Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy)

by Bethany Bloom

  “Is that what you’re going to wear?”

  Charlotte had slept in the new workout gear that Fiona had picked out for her the day before…partly to get used to it and partly to save time. A pair of gray tights with a matching teal racer back sports bra and t-shirt. The whole ensemble was great at wicking, whatever that meant. It was also tremendously constrictive and smelled like sleep. Charlotte suddenly wished she hadn’t worn it to bed.

  “They say this five a.m. spot is the best one. The one reserved for the VIP clients,” Charlotte said.

  “They say? Who is they?”

  “Okay, Slicky says. But he seems to know.”

  Gracie giggled then. “Fiona showed us his headshot. Leopold’s.”

  “Yeah. What kind of personal trainer has professional headshots?”

  There was a pause then, and they both enjoyed the sound of morning. The way their words hung ripe in the air. The fuzzy, hushed spaces between them.

  “Aunt Fiona really wants this to work out, Mom.”

  “I know she does.”

  “You’ll do your best.”

  “Of course.” Charlotte folded a towel into her duffel bag. “You sound like the mom here.”

  “I just know it’s not going to be easy. I do understand that, you know.”

  “You are wise beyond your years, honey pie.” Charlotte said, leaning to kiss her daughter on the top of the head and then straightening to swing her bag to her shoulder.

  “I just know that, if I were in your shoes…”

  “God forbid,” Charlotte said, without thinking.

  Gracie ignored it. “Like, if Hannah were trying to…”

  “Rub her success in your face all the time?”

  “Exactly. She does, sometimes, like if she gets a better grade in a class I’ve already taken, or if she runs the mile faster than I did in gym class. She does that. And it drives me mad.”

  It drives me mad. This was one of Fiona’s expressions, Charlotte thought, and something turned inside her. “I suppose you do know a little something about competitive sisters,” she said.

  “Maybe you need this, though, Mom. Really.”

  Charlotte pressed her lips together.

  “And don’t worry about making your bed. I’m up for the day. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course. Now go. I want to hear all about it when you get back.”

  And so Charlotte padded out the front door in her new running shoes, which perfectly pushed up her arches and made her feel powerful and bouncy.

  The minivan smelled moist, like soggy French fries. A wave of nausea flared through her. This always happened when she got up too early. She could sometimes stomach coffee, but no food for awhile. She rolled down her window. This was going to be brutal. But Leopold probably wouldn’t even do anything today. Just weigh her. Maybe figure out a plan for her.

  At the health club, the parking lot was empty but for two cars, a Toyota pickup and some itsy sports car she should probably know the name of but didn’t. Which belonged to Slicky and which to Leopold? She practiced saying his name. “Lee-AH-pawlt. Lee-AH-pawlt.” The lights blinked on, just inside the club, all at once, like a new shimmering world had come to life and was beckoning her forward.

  She charged through the revolving door and put a hand on her stomach. These early mornings were going to take some getting used to. Behind the reception desk, Slicky raised his to-go cup toward her. Starbucks. What she wouldn’t do for just a sip of that. And where was there a Starbucks open this early? She smiled at him and approached, remembering Fiona’s words. Here, she didn’t have to be Shy Charlotte. She didn’t have to be so nervous all the time. She was halfway across the lobby when Slicky pointed a finger at the opposite wall.

  She turned and there he was. Lee-AH-pawlt. Leaning against the wall, in an indigo track suit, three silver stripes down either side. His skin was white as chalk, his bald head shiny in the overhead fluorescents. His chin was lifted just enough that he appeared to be looking straight down his nose at her.

  Charlotte had never felt so intimidated by such an unappealing man. She applied her best self-assured and fearless face, but one look from Leopold told her that he could see right through her. She even got the sense he could tell what her naked body looked like under all these clothes.

  They met eyes—his were heavy lidded and the skin around them dark—and he flicked them down toward his watch as he grimaced. She was a full five minutes early. She knew she was. What was he trying to do here?

  Leopold jerked his head to the side, motioning her toward him. Charlotte glanced back at Slicky, who was now absorbed in a frenzied series of tasks: tapping buttons on his computer, straightening items on his desk, not meeting her eyes.

  Leopold squeezed two fingers together and used them to point to the locker room. Then he held those two fingers in the air. “Two minutes. Our session starts. Right here.”

  She was already dressed, so she used the time to stash her gym tote in a locker, and then she messed with her ponytail and tightened the laces of her sneakers until two minutes had fully passed. No sense spending any more time with this guy than she had to. People like him made her trip all over herself, and the more she tried not to, the more it just worked out that way.

  When she emerged, finally, Leopold turned and led her up a chrome flight of stairs to the running track that circled the ceiling. Just inside the center of the track was a carpeted area with free weights, kettle bells, and a digital scale. He flitted his two fingers at the scale and she stepped on. He grunted and scribbled a note. Then he pushed a set of weights toward her. “Do like me,” he said as he began to lift.

  Ordinarily she liked the quiet, but today she found it unnerving. “Do we do this all in silence?” she asked. Her voice tittered nervously, the way she knew it would.

  “If I have something to say, I will say it. Exercise and building strength is as much a mental exercise as it as a physical one. Pay attention to your form. Do not distract yourself with words.”

  And so she did her best to concentrate. First, he would bark the name of an exercise and then she would perform it along with him. The weights felt light at first but, after a series of reps, she found she could hardly lift them. “The last three repetitions should be very difficult. If they are not, we will increase the weight,” he told her.

  In this fashion, she successfully executed a set of one-arm alternating bicep curls and a set of hammer curls. Then it was on to tricep extensions and one-arm alternating tricep kickbacks. And then it was down to the floor for standard pushups, military pushups and diamond pushups. Each time her back dipped, he straightened it with his hands. “Your core needs strength. Much strength.” He scribbled more notes on his clipboard. Her stomach gnawed on itself and she knew to stand up very slowly and carefully; making sure her head was the last thing to come up.

  Leopold produced a stopwatch from his pocket. Surely they were nearly done. If she had been feeling more comfortable, if she hadn’t been feeling so shy, she would have told him that she was feeling a little dizzy. She would have told him about her blood sugar problem. But he seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t care if she had an excuse anyway.

  “Run,” he demanded, popping at the top of his stopwatch as she set off along the track. She rounded the first corner and spied a clock on the wall. Five fifteen. Only fifteen minutes had passed? She felt the room spin once. Vroop. She slowed and took a deep breath, and then her skin prickled in a rush. That’s how she knew it was too late.

  And that’s when it happened. All the lights flickered and her skin went barbed and brambly and she felt herself dissolving into the darkest, tiniest pinhole, just as she felt her body slump to the floor.

  ***

  A red-headed man who smelled like spearmint was staring straight into her face, and her insides felt squishy but bristly at the same time. Another man was making notes on a clipboard and, behind him, stood a whole group of men with pressed
white shirts and blue slacks and squawking walkie-talkies.

  “Ah, there she is,” the redhead’s voice said. “Hello, beautiful.” She blinked her eyes. He had a smooth, unlined face and a mop of angled red bangs, which swung as he pushed a rolled towel behind her neck. She found it oddly embarrassing to have someone so young taking care of her. She blinked her eyes again. “What did you eat this morning?” he was asking.

  She shook her head. Closed her eyes. Tried to sit up. A pair of hands forced her backward.

  She squinted. What the hell? Her stomach felt like it was caving in on itself and the lights were too bright and her ears were ringing, and who were all these people?

  “What did you have to eat this morning? Anything? Do you remember?”

  “No, nothing. But I meant to.”

  The red-haired man (whom she immediately named Lucky for reasons she didn’t have the wherewithal to determine) took her pulse. His hands were smooth. Then he moved the blood pressure cuff onto her arm. “I think I know you,” he said.

  She squinted up at him. Why were these lights so bright?

  “You are Fiona’s sister. Right?”

  She wrinkled her brow and squinted. Ah, it was because he looked like the leprechaun on the Lucky Charm’s box. With his red hair and his button nose and all of that early morning exuberance. Did that leprechaun have an actual name? Surely it was Lucky. He was talking now. “Fiona does my wife’s hair. I think my wife is scheduled to help you with something…finding you a job or some such thing.”

  “Oh.”

  The paramedics formed a horseshoe around her, nodding and grinning. Just behind them was Slicky, his eyebrows expressing eagerness and concern. She braced herself up on her elbows. “Where’s Leopold?” she asked, realizing she might be pronouncing it wrong. Her head throbbed.

  One of the men pointed. He was standing near the rail on the side of the track, his arms folded tight across his chest, his chin raised. His eyes met hers, and then he moved his head from side to side.

  “I just need a peanut butter sandwich,” she said, in her intrepid-undaunted-fearless voice. The one that made her hate herself, the one that made her feel like a fraud, and the one she used in times like this. “I just forgot to eat in my excitement to get started, and I have this low blood sugar thing. That’s all.”

  Lucky nudged her back against the towel roll. His voice dropped. “Has Leopold been pushing you too hard?”

  “No. No. I just…like I said, I just need a peanut butter sandwich.” And then that laugh she hated came spilling out of her. When she could next look over, Leopold had disappeared, and Slicky let her know that the day’s session had ended.

  ***

  Charlotte wondered who would tell Fiona first. Who would relate the tale of her embarrassing sister who passed out cold at the health club and who most likely prompted an investigation into Leopold and his training techniques.

  Why hadn’t she eaten anything? And how could just fifteen minutes of swinging weights around make her so sore? Even her bones hurt, along with the tendons and the ligaments and the nerve fibers. And if she were this sore now, how would she feel tomorrow, when it was time to visit Leopold again? How could she feel this awful and have no visible signs of damage? No missing limbs. No hemorrhaging from her head. On the outside, she looked like Charlotte.

  That cute little band of paramedics had wanted to transport her to the hospital for observation, but she had stood up then and nearly ran out of there, mumbling something about needing a sandwich. But really, why didn’t they just have peanut butter sandwiches in their Emergency Response Packs? It would solve all kinds of problems. Every mom knew that.

  Now that all the excitement was over, she had some wicked shakes. Was it twitching muscle tissue or a delayed response to unmitigated humiliation? She wasn’t sure, but, on the way home from the gym, she located the Starbucks, where she ordered an iced coffee and a seven-layer bar to revive her energy. There was protein in there, she was nearly sure. She had worked out hard, and she deserved it. Besides, she would need some strength to face her sister.

  She sat in her car and gobbled the pastry as quickly as she could, before anyone could see her and report that embarrassing piece of information, too.

  All hail the buttery goodness. And that toffee! Some things did deserve exclamation marks after all, she decided.

  Before she knew it, the whole bar was gone, and she was left with nothing but a waxy brown paper bag and a tablespoon of crumbs, which she poured straight into her mouth. It was easy as long as you managed to tip your head just so and you didn’t have any wrinkles in the bag.

  And then that wonderful feeling of fullness. Blissful. Right in the heart of her. She slurped the iced coffee until the straw squeaked, and then she got out of the car, brushed off the crumbs and threw away the bag and cup. She wouldn’t need to show any physical evidence of her snack. But it was making her feel more powerful by the second.

  ***

  What were the chances that Kamal drove a Camaro? Because there was a shiny red Camaro parked in front of the house when she returned home, just like the one Caleb had bought with his last royalty check.

  She pushed open Fiona’s front door. There went the twitching muscle fibers again. And Leopold was going to have her work out like that for two hours? Thank the Lord she had passed out cold.

  As soon as she was inside the house, she heard Hannah’s voice, the high-pitched fast tone she used when she was excited. “It’s so beautiful. You should see it. So beautiful. Seriously. And there are shampoo bowls and these long squirty hoses that you can wash people’s hair with, and Aunt Fiona says I can help her. I can shampoo people for her and for the other stylists and they will even tip me at the end of the day. I can make so much money, Dad. So much.”

  Charlotte’s stomach dropped. She thought for a moment about turning to go, and then Caleb rounded the corner. “Charlotte.” He smiled and winked. “Surprise!” He opened his palms and waggled his fingers. His jazz hands, which he used only when he wasn’t feeling sure of himself.

  She wanted to run at him, yelling and pushing, with all the newfound caffeine-induced strength she felt. How dare he interrupt her summer away? But then he gave her his shy smile and her breath caught.

  She shook her head and squared her shoulders. She had to admit that being single agreed with him. It was probably all the swing-from-the-chandelier sex he was having. His dark brown hair was close-cropped and combed forward just so. That fair skin. Those aqua blue eyes. Kind of like Slicky’s, it now occurred to her. But he was losing his hair. It was definitely getting thinner on top. Ha.

  Hannah skipped behind him and made a little leap right in front of her. “Dad’s here for the whole summer, mom. He’s working at the college. A special guest. Leading workshops…writing workshops. Isn’t that amazing?”

  Gracie came in to the foyer then, too, and Caleb put his arm around her. “I couldn’t let my girls go for the whole summer. I know you understand. You wouldn’t have been able to either.”

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t.

  “And you. My most important girl.”

  Charlotte took a step backward and tried to gauge the response of her daughters. She suddenly didn’t feel so well again.

  “Are you okay, mom?” Gracie asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Your color isn’t quite right.”

  “I’m fine. Just…surprised.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You’re kind of…white or pale or yellow or something.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You look beautiful, Charlotte,” Caleb intoned. “As you always have.”

  She dropped her gym bag to the floor and looked toward the dining room. “Where’s Fiona?” she asked.

  “Early morning client,” Gracie responded. “We’re helping get the boys up. She gave Consuela the day off because we said we would be nannies for the day.”

  Just then four-year-old Maddox came bouncing down the stairs on a
green fuzzy blanket, riding it down, down, down, and landing with a thump on the tile. Watching the way his spine lurched upon each riser made Charlotte’s back ache. Maxwell, two years older, bumped along just behind. Maddox and Maxell. Mad and Max. The girls, had, in fact, begun calling this house the Thunderdome because the boys were always pounding through it on rapid heels, shooting something with Nerf bullets or firing balls at the plate glass windows. Anything that could be hurled, would be…spoons, banana chips, ramen noodles.

  “Are you sure you can handle it?” Charlotte asked, but she smiled at Maddox who leapt into her arms. The force of it nearly knocked her over, but she caught herself by kicking a foot backward.

  Maddox clung to her with one arm and pushed his other hand along her forehead, smoothing her bangs out of her eyes. His hands smelled earthy. “You have pretty hair,” he said.

  “Doesn’t she, though?” Caleb agreed.

  “Thank you, Maddox,” Charlotte said, “And you have darling brown eyes.”

  He wiggled to get down. Then he poked out an arm and a leg in an exaggerated runners’ pose. “Chase me, girls!” he cried, and he dashed down the hall. Hannah and Gracie hurled themselves after him, sliding on their socks.

  Charlotte turned to Caleb. “So. You’re really here all summer?”

  “I am. Well, most of it. Until the release.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “Not here. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Charlotte shrugged. “Does Fiona know you’re here?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t imagine she would want that…what with her Grand Transformation Pact for you.” He winked.

  Her stomach clenched. “How did you know about that?”

  “The girls told me. Or Hannah did. Gracie didn’t think you’d want me to know, for some reason.”

  “It’s embarrassing, for one. You know Fiona, though. There’s no stopping her.”

  “Well, I have a Transformation Pact of my own.”

  “Oh?”

  “Charlotte. I miss you so much. I am going to get you back. Convince you that I did nothing wrong. Even if it kills me. Whatever it takes. I am going to woo you.”