The sun pouring through the kitchen skylight was offensive. Willa put on her sunglasses.
“Good morning,” Pete said, ladling homemade batter into the waffle maker. “Also, I’ll never understand why women wear such big sunglasses. You look like a bug.”
“Fashion was never your forte,” Willa said. She pulled the oat milk out of the refrigerator, then sloshed it into her iced coffee. “Now please stop screaming.”
The kitchen opened into the living room, where her two boys were under Pokémon blankets on the big, blue sectional couch, watching Dan TDM videos on YouTube. She sat down between them, giving each a quick kiss on the head.
“Daddy’s right. You look like a bug,” James said. Charlie farted, and all three boys laughed.
“Whelp, that’s my cue. Time for me to go,” Willa said, hoisting herself up and collecting her keys, coffee, FitFams Bible, and cross-body bag that made a rattling noise from the Excedrin Migraine bottle inside. “I’ll see you all later today.”
Willa pulled into the deck behind the FitFams studio and willed the machine to hurry up and spit out the parking ticket. As soon as it peeked out of the slot, she yanked it the rest of the way, watched the arm creak up, then swung into the last open spot on the ground floor. With 90 seconds until training was set to start, Willa raced out of the deck and around the corner, nearly crashing into Jem, who was unlocking the studio.
“Where is everyone else?” Willa asked.
“Oh, the rest of the team already did their six-week training, and Tara —” Jem pulled the door open and avoided eye contact. “—I think she’s sleeping. So it’s just you and me today.”
Huh.
“OK,” Willa said.
“We have six days to get you ready. It’ll be fine,” Jem said, unconvincingly.
The plate glass window had been replaced and the fiberglass insulation had been cleared from the corners. The lights were on. Workers were installing mirrors along the last of three walls, to match the mirrors on the ceiling.
“Yikes,” Willa whispered, seeing way too many reflections of her own butt.
“Having all of these mirrors allows the client to really connect with the workout, whether she’s looking up or down or facing forwards, sideways, or backwards on the machine,” Jem explained. “We tell clients to stare into their own eyes. It gets really intense. I once had an out-of-body experience. I was sweating and breathing hard, and I literally thought Brene Brown was reading to me from ‘The Gifts of Imperfection.’”
“Wow,” Willa said.
“But we’ll get to all that. Let’s start with a tour of the machine. Here she is,” Jem said, presenting the piece of equipment with a flourish of her hand.
It — she? — looked like a leaned-out stair-stepper, with two foot pedals, hand rails on the sides, and a control console at the front. The console allowed the client to increase or decrease speed and resistance in accordance with the moves called out by the coach.
“For example, you might yell, ‘Vintner’s Son,’ and the client would lower her resistance while speeding up her feet to your beat,” Jem said.
Each pedal had a special click-in feature, similar to what you’d see on a spin bike. “But don’t try to bring your ratty cycling shoes in here,” Jem warned. “They will not fit, and our shoes won’t fit any other machine. A pair of FitFams Feet is $20 to rent, per class, or $104 to buy.”
Jem pointed out another unique feature of the pedals: they swiveled in tandem. You could start out facing the front of the room, with your hands on both handrails, then shift to face the side, holding just one side rail, and then turn to face the back, holding on to no rail at all. To turn, you needed to engage your core, Jem said.
Hanging from the console were two sets of weights — one dusty pink, one gray — that looked like thicker versions of those bendy hair rollers teens used in the 1980s when their moms wouldn’t let them get perms. After completing 10 classes, Jem said, clients were expected to bend and secure one set of the weights around their ankles and the other around their wrists, to make the work more challenging. The at-home version was on sale in the merch area, next to the branded crop tops, bike shorts, beanies, water bottles, phone cases, and delicate glass vials of FitFams’ signature scent.
The machines were set up in two neat rows, facing a raised stage that was ringed with votive candles. On the stage was a pedestal, and on that pedestal was what looked like a fairly complicated set-up for a DJ.
“That’s a Numark Party Mix DJ Controller,” Jem said, proudly. “As of this week, all of our studios have them. It has two decks, a crossfader, jog wheels, four pad modes, and auto and manual looping so you can seamlessly mix your playlists while you coach.”
“Wait,” Willa said. “So I’m going to coach and … DJ? At the same time?”
“I mean, I guess if you can’t do that, you could always just play straight from your Spotify and pretend,” Jem said, putting an invisible headphone up to her ear and pretending to scratch a record. “But that might make your class less appealing for clients, and you’ll probably get dinged on your evaluation. So.”
Just then, Jem’s phone buzzed. “Oh,” she said. “That’s Tara. She needs coffee and, yeah, I need to go. Walk out with me.”
Willa felt a little bit dazed. The workout looked really fun; she already knew that from the videos she’d seen online. But she had little idea of how to coach it — and zero clue about how to DJ — and there were just five days left until the studio opened and she was on the mic.
She walked with Jem to her little yellow Mazda Miata, parked on the street out front, and watched her climb in and back out of the prime spot. Then, before pulling into traffic, Jem rolled down her window and yelled:
“Welcome to the first day of your best life!”
What does the signature scent smell like? Sweat?