Chapter Eight Silas
Chapter Eight
Silas
O ver text, Jo and I make plans to meet on Friday afternoon, once she’s wrapped up a training session with the newest cohort of instructors.
We also strike a deal.
Whenever I want to attend one of her classes, she’ll hold the VIP bike for me if it’s available. For all other instructors, I’m at the mercy of their popularity. The week after my first class, I try to get into one of Mike’s rides to see how one founding instructor stacks up against another, but I’m shit out of luck. Like Jo’s, his classes book up within minutes of their release on the app, but his offerings are different. In addition to the bread-and-butter cycling classes (called Haven Spin), Mike teaches a boot camp class featuring the Haven-branded treadmill (the class aptly titled Haven HIIT) and a weights class (called Haven Lift).
In the little journal that I carry with me everywhere, I make a note to ask Jo why she only teaches spin and nothing else.
Since I’m unable to get into Mike’s classes, I take two more classes with junior instructors on the magazine’s dime. One is held in a studio similar to the one Jo taught in: first floor, low lights, dark walls, with just the instructor and a mostly full room of clients. The other class is held on the second level of the NoHo studio, which is where I’m told they house the streaming studios. In this class, there are fewer bikes, with more room for the three cameras angled toward the podium to always have a clear shot.
Neither instructor holds a candle to Jo. Their classes are fun, but their words feel canned and rehearsed. They lack the emotional connection and charisma with which she inspired all of us to push harder and be fully present in the room. If I was someone who simply wanted a workout, either of those instructors would have sufficed, but I’m not. I want the kind of experience that Jo provides, where my mind has no choice but to be only there, with her.
Admitting this to myself requires me to push aside my inner skeptic, if only for a little while.
At lunchtime on Friday, I’m at my desk, wrapping up the latest installment of my regular monthly column on what’s happening in New York’s cultural scene. I’ve just finished my Reuben sandwich and am wiping the Russian dressing off my face when Colin drops into the empty chair next to mine.
“You’re meeting Jo again today, right?” he asks, by way of greeting.
I’d given him a brief recap of my Saturday experience at Haven and the following talk with Jo during our editorial standup meeting. I knew he wanted to dig deeper and ask more about the project right then, but Colin’s time is precious these days. As our division’s editorial director, there’s always something pressing making demands of him.
“Yep,” I reply. “We’re meeting at a cafe in a couple of hours.”
The nerves I’ve been ignoring all week flutter in my chest again. Every time I think of Jo, my body responds physically—usually by dropping whatever I’m holding and sweating. I chalk it up to intimidation, pure and simple; Jo is a force in person, especially up close.
It has nothing to do with how, when she said she had to “take a break,” my brain automatically began making connections with the comments—and speculation—from Internet strangers on her mysterious absence. Nor is it because of the honey-brown shade of her irises, or the way her whole face lights up when she really, truly smiles.
It’s certainly nothing to do with the deceptive way I met her; my own personal red flag is tucked away in a quiet corner of my brain, neatly folded and out of sight.
“What’s the angle you’re working? Still despise her and everything she represents?” Colin asks.
Glancing at my computer screen, I see the tab holding my initial rough draft. I can’t bring myself to close it, not when I’m still uncertain of how the story will unfold. “I’m not sure. The class itself was fun, for the most part. We haven’t really dug into the meat and potatoes of anything yet. I get the feeling she’s hiding something.”
“What do you mean?” he asks. “Something bad?”
“I don’t know.”
This is what’s been bothering me since our conversation at the diner. Knowing that she’s not the person behind her own social media accounts certainly changes things; if nothing else, it explains the lack of personality outside of a strong emoji game. What it doesn’t tell me is why she’s not interacting with her clients—or should I say fans?—outside of the studio. “All I know is that there’s a story there. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
I think of her at the diner, hair still damp from class, her dark eyes thoughtful as she said, “There was… a situation.”
The question I keep asking myself is: What does “situation” mean?
“Well, you know you have my support no matter what you decide, so long as it doesn’t end in a lawsuit,” Colin says with a smirk. He adjusts the black-rimmed glasses perched on his long nose. “Though Mia wanted me to tell you that if you sully Jo’s good name, she will murder you.”
“Noted, thanks,” I mumble as I spin my chair around to face my desk again. Just as Colin stands up to leave, a question strikes me. “Colin, you ride in Jo’s streaming classes on your Haven Home bike, right? What is it about her that makes you go back to her class again and again?”
Colin takes a deep breath and fixes me with a pointed stare. “One part is convenience,” he explains. “Having the bike at home makes it easy for me to exercise when I’m so adept at coming up with reasons not to exercise. But with Jo’s class… I don’t know, exactly. She has that je ne sais quoi.”
“Is this why people act like she invented hair?” I ask. Colin shakes his head and laughs, but in a pained kind of way, as if it’s against his better judgment. “Seriously, can you humor me here? Try to explain?”
“Fine,” Colin replies, folding his arms across his chest. “I can’t speak to the hair thing, but I know her music is good. Great, even. I think it boils down to the fact that I believe her. She never gets too preach-y or too cheerleader-y. She just asks me to show up and give it all I’ve got. I can tell that she’s working her ass off with me. I guess I trust her.”
Heaving a sigh, I slump further into my chair and wave Colin off. My pulse picks up as irritability sweeps through me; I know exactly what Colin meant, and there’s a small, grumpy part of me that hates that. At the same time, though, I hold fast to my original sentiment: that the fitness industry is predicated on people’s insecurities and fears, and that people like Jo who embody it have no business telling others what to do with their lives.
Still, I can’t deny the fact that I had fun in Jo’s class, that her words resonated with me. I also know that the Jo presented to the world isn’t the same Jo who moves through it. She’s a byproduct of professional branding, but somehow, I still believed what she said.
So who is the woman on the podium and on the screen?
Snapping my computer shut, I slide it into my backpack, determined to find out.
A couple of hours later, I stroll into the coffee shop I picked out, a few minutes ahead of our scheduled meeting time. My eyes sweep the quaint sitting area, glossing over the hardwood floors and white walls filled with hundreds of framed photos and dried flowers. Big, leafy plants are tucked away in every corner and on every available shelf space, giving the whole room a very English Garden Shoved Inside feel.
My gaze snags on a curtain of dark hair seated at a table in the corner. She’s curled into herself, so I can’t see her face, but I don’t need to—I know that’s Jo. My heart skips a beat and my palms start sweating as soon as I head in her direction. I have to remind myself to breathe as I approach her.
When I set my backpack in the empty chair across from her, she looks up. Her face is flushed, her deep brown eyes wide and open as she looks up at me. She looks uncharacteristically small, with her legs crossed tightly and her spine curled toward the table.
“Hey,” she says, a little breathless.
I force myself not to look at the gray tank top slipping down her shoulder, exposing the blue strap of a sports bra that matches the shade of spandex covering her legs. “Hey.”
An uneasy silence settles between us while the quiet sounds of the coffee shop rattle around in the background. There’s a tension now that was absent last time, but it’s different from our disagreement during the walk to the diner—this feels less like mutual animosity and more like Jo really doesn’t want to be here.
Hoping to butter her up, I ask, “Can I get you something to drink?”
She chews on her full bottom lip—god, why am I looking at her lips?—as she contemplates her answer. “I’d like an iced Americano. Decaf, please.”
“Coming right up.”
When I return with our drinks a few minutes later, I know that I need to help Jo break out of her shell. Years spent interviewing all different personalities have taught me a few tricks when dealing with reluctant people.
This is exactly why I bought two of those sinful looking pastries along with our drinks.
“I took the liberty of buying a couple of these cream cheese and blueberry monstrosities,” I say as I struggle to set the desserts and two coffees down on the table. “I find sugar to be one of the most effective ways to get people in the mood to talk.”
A small smile works its way across her face, lighting her up from within. Seeing her relax a little sends a surge of dopamine through me. “Thank you,” she says, before slicing off a small bite with her fork. When her lips wrap around the tines and the confection hits her tongue, her eyes roll back into her head and flutter close.
I drop into my chair and ignore how incredibly satisfied I feel seeing her look like that.
I cut off a bite of my own pastry before I start unloading my interviewing essentials: a small recorder, my handy notebook, and my usual black Pilot G2 pen. Jo’s expression changes from sugar-induced bliss to wary as she eyes the voice recorder between us.
“I figure we can start casual today,” I say. “We’ll cover some surface stuff, see where the conversation takes us.”
She takes a sip of her coffee and nods.
“You’ll have to use your words once I turn this on,” I add with a smile. The joke doesn’t land; she nods again as one of her hands winds its way through the ends of her hair.
With a push of a button, a small green light turns on. I rattle off the date before saying, “I’m sitting with Johanna De La Cruz at the Savill Cafe in New York City.”
I flip open my notebook and grab the pen, glancing at the prompts I’ve scribbled for myself on the page. With the context for the recording set, I shift gears. “So, Jo, you mentioned you were training new instructors today, right? What does that entail?”
Jo’s fingers twirl ribbons of hair and tug. She resumes biting her bottom lip. There’s no music playing in this coffee shop—one of the reasons I suggested it—so only the soft murmurings of other guests and the clattering of the espresso machine fill the space between us. But for every moment that passes, I become more unsure. Jo is not handling my first question well, one that I assumed was conversational. Easy, almost.
“Do you like training people?” I ask, hoping a simple yes or no question will start building a bridge between us.
She gives me a simple, quiet, “Yeah.”
I can’t tell if she’s giving me nothing because she thinks my questions are stupid or if it’s something else. I try to wait out the silence—a trick I learned in my early days as a beat reporter—but she remains silent. She’s even avoiding looking at me; there’s no way the back side of the espresso machine could be that interesting. It almost feels like she doesn’t want to do this.
“Care to elaborate?” I try.
Somehow, she becomes smaller, curling into herself so tightly she resembles a ball. She pulls her knees up to her chest and hugs them close with one hand, while the other continues winding its way through her hair. Her bottom lip has disappeared into her mouth entirely.
Now I’m certain she doesn’t want to go on record. Between her physical reaction now and her trepidation back at the diner, it’s clear that something is keeping her from opening up. Panic zips up my spine as reality settles in. I thought I’d scored the golden ticket when she’d been the one to suggest this whole thing, but now I’m going to have to convince her. Not just nudge her, like I did over breakfast last week.
This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself a situation like this either. Early in my career, I interviewed survivors of a flood that devastated a neighborhood in Long Island; so many of them struggled to articulate what they were going through. This reluctance to go on record isn’t just a general skepticism of me and my opinions—there’s some underlying trauma beneath that colorful spandex. Something that I didn’t expect.
I reach for the recorder, shut it off, and stow it away in my backpack, along with the notebook and pen. As soon as they’re gone from the table, she releases one leg, then the other, and sighs.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“No need to apologize.” I keep my voice light and nonchalant. This takes some effort, considering the myriad of emotions working through me. It’s impossible to untangle them while staring into the honey-brown depths of her irises.
“Do you remember how I told you I was an anxious kid?” she asks. “Well, that kid turned into an anxious adult.”
Before I realize what I’m doing, I reach for the hand she’s placed on the table, but she moves before I reach her. I’m forced to grab my drink to save face. “You don’t have to explain yourself. I dug in too quickly.”
Her eyes dart to where my hand clutches my cup before meeting my gaze again. “I thought the point of the interview was to explain myself?” she asks wryly.
“We’re off the record now,” I say with a shrug.
Her eyes hold mine, soft like they were the morning at the diner. Suddenly the full force of her attention, coupled with the knowledge that this story is not going where I thought it would, becomes too much. Familiar pressure rises in my chest, hot and fast. I force a deep breath, but it does little to relieve the tension bubbling up inside me.
“Are you… okay?” I ask as I search her face for any clues that I took this too far.
Jo leans forward and asks, “Could we take a walk? Movement helps me when I feel like this.”
The force in my chest transforms into something heavy, something dense as it sinks into my stomach. This feeling of guilt tangles up in the metaphorical red flag I’ve been trying to ignore since first meeting her. It’s a warning from me to me not to take advantage of this situation any more than I already have. To let her go, let her work through it on her own, and come to me when she’s ready.
Instead, I say, “Yeah. I’d like that.”
After all, I have a job to do.