person alive when you don't get enough sleep."
Freddie blushed. It was something he often did nowadays around girls. His self-esteem was not precisely the highest at the moment and the fact that his agent was speaking to a girl about him was very embarrassing.
"What else did he say?" Freddie asked.
Michelle shrugged. "Only that your big fight is in a couple of months. Which means, we had better get started."
Michelle dried the sweat from her body with a towel and tied her blonde hair into a bun. Freddie realized it must have been long time since he was around an attractive girl, because something in his pants was becoming nice and hard.