Chapter 4
The Midtown bar was all low lights and dark wood, crowded mostly with white 20-something women who worked entry-level jobs at law firms and PR agencies and whose parents paid the rent so they could go to Miami and color-coordinate their bikinis for better Instagram photos.
The three FitFams coaches were easy to spot, even before Willa heard Dee yell, with her well-known vocal fry, “Drink up, bitchehhhhhhhhs!”
Willa saw the ponytails first — high on the crown and then, with the help of some sort of pretty-person witchcraft, bumping higher at the elastic before cascading to a perfect swirl below their shoulders. They wore cropped sweatshirts, high-waisted leggings, and stacked sneakers, the picture of health and youth and athleisure. Willa absently touched her face, and made a mental note to just go ahead and buy the Fenty Beauty Skinstick that had been languishing in her cart at Sephora.com, as she admired their perfectly highlighted cheekbones.
With flashbacks to the first day of junior high — when Craig P. beat her to the last seat at the popular kids’ lunch table, next to her grade-school best friend, who henceforth pretended she and Willa didn’t really know each other — Willa approached the FitFams group.
“Willa! What is UP?!” Tara yelled out, momentarily breaking the three coaches’ intense focus on Dee. “You made it! Everyone, this is Willa. Willa, this is everyone.”
The three smiles that immediately beamed up at her were almost unsettling. One coach, whose ponytail was auburn, stood up and dragged a chair over for Willa, then patted the seat.
Jem waved weakly. Tara reached out for a fist-bump, and Willa replied in kind. “We are seriously so stoked you decided to come,” Tara said.
Dee reached out her hand. “It’s soooo nice to meet you.”
Willa almost said something but swallowed it, thankful for this second chance at a first impression.
Dee lifted her full glass. “A toast,” she said, eyes locking with Willa’s. “To the newest members of the FitFams family.”
The coaches clinked their drinks with Dee’s (all four drank Tito’s with lime) and Tara’s (Tropicalia, a local IPA) and looked expectantly at Willa as the server approached their table.
“I’ll have a shot of Jameson and a PBR,” Willa said. Drinking had been part of her skill set ever since 1995, when she and Stacey snuck old, ignored gin from her mother’s liquor cabinet and replaced it with water. Her father always had a scotch after work and would sometimes “nap” on the living room carpet.
Tara seemed impressed. “OK, you did not come to play,” she said. “We like that.”
Dee sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “That’s not what I was expecting, from a mother of two.”
“Oh my God, you’re a mom?” auburn ponytail said, her eyes going anime. “You look way too young.”
Willa felt a warm rush in her heart, and not just because she was shooting back the whiskey. When she interned at a New York City marketing firm during the summer before her senior year of college, someone bent down and asked if she was there for Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. Back then it was annoying. Now, in a society where people were more likely to say “you look good for your age” or just ignore older women entirely, Willa would take these kinds of compliments wherever and however she could get them.
“Yeah, I’m a mom. I’m 40,” Willa said, reveling in the coaches’ gasps. “But I’m really immature.”
“That makes you eight years older than me, and the oldest coach on the team,” Dee said. “You’ll be like the den mother.”
A little air leaked out of Willa’s balloon, but she ignored it, slugging the PBR while the coaches introduced themselves and Willa took inventory:
Auburn ponytail = Jamie, 22, white, born in rural Alabama to Pentecostal parents (“like, the snake-handling kind of church people”) who, after a modeling scout spotted her at age 16 in an Instagram post, brought her to New York City and left her alone with one rolly bag in one of those model apartments, where she developed an unhealthy dependence on cocaine and the bank accounts of older men. One of them paid for her membership at a Pilates studio, and that gave her a way out. She coached for the CoreFix chain, which relocated her to Atlanta, where FitFams snatched her up. Single, vegan, pansexual.
Black ponytail = Ashley, 28, white, wanted to be a gymnast but as a pre-teen was rejected from her suburban Philadelphia team for being “too big” (read: she was tall with breasts). She shifted to volleyball and, after a man tried to mug her with a knife in a parking lot after practice, started weight-lifting. Met her now-fiancé, a successful tech executive, on a dating site for Crossfitters and moved to Atlanta to be with him. They have two dogs, Chief and Snout (Snout, not Scout).
Dirty-blonde ponytail = Jen, 26, white, fit but feminine, with a snatched waist and round butt she showed off in photos and videos on her social media channels as the very popular fitness influencer and craniosacral therapist Small But Mighty. A building at the University of Michigan, where she attended and studied Decision Sciences (with a minor in Modern Dance) for three semesters, is named after her grandfather. Single, bisexual, and loves music festivals, particularly in the EDM scene. These days she’s thinking about becoming a professional life coach.
Willa ran down her own personal CV:
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, where Dad squeaked by in law school and mom was a substitute teacher who once got spat on;
moved to Brooklyn and then New Jersey so he could show off his salary with a big house;
no siblings; six former step-siblings from her dad’s two subsequent marriages;
currently teaches spin at Ryde Or Die, the small studio owned by James and Tamryn Ray, a Black couple originally from Detroit (did Dee just smirk?);
loves dogs and those gummies that look like cola bottles;
hates cats (allergic) and country music (“Dang,” said Ashley. “I’ve been to Stagecoach twice.”);
vegetarian except when hungover;
fan of feminist art and Bell Biv Devoe (“Who?” asked Jen);
a homeowner who was a renter for so long, she tends to forget that she can hang pictures or paint the walls without losing the security deposit.
Dee listened quietly to all of the talk, fingers tented under her chin, almost apart from all of it, like she was watching a top she had set spinning. Then, as silence set in and the coaches self-consciously sipped their drinks, wondering whether they’d just shared too much, she spoke:
“It is just so awesome to hear all of your stories. Where you come from. Who you are. What makes you tick. I think you’ve made the right decision to join our team. It’s gonna be hard. There are gonna be days when you think, ‘I just can’t fold one more towel, or validate one more parking ticket, or push one more piece of merch,’ But you will get through it. Because you’re now part of the FitFams Force. You’ll represent us with how you look, talk, act, and — of course — coach. And you will be changed.”
Tara nodded knowingly. The three coaches and Jem sat in reverential silence. Willa stifled a burp.
“But before all of that begins, let’s get hammered,” Dee said, then turned to yell for the server. Not realizing he was right next to her, she screamed directly into his face: “Get my team another round!”