Fitness Junkie by Lucy Sykes
For all those fierce and fabulous fit bitches—you inspire us personally and professionally every single day.
Dedicated to Euan Rellie, the fittest husband—and Dad—I know. You inspire me to be the most Fit Person I can.
—LUCY SYKES
Nick Aster. Maybe we’ll work out more next year.
—JO PIAZZA
“I’d rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a can.”
—GWYNETH PALTROW
“Food is an important part of a balanced diet.”
—FRAN LEBOWITZ
CHAPTER ONE
“I can’t believe you ordered that.”
Beau Von B. narrowed his brown eyes at Janey Sweet’s French toast. He reached under the table and into his leather satchel to pull out a small metal plate.
“What’s that?” she asked, taking the opportunity to pop a perfect square of buttery French toast smothered in raspberries and powdered sugar between her glossy lips.
“It’s a scale,” Beau said shortly, as though the fact were self-evident. He placed the device flat on the tabletop and laid a single strip of turkey bacon across the mirrored surface. Beau’s eyebrows lifted when the small dial barely twitched to an ounce. Only then did he allow himself to begin nibbling, like a very delicate bunny, on the end of the strip of meat.
“Sugar is the devil, you know,” Beau whispered to Janey as if he were conveying a very dirty secret to a very stupid child.
Janey poured a tap of syrup onto her plate and made her voice equally low and mysterious. “So they say.” She refused to let Beau irritate her this morning. She was busy enough the rest of the day with things that could cause actual stress—a couture dress fitting with that bothersome model with the high-pitched voice, a meeting with investors about brand expansion in Asia, and yet another call with her divorce attorney to finalize the details of the fairly large settlement she’d soon have to hand over to her almost ex-husband.
Beau continued his lecture on the merits of eliminating sugar from one’s life. Her business partner loved few things more than telling other people how they could improve themselves.
“Not everyone totally gives up sugar. I did, of course. It was the right thing to do. Sugar is just a health-food faker and a big tummy maker,” Beau expounded. “But I do know a lot of people who are just giving up on recreational sugar these days. Maybe you should think about trying that.”
All around them, Manhattan’s fashion world breakfasting elite—hipster e-commerce entrepreneurs in their factory-dyed organic denim, the Man Repeller blogger crew, all the European fashion editors who still had time for meals outside of the office—took no notice of the woman enjoying her French toast or the man fretting over his bacon. The Horse Feather was the kind of place you came to for breakfast if you wanted to be seen eating breakfast, not if you wanted to enjoy it. The portions were notoriously small, the service slow, but the lighting was fantastic and made everything look lovely on Instagram. It was Beau’s favorite restaurant for that very reason. His #avocadotoast posts from here always got more than a thousand likes. It didn’t matter that he never actually ate it. No one ate it. The décor of the Horse Feather could best be described as hunting lodge chic. Along one wall sat shelves of succulents, while tasteful taxidermy adorned the exposed whitewashed brick. Two full-sized Joshua trees, imported from Southern California, took up residence in each western corner. The once wooden floor was painted a shiny white to match the exposed beams overhead. Paparazzi regularly waited outside to catch a shot of Gwyneth Paltrow or Amal Clooney walking through the grand wooden barn doors.
“Recreational sugar? You say that like it’s a drug, Beau.”
“Sugar is a drug,” Beau insisted with all the seriousness of Nancy Reagan.
He’d only eaten half the strip of bacon before putting it onto the saucer next to his triple espresso. She wondered why he’d bothered to order the bacon at all.
“Janey-boo, we need to talk.”
“I’m listening,” she said, letting an edge creep into her voice. Beau only brought out the baby talk when he wanted to discuss something she’d find irritating.
“Have you seen this morning’s Fashion List Daily yet?”
She hadn’t. She’d taken an Ambien. Okay, maybe an Ambien and a half last night, which caused her to wake up just ten minutes before this breakfast was supposed to take place, forcing her to forgo her morning inspection of FLD, Twitter, Instagram, the Skimm, and the Wall Street Journal. And though her morning data check was typically a sacred ritual, it had taken a lot just to put on pants that morning. Because of that Ambien and a half she also found herself feeling cloudy and unfit for the fight Beau was so clearly looking for. And speaking of meds, Beau seemed like he was on something new; he was all amped up, his beady eyes darting left and right. She looked hard at him. Beau had always been too thin, but only recently had his face and body become all forty-five-degree angles with no round edges at all. Each month some new quack told Beau something else he shouldn’t be eating—fat, carbs, oil, gluten, now sugar. This meant that Beau just kept subtracting from his diet without ever adding anything back in.
“Of course,” she lied. Lying to Beau was a professional obligation.
“Please don’t lie to me, boo-boo. You’re a shitty liar. I know you haven’t seen it because if you had you’d be as mortified as I am.” Beau pulled his iPad from the bag and tapped it before turning it around to face Janey.
“You’re all over Instagram too…un-Facetuned,” he said in a superbitchy voice that went high on the last syllable and was beginning to make her light-headed. Facetune was Beau’s favorite new app. It let you retouch any picture before you posted it on social media, making it possible for every normal human to look like Cara Delevingne all of the time.