Roxanne doesn’t like distractions when she works out. No clothes. Dim lights. She’s painted the room gray-blue. A soft charcoal carpet. Music yes but low-key techno interspersed with childhood favorites, Jewel’s ‘Yes U Can,’ for example, and the soft jazz tunes her father favored. Brubeck. And the sounds of the sea and shore birds and crackling storms. After loosening up with some stretches, she does weights. 80 pounds on the barbell, twenty reps, five sets.

Then the treadmill. Six miles, each mile faster, from eights to sixes.

A five minute cooldown walk. Then the barbell again. Squats. Presses. Lifts. Until the tape runs out.

Not quite two hours total.

She finishes her last water bottle, discards her sweat-drenched towel, and exits the workout room. Her bedroom is a dozen slow steps down the hall. She dives onto the bed and rolls to her back. “Play it,” she calls to the Google Nest. The music is old. The slow movement from a Beethoven string quartet. “The Nymph’s Lament” by Monteverdi. A Sarabande by Debussy. She touches herself lightly at first. Fingertip circling the puffy nipples, the engorged clitoris. Her touch firms and becomes faster as her arousal grows. She tries to avoid orgasm until the climax of the Debussy, but sometimes she comes midway through the Monteverdi.

With orgasm comes sleep. However much she needs.

No later than noon she’s up and ready for work. Almost certainly Rafe and Celia will want a fuck.