Chapter Thirteen Jo
Chapter Thirteen
Jo
I taught six studio-only classes the last week. In each one, I opened up a little more, diverging from my usual cadence of modestly-emotional-to-inspire-athleticism, and to my surprise, my words found purchase with my clients. The post-class conversations stretched on for longer. People wanted to tell me how much the class resonated with them, and I was content to listen.
Journaling certainly helped. Every night—and sometimes again in the morning—I scribbled my thoughts and feelings onto the page. Reading my owns words helped me to figure out what to share with my classes without giving away too much of myself.
It’s been a delicate balance to strike, but the results have been worth it.
Silas makes it into my journal more than I care to admit. Running into him at the studio had an unexpected effect on me. Seeing him at the bottom of the stairs, looking just as surprised as I’d felt, made my heart trip over itself. Normally I hate surprises, but I can’t deny that riding next to him in Mike’s class felt… good . Being spontaneous left me no time to overthink anything. Once I saw the open spot next to Silas, I’d simply booked the bike for myself, with no negative thoughts, no second guessing, no determination to prove him wrong.
I did it because I wanted to. Almost like Silas and I were friends.
Despite that slight energy shift between us, I expected to be more nervous, sitting here in this familiar nostalgic diner as I wait for him. But I’m levelheaded today. Excited, even.
Silas is a journalist. I am a subject.
I remind myself of this repeatedly to temper my expectations.
I take a sip of water from the glass in front of me, choosing to ignore the carafe of fresh coffee. Caffeine is a major trigger, both for my anxiety and the physical stress I put on my body with the work I do. All I seem to tolerate is a single cup of matcha tea in the morning.
No need to ratchet up my heart rate when my baseline is already miles above everyone else’s.
I look to the door when a bell chimes from the front of the restaurant. Even against the glare of the sunlight, I can tell the man coming inside is Silas by his build: broad shoulders in a fitted black T-shirt, jeans that hang low on his hips, backpack slung over his shoulder, all topped off by unruly brown hair. He speaks to the hostess for a few minutes before making his way over to my corner.
“I see they gave you my VIP booth,” he says once he reaches the table.
I don’t know what comes over me, but I stand up to hug him. Surprise flashes across his face but he’s quick to hide it, wrapping his arms around me with a force I wasn’t expecting. It’s the final squeeze at the end that smooths over the anxious knot that formed the moment I second-guessed the hug.
By the time we take our seats opposite each other, his face is flushed. I don’t need a mirror to know that mine is too. He busies himself by prepping a cup of coffee, and I start to notice things that I never did before: the way the tendons and muscles in his forearms flex and stretch with the movements, the way he shakes his head to free his eyes from the curls that drop low enough to kiss his eyelashes.
“Were you waiting long?”
Jolted out of my reverie, I stop myself from jumping. “Not really. But one thing you should know about me is that I am always, always early, so don’t feel bad about getting here on time. It’s a classic symptom of perpetually anxious people.”
His eyes meet mine. “I wouldn’t call it a symptom. That implies there’s a negative connotation to simply being better prepared than most of us.”
“It isn’t a negative until you arrive thirty minutes early to a party, and then have to circle the block three times so you don’t embarrass yourself by being the first person to show up,” I reply with a shrug. “Not that I’ve been there before.” I smirk.
The waitress drops by our table with a pen and notepad in hand. Silas motions to the menus on the table to ask if I want anything, but I shake my head.
“We’re fine for now. Thanks, Linda,” he says. Once she disappears back into the kitchen, he returns his attention to me. “Are you sure you aren’t hungry? I thought you taught three classes this morning. The magazine will gladly pay for you to eat as much as you want.”
“I’d rather get this over with and reward myself with something after.”
“Fair enough,” he replies and gets to work on unloading the interviewing supplies from his backpack. Once the recording device, notebook, and pen are spread out in front of him, he looks to me with sincerity in his eyes. “We can stop whenever you’ve had enough. Ready?”
I start to nod but catch myself. “I’m ready.”
Silas flicks the device on and rattles off the date and time. His gaze never leaves mine, not even when he grips his pen above the note page. “I thought about going back to the beginning, but I think it might be better if we pick up at the present. Tell me what a typical week looks like for you.”
I can guess why he’s doing this: he’s warming me up with casual conversation. This is the kind of question that I can answer without bracing myself. The information is already available to the public via the Haven app or the home bike.
So I settle into the vinyl booth and start talking. “Typically, I teach twelve classes a week. A combination of studio only and streaming rides. Fridays are the only days I don’t teach, but we usually hold workshops on those days. We do continuing education throughout the week too. I lead a lot of the new instructor training when we have a fresh cohort.”
“So, that’s roughly twelve hours of exercise a week?” he asks. “All spin classes?”
“Yep, all spin. I do my own strength training outside of what I teach. Sometimes I’ll do a yoga class when I have time.”
His eyes widen. “Really? Why?”
“Because after doing this for ten years, I’ve found that balance to be really important. High-intensity cardio has a lot of benefits, but I have to keep up the strength in my muscles to perform at the level needed for my job. There’s always a risk of overuse injuries when doing what I do at Haven. Lifting weights helps prevent that, as do things like stretching and foam rolling.”
“Overuse injuries?”
I shrug. “Tendonitis, muscle strains, things like that. This job can be hard on the body.”
“What are some of the other challenges you face that people might not know about?”
“Physically?” I ask. When he nods, I continue. “Well, I’m perpetually dehydrated. For every class that I teach, I have to practice what the moves and combos will feel like at home first, especially when I’m teaching to new music. So even though I’m only in front of clients twelve hours a week, I probably spend another three hours prepping the routines, plus another two to three hours lifting. For streaming classes, the prep is even longer. I sweat like a pig when I exercise, so factor in all that, and I’m constantly behind the eight ball.”
Silas stifles a laugh as he scribbles something in his notebook.
“Every now and then I’ll overexercise to the point that I can’t sleep. Cardio elevates your cortisol levels, and cortisol is basically the stress hormone. Even when my body is totally exhausted and I’m wiped from teaching, I’ll lie in bed for hours, waiting for sleep to come.”
He takes a sip of his coffee and frowns. “Why do you put yourself through all of that?”
It feels like I’m standing at the edge of the cliff again: there’s a part of me that is scared and a part of me that wants to tell him the truth—that I used to love this job enough that it was all worth it. The high of teaching a great class to a group of clients—whether seventy or thousands—used to be enough to sustain me, even when I was so depleted and dehydrated that I felt drunk. Now, I only find glimmers of that old feeling.
I glance at the little recording device situated between us as I say, “Every job has its drawbacks.”
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
Something like confusion flits across Silas’s face. He writes in his notebook, glances at whatever he’d written before, and then finds my gaze again. “What are some of the best parts about this job?”
Warmth fills me as a smile stretches across my face. This was a question I anticipated, so the answer is ready in the front of my mind. “The people. Haven clients are… they’re the fucking best. They’re so dedicated. I’ve met so many amazing people through my classes. And the thousands that ride with me that I’ve never met? Well, I’m assuming they’re pretty great too.”
“Can you expand on that further?” He taps the end of his pen to his chin.
“Sure,” I reply. “Well, you’ve been to my classes and so you’ve probably seen how people sometimes stop me to talk to me before or after class. That’s the best part. The human connection. People will tell me things that I don’t think they would normally tell strangers. Because that’s what we are, right? We’re all basically strangers just trying to do something good for ourselves by exercising. But there’s a shared experience there that brings out something in people. They can get really vulnerable with me sometimes and…”
My words fall short. To speak about this publicly—how much I admire my clients for being so brave with me, for trusting me with things that scare them—opens up a door I’ve kept closed for a long time. None of my clients know the real Jo. They don’t know the anxious mess that festers in my head when I’m not on the bike. They don’t know about the boundaries I had to set after months of therapy.
They don’t know that I’m doing this interview to rectify that. That I’m working so hard to be more vulnerable with them. To prove to myself, and to them, that I’m not an imposter. A fake.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
“That means something to you?” Silas offers in lieu of my completed thought.
“It means everything to me,” I manage to say.
“For what it’s worth, I think Haven clients know you care.” His voice has a soft timbre. “I mean, I felt the energy shift in the room when you walked into Mike’s class—that’s the kind of thing you can’t fake. People were genuinely excited to see you.”
“Really?” His comment surprises me so much that, for a moment, I forget the recording device sitting between us. “I’m trying to be more open in my classes. I feel like people are listening, but… you never know, I guess.”
My words come out so hopeful, so vulnerable, but I can’t bring myself to panic, especially when he says, “Yeah, really. I’ve been doing this journalism thing for a long time, Jo. I’m pretty good at reading the room.”
The unexpected compliment settles over me with a pleasant warmth. Silence falls between us, as thick and heavy as the smell of bacon hanging in the air of the diner. Silas drops his gaze to his notebook and clears his throat. If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess he is having some sort of internal battle with himself.
I know I am.
I want to tell him the truth on the record. I want to be candid about my struggle with anxiety and depression. I want my clients to know that it’s not me on social media. I want them to know I had to hold back to save my own sanity.
But I don’t trust Silas enough to tell him that. Not yet.
With this boundary firmly in place, my anxiety stays manageable. The rapid pace of my pulse and the quickness of my breathing can be attributed to both nerves and excitement for having gotten this far while the green recording light stayed on.
“Let’s switch gears a little, then,” he says finally, the professional edge to his voice back in place. “The story of how Z found and recruited you has been widely reported, but what made you want to be a fitness instructor to begin with?”
Silas is giving me another breadcrumb here. He knows the gist of this story; I already told him when we were sitting in another booth in this same diner. I look down at the blinking light of the recording device and share it again, adding a few more details as I go: the aerobics videos with my mom, my time at UT Austin where I studied kinesiology on a sports scholarship for soccer, and how hard I hustled teaching cardio dance classes when I landed in New York.
This time, however, I omit a few key pieces, chief among them my anxious brain and how hard it was to be a little brown girl in central Texas growing up with parents who didn’t understand how to raise someone like me. Those pieces of my life still feel too personal, too raw to share on the record.
Eventually, we arrive at Haven’s origin story, which I describe using Mike’s word: magic. “And then came the home bike,” Silas says, as we head into uncharted territory.
“And then came the home bike,” I echo. And with it, the beginning of my mental breakdown. I’ve been trying to patch myself together ever since.
“The Haven Home bike was the first exercise bike with a streaming tablet attached,” he says. “The response to the product was pretty remarkable. At one point, I think Haven had a wait-list for the home bike that was six months long. What was that like for you?”
This is another question I expected, so I have a plan to reroute the conversation away from the hardest time in my life. Another angle that I can share without causing me to fall into a mental spiral.
In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four.
“What people don’t know is how much prep went into that bike,” I start. “It took three years of development before the announcement even went public. This was Z’s master plan all along. She’s an entrepreneur at heart and saw an opportunity to disrupt an industry that required people to travel to a physical space in order to take a spin class. She wanted to close that gap and give Haven clients the opportunity to take top-tier fitness classes from the comfort of their own home.”
“Disrupt the industry,” Silas repeats, a smirk working across his face. “That sounds very Silicon Valley.”
“It is, more or less. The engineers who built the bike and the tablet came from some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Former Google and Amazon types of people. What Mike and I—plus a few of the other New York instructors—were responsible for was recording dozens and dozens of ready-made classes. There was a lot of failure involved. For every class that was available when Haven Home finally launched, there were at least three others that I totally fucked up. All on top of teaching in-person classes at NoHo as usual.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“You have no idea.”
Silas scribbles furiously in his notebook for a long beat. “Was it the same process for the Haven Treadmill? That came out just a couple of years ago, right?”
I nod. “By then, we had enough instructors on staff that were better qualified to teach the HIIT and Tread classes. I stuck to the bike.”
“It’s like lightning struck twice between the original studios and Haven Home launches,” he muses as he taps his pen to his chin.
I frown before replying, “I don’t really think that’s fair. There were hundreds—if not thousands—of people working their asses off to make both of those ventures a success.”
He angles his head to the side as he looks at me. “Valid point,” he replies lightly.
Silas, ever the skilled journalist, takes the conversation in a new direction. He sticks to an easy series of questions that I’m able to answer without tumbling into a panic attack. He avoids anything too deeply personal, opting to navigate me through my career at Haven. I share funny behind-the-scenes stories, including the time that Mike lost a bet to me and I got to pick a theme for him to teach, costume and all.
That was how Mike’s most popular livestream class became the Britney Spears ride—complete with Mike in a blond pigtail wig and a schoolgirl costume.
There are also evasive stories about celebrities who have ridden in my classes—“ghosts,” as they’re known among Haven staff. I don’t name names, but I do share how strange it is to look at a sea of faces and see a movie star or first lady staring back at you. We talk about my personal on-camera blunders, including the time I meant to tell a streaming class to “feel your heart beating in your chest” but what came out was “feel your chest.” He can’t hold back a laugh when I confess that I had to fake a cough to stifle my own giggle when twenty-some people actually put their hands on their pecs.
The longer we talk, the closer we get—physically. He leans farther over the table with each story; I mirror his actions, my hands pressed on the cool laminate, intent on hearing every inflection in his questions. It’s so gradual, almost like a shared gravitational pull, that I don’t notice it happening.
At least, not until my left pinky finger brushes against his, and we both jerk away from each other.
I can feel my face heating as I avert my gaze to the abandoned menus on the side of the table. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Silas bend his neck to flip through his notebook, his ears decidedly pink. Neither of us says anything for a long time.
For my part, I’m surprised that I felt so comfortable that I let him into my personal space without realizing it. As I stare at the menus, not really seeing them, I realize it’s because some part of me does trust him just a little. He was right; I needed the freedom to get to know him, to see him without the pen and paper, and start envisioning him as a whole person.
He’s no longer a threat or a challenge. Instead, he’s becoming a friend.
A friend who just happens to be attractive.
Wait… what?
“Jo?” he asks.
I blink quickly and swallow hard. I know that he just finished speaking, but I have no idea what he said. “I’m sorry. I was distracted. What did you say?”
He smiles, those two damned dimples appearing in his cheeks, and my heart throws itself against my sternum. His blue eyes seem to sparkle when he says, “I was just telling you that I think I have enough for today. I want to organize my notes and come up with some follow-up questions. Does next week work for you?”
After mumbling some inarticulate series of words instead of a simple “yes,” I down the rest of my water. My mouth feels like it’s filled with sandpaper. I fiddle with my empty cup while Silas packs up his things. When he’s done, he throws a few twenty-dollar bills on the table.
I raise my eyebrows.
“For holding the table for two hours,” he says. “Tonight, and for the last few years.”
Then he hits me with a playful wink that I find so stupidly cute my face flushes again. When we both scoot out of the booth and he follows me out of the diner, I’m aware of every nerve ending in my body. My up-tempo heartbeat has nothing to do with anxiety for once. For the first time in years, I’m nervous because of a man. In a good way.
The air outside is thick with moisture. It’s the kind of humidity that defies all blowouts and lightweight fabric. When Silas pulls me in for a goodbye hug, I breathe in his scent—a simple yet undeniably attractive combination of soap and something woodsy. Pine, or maybe cedar.
We make tentative plans to meet on Friday and then go our separate ways. Somehow, I manage to hang on his every word while feeling completely disassociated. Shock will do that to you, I guess.
At least I have the walk home to come to terms with the fact that I’m attracted to Silas.