But no time presents itself before I need to meet Rafe for our first training session.

He’s reserved us a studio in the Spring wing, an area I’ve hardly explored. I enter a corridor that has an actual river running through it and soft moss growing on the walls. The river turns into a waterfall as I reach a staircase, which I descend, breathing in the fresh, cool mist. I should really hang out here more often. There are breezy rooms with pools, saunas, exercise equipment, and a lot of scantily clad journeys taking advantage of the amenities.

I find the room where Rafe has instructed me to meet him. He’s lying on a mat on the floor, shirtless, glowing with sweat, clearly having just finished a round of crunches, or perhaps shooting an underwear ad, because I’m pretty sure that’s the only other place in the universe where men look like this.

“Hey, Little Weed,” he greets me, the epithet holding no malice.

There’s a tattoo of a dragon on the left side of his chest. I drag my eyes away from his sculpted torso and very consciously focus on staring at his nose so that my eyes don’t accidentally wander anywhere else.

“Can you put on a shirt?” I reply in a higher pitch than intended.

Look at his nose, Ada.

He grins, gracefully leaps to his feet, and walks to the corner of the room, where he fills a glass from a small waterfall. Now I’m panicking because his nose is gone, and I don’t know where to look.

The room is mostly empty, with many windows and a fresh earth floor covered in rugs. There’s a crop of rocks in the corner where the waterfall flows into a small pool, the stones forming multiple storage cubbies. Across the room, there’s a crack where a root grows through the wall. I focus on that.

“Are you ready to train?” Rafe asks. I’m still aggressively staring at the root, but I see him in my peripheral vision, carelessly toweling off his sweat, his muscles doing all sorts of ripply things.

“About that shirt,” I remind him.

“I’m glad you like what you see,” he responds.

“Also, pants,” I add. His tight shorts provide a little too much information.

He laughs. “Little Weed, you’re gonna have to get used to all this perfection”—he gestures at his exposed figure—“if we’re going to be training together.”

Right. Training. Once I finish contemplating the deep philosophical truth—that I have only just come to understand—about the etymology of the term “washboard abs.”

To my relief, Rafe conjures a shirt from one of the cubbies. Then he stands, hands on hips, and says, “Okay, where should we start?”

I clear my throat. “You tell me.”