“Always.”
“I was just over at Beau Von B.’s table. He just got here. Did you see him come in? And he was sitting with a woman and I totally thought she was you. That you’d like switched tables! Same long black hair and well last time I saw you the two of you were here together. So I brought your latte over to that table. Except then she turned around and it was somebody completely different. Much younger.” He was too young to know that what he just said was insulting.
“And did you happen to catch who it was?” Janey asked.
“Beau just introduced her as his muse. It was so cool.”
Now Janey truly felt ill. She grasped the edge of the table until her knuckles were white. Her muscles tensed as if they were preparing to help her sprint out of the restaurant. She looked at her plate of quinoa and eggs and tried to imagine how Beau would look at her plate of quinoa and eggs.
“Sweetie. Are you okay?” CJ said with alarm.
She wasn’t okay. None of it was okay.
“Can I get you anything else?” the waiter continued cheerily.
“No,” Janey managed through gritted teeth. “We’re good. Thanks again for the camel milk.” The waiter nodded, pleased to have introduced the wonders of camel milk to a stranger.
As soon as he was out of earshot CJ reached across the table to pat Janey’s hand. “That waiter is a moron. You know that. Beau might not have even said that and if he did…well…we know Beau is a moron.”
Janey wanted to pick up the little white ceramic pitcher of camel milk, walk across the room, tap that Beau on his bony shoulder, and toss the milk in his face. Would she have felt like this if Michael cheated on her? Probably not. But Beau? That was a different story. The intern was beautiful. Their similarities stopped at the long dark hair. Her face resembled a young Sophia Loren, exotic and comforting at the same time. Janey racked her brain for what she knew about the girl. She was definitely smart, fresh out of FIT, where she double majored in fabric styling and entrepreneurship. Janey could tell she’d been flattered by Beau’s attention from the moment she walked into their studio. When Beau’s light shone on you, it made you feel like you could stare directly into the sun without being burned. When it shifted away things felt very, very cold.
“Let’s get out of here,” CJ said, pulling her purse onto her shoulder and signaling to the waiter for the check. “Let’s go buy something obscenely expensive and charge it to your corporate card.”
What would happen if she did go over there? She began running it over and over in her head, the scenarios a little different each time. Maybe he would surprise her. Stand up, embrace her. Laugh when she told him the story about the waiter thinking this waifish child was his new muse.
“My muse?” she imagined him saying. “Janey-boo. You and I just had a tiff. No one but you will ever be my muse.”
Then the second scenario: “Janey? Is that you? I hardly even recognized you. You look so much older. Did you gain even more weight? I’m sorry, boo! But don’t you worry about coming back to work. I found a whole new you!”
Her mind raced with the rational and the irrational. Why had Beau really put her on hiatus? What were his actual intentions? Was this bigger than her superficial weight gain? Janey pushed the gravelly quinoa around on her plate, feeling her stomach rumble.
“Janey. Janey. Snap out of it.” CJ was desperate to distract her from Beau’s presence.
“Janey, I’m going to drink the camel milk. Look at me. Look at me. You can’t stop me now. I am going for this. Drinking the camel milk.” She was really doing it. CJ tipped the milk up to her lips just to make Janey snap out of her shame spiral. As soon as the warm milk touched her lips she made a face like she’d just been given warm blood to drink.
Janey couldn’t help but genuinely smile. “Wow. Are you vying for best girlfriend of the year award?”
CJ stood and picked up Janey’s purse and slung it over her own shoulder.
“Oh, I get that on an annual basis. They just give it to me now; I don’t even need to be nominated. It’s not that bad. A little saltier than I prefer, but not bad at all.”
She grabbed Janey’s hand and pulled her out of the seat and toward the door. “Let’s go to Staten Island and expense the whole damn camel. We’ll make a fortune bottling their salty milk and never have to work again. We can name her Beau.”
Janey glanced one last time over her shoulder and saw Beau staring directly at her. What did she expect him to do? Look away? Look ashamed? He did neither. He raised his hand and wiggled his three middle fingers, daintily waving as if nothing were wrong at all, his lips slowly moving into a cruel smile. And even though his smile pierced her like a dagger right in her side, she managed her own toothy smile right back before she whipped her head around to hide a fat tear rolling down her cheek.
CHAPTER EIGHT
To: SoarBarre Staff
From: Management
Good morning, bitches!
We have exciting news! Demand is surging faster than ever! We just couldn’t be more grateful that people are embracing SoarBarre. To keep pace we will be raising the price of a single walk-in Soar by five dollars to sixty dollars apiece. Our members know they are paying for a premium luxury cardio experience and we want them to continue to feel this way. Let us know if you hear of any concerns. Don’t forget—our mission is no less than to change people’s lives. You can’t put a price on that.
Let’s take a moment to give a shout out to our rock star instructor Ivy, whose latest column in Self magazine, “Torture Now, Laugh Later,” was the number-one story on their website all week. We are so grateful for you, Ivy.
And please remember to call Kimberly at reception by her full name. Just a gentle reminder that she came into her wholeness and shed the Kim recently. Namaste, bitch!
With so much gratitude,
Ally and Lemon
Ivy thumbed through the rest of her emails while standing in the kitchen waiting for her Magic Bullet to finish mixing up her morning protein shake. She must have been making a face when she read the note from Ally and Lemon because Kelli looked across the butcher block island at her with an amused smile.
“I wish I’d known you before SoarBarre,” she said teasingly.
Ivy glanced up from her phone and managed a smile for her still fairly new girlfriend. “I wish you had too. But if it weren’t for SoarBarre we wouldn’t have met, and who knows what the fuck you would have thought of the old me. You might not have liked me at all. I was a completely different person back then.”