28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I trained for this moment like I was fucking Rocky. I jogged on trails. Or jogged, then briskly walked. Or briskly walked, then sauntered. I attempted unmodified push-ups until I had to accept I needed to do the modified push-up. I performed full sit-ups until I gave up and settled on crunches. I was going to attend one of Beau’s classes and make it my bitch.
I rode the rapid transit all the way into San Francisco. The most difficult leg of my journey was dealing with the front desk person again. Who knew I’d have to go through the whole rigamarole just because I canceled my membership? I forked over my credit card. Dammit, take my money EverGreen & Fit Studios.
“It looks like you’re signed up for our Advanced Cycle Boot Camp class. We want to make sure our clients are prepared for the level of difficulty this class provides.”
“Does Beau Bishop teach this class?”
“Yes.”
“Then it will be right up my alley.”
I showed up fifteen minutes early inside the studio, a room so oppressively dark green from floor to ceiling, I thought I had stepped inside a photo development lab. Bikes and mats had been positioned on three sides of a slightly raised platform in front of a wall-sized mirror. On top of the platform was a lone bike and mat. That was the instructor’s area, where Beau would be. I selected my bike, front and center, and double-checked I had all my equipment: kettlebell, full water bottle, hand towel. I adjusted my bike the way Beau had taught me. I clipped in and did a few jogs and climbs on the bike. Whatever Beau Bishop threw at me, I was going to throw right back.
More people arrived in the gym, laying out their workout area next to the bike. They looked like triathletes, tall, sinewy people who did outrageous things like swim across bodies of water or hike multiple days in the mountains.
Maybe I could wait for Beau outside of class. I started to unclip from the bike.
The lights dimmed. I was in the dark. A spotlight beamed toward the stage. Beau emerged from the depths of the darkened room. He wasn’t the cycle daddy character we came up with. He was just normal ole Beau.
“Hello, my current Evergreen family and those new to my cycle crew. Welcome to advanced boot camp. If you’re new, bootcamp will baptize you by fire, but don’t you worry, I have an amazing plan for you. We’ll combine some tough climbs and intervals on the bike with some fast-paced strength training to raise your heart rate and spirits and push you to your physical limits. If you’re ready to become a Beau Bishop Baddie, can you make some noise?”
I wooed as loudly as a woman who was about three goblets into a bottle of rosé. Beau squinted. One part near sightedness, the other part staring directly at a spotlight. Did he recognize me by a woo ?
The warm-up, jog, and climb were painless and set to some forgettable, radio-friendly electronic dance music. Those intervals were my bitch. We unclipped from our bikes and changed shoes for strength training. The lights came up as we switched shoes. I was tying my red skater shoes on my foot when Beau made eye contact with me. At first, he looked like he had just smelled shit, a valid reaction to me. Then his expression melted into a tiny smile. I returned the expression.
The full body workouts were going fine. Nothing but squats into overhead pulls and deadlifts into rows. I had a healthy sweat going on. Maybe all the hard work I completed over the last few months made me the equivalent of these triathletes.
Beau signaled for us to switch our shoes back. Once we did, we clipped back into the bikes, and Beau said the evilest thing I had ever heard. “Resistance at fifty with an RPM of ninety.” Not impossible but the feeling of marching in taffy. Surely those numbers were a mistake. Then he announced it again, as if he knew I was on the verge of asking. Yes. Evil. At least he set it to some good, late-period Weezer.
I focused on my breath, trying to keep myself from panting like a tired dog already. Through the nose, I reminded myself. Beau riffed about the song’s “memorable music video,” which consisted of icons “from the old internet days like Cara Cunningham, Kelly, and the Numa Numa guy.”
“Some of you folks out there know what I’m talking about.”
“You bet,” a proud elder millennial shouted across the room.
I’d join him in enthusiasm if I wasn’t trying to figure out how to breathe and move my legs at such a wicked level of resistance. Beau finally announced a flat road to the song “Steal my Sunshine.” Easy. Then a minor key electronic song by the Prodigy kicked in. We were doing cycle sprints of 120 RPM with a resistance of forty. My heart was going to puke itself out of my chest.
Finally, we were back on the mat, changing into our normal shoes again. But the evil kept evilling. Front lunge, back lunge, right side lunge, left side lunge, repeat. By the time I was finished with one round, Beau and the triathletes had lapped me by four repetitions. I was so fucked.
I worked my muscles beyond pain. I didn’t even know if I was doing the movements correctly. Something else possessed me, and my body had become Jell-O.
Beau shot me a concerned look. “Feel free to reduce your reps. We all have days where six feels better than ten. And of course, there is no shame in doing the modification. Better to have correct form than to stress out your body.”
I was in a whirlwind of exercise. Kettlebell swings turning into squats, burpees combining shoulder lifts. At this point, sweat practically had me shrink-wrapped in my T-shirt.
By the end of the class, I went from gym grunter to gym wailer. I never knew there were levels of annoying sounds one could involuntarily make at the gym. I wasn’t doing the last batch of a trillion-billion burpees. My body was doing something else. Sir Hooper had left my body, and her existence was merging with all of life’s molecules at the pearly gates of Nirvana.
The lights came on. I did it. I made it through boot camp. I high-fived the beautiful people around me. Not sure if I was still wailing while I did. Now I needed to talk to Beau and tell him I loved him and that I made a mistake, but but but…
First, I needed to go puke.
I burst through the doors of the swanky all-gender bathroom. I ralphed the ralph of a thousand exorcisms. What was supposed to be my grand gesture ended in vomit and using the rim of a toilet seat as an unfortunate headrest.
I heard a gentle rapping at the door. “Sir?”
“Come in.” My invitation came out as a groan .
Beau sidled inside and crouched down next to me. “Do you need anything?”
“Probably, like, five Gatorades.” Hold on, I wasn’t done puking my guts out. “This was supposed to be my grand gesture. Proof I’m not a quitter. That if I want something badly enough, I’ll do anything for it.”
“It’s just a digital badge, Sir. It’s no big deal.”
“No, I wanted to show you that I love you through…” I gestured across the tiny, tiny expanse of the bathroom cubicle.
“You love me?”
“Of course I do. I was just too chicken shit to admit it.” Retch! “The last time I loved something this much, I lost it. And I’m going to give separating love from grief a good college try in therapy.” Retch! “This is a new start for me, and I want you to be a part of it, Beau. That is if you’ll have me.” Retch!
“This might be the most romantic thing someone has ever done for me.”
I waved a weak hand holding a puke-blotted tissue. “Get used to it, bub. I want to kiss you, but… I keep barfing.” I tucked my arms underneath my chin and considered taking a nap on the bathroom floor.
“I’ll kiss you on the forehead.”
And he did.
Beau helped scoop me off the floor and assisted me as we moved to the employee break room. I admired EverGreen & Fit’s commitment to green. The tables were a mint green whereas the plastic chairs were a deep evergreen. The rest of the break room was accented with pine wood and frosted glass, a chimera of modern design. Sitting down, I chugged a bottle of a sports drink as if my life depended on it.
When I finally had enough electrolytes to stop feeling like a used gym sock, Beau told me how his audition went. At first, he wanted to turn around and head back home. They had auditioned a score of fit men with brown hair and brown eyes. His themed class that we came up with gave him the edge he needed to stand out among a crowd of doppelg?ngers.
I recounted my struggle to cheat on him with another obnoxious, color-centric gym. “The whole time I was thinking about what you would do and say in the situation. It made me realize how amazing you are.” He held my hand across the table and smoothed his thumb over the top of it. I had missed these moments of affection when we were apart. “Does this make you my boyfriend?”
“I’ll be your boyfriend if you’ll be my girlfriend.”
“Deal.”
After the trial period, Beau appeared on the app. Occasionally, I would go to his parents’ house to watch clips of his workouts.We gathered in the living room to watch someone workout on the television while we sat eating popcorn. His popularity on the app skyrocketed when some clips of his rides went viral on social media. In the clips, he wore a smaller, non-prescription version of his horned-rimmed glasses. He perched them on his nose, claimed he was taking riders to the library, and he would tastefully describe some smut we had read together. People liked Beau’s book recommendations. He said producers are toying with releasing his “Dom Next Door” cycling series February next year.
Online, my cartoons spoke to millennials in existential crisis who swarmed to my page to see the next upload. My biggest boost came when Preeti re-shared my cartoon to her wider audience, describing my art as “for those who’ve struggled with adulthood and grown up reading Calvin and Hobbes .” My page’s visit count increased exponentially, and I was able to monetize and blue check mark that shit. I even made a bit of cash selling merch with a cartoon version of me and Randy, my partner-in-crime baby. It was as if my ItsyBizzy store hadn't been a complete failure.
With my money from selling Chris and Claire my portion of the home, I had a down payment to buy a shop front and an apartment above it in San Francisco. Not the easiest market to get a foothold in, but a startup that dwindled when everyone started to work at home was happy to get an empty property off their hands. My ex-husband was no longer my landlord.
I contacted Perry to see if he’d actually be interested in investing in my business, print shop by day, art studio by night. Moving from the shining ‘burbs to the city while inflation was high and the tech bros fled to unregulated states actually saved money. So, he took me up on the offer. We bought equipment off Tina—I made sure to get the paper cutter sharpened. I had a little at-home business and took a lot of customer orders online. For those who threatened to take their business to a store online, I had become both. Shake ye in despair, competitors!
With Beau’s hectic schedule, I offered my apartment as a way to reduce his commute, which he took. Of course, we had to re-christen every room with sex.
So Carol and Les didn’t feel left out of our lives, we reported for chore duties every other weekend. When Beau showed me the framed cocktail napkin his mother had shared with me earlier, I pretended it was the first time seeing it in a frame.
He mounted it on the wall of our living room when we stopped bullshitting each other, and he moved in.