Lucky Break

by J. Minter

  “That reminds me of a card trick I know,” Dave said, reaching into his pocket for a deck of cards. “You didn’t take me for an excellent magician, did you?”

  I shook my head and Dave proceeded to show me the most elaborate card trick I’d ever seen, involving three queens, the nine of hearts, and a joker. After he bowled me over with a few more tricks, I decided to show off my skills and beat him at a few games of gin rummy. When the captain announced that we were flying over New Zealand, it reminded Dave of this song on the new Bob Dylan album, so we biPodded for a little while. After that, we flipped through the movie channels and realized both SBB and Danny Tumble, an Aussie actor friend of Dave’s, had cameos in Arctic Lightning. It was only when the captain turned on the seat belt sign to indicate we were landing that I realized I was having more fun on this airplane than I’d had all week on the ground in Italy and in Thailand.

  “This is why I love long flights,” Dave said, giving me that contagious smile. “By the time we land, we’ll have already been on three dates.”

  “Oh, I get it,” I said coyly. “Picking up girls on planes is your thing.”

  I phrased it as a joke, but I was also really hoping that Dave would insist it wasn’t true. Luckily, he laughed.

  “Yep, last flight, I met a lovely screeching infant. She really opened up to me, but then”—he mimicked a sniffle—“she never called.”

  “You just never know with babies, do you?” I joked.

  It had been so long since I’d looked at another guy. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to fall right back into flirting. Dave and I smiled at each other and didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he reached into his bag and took out his phone.

  “Speaking of calling people,” he said, “I’d say it’s time for the obligatory number swap. Don’t look so surprised—you’re going to be in Sydney for a few days; I live in Sydney. It’s only natural.”

  My heart picked up. Was I really going to give out my number to a guy I just met on the plane? What would my friends say? This wasn’t the first time this week that I realized how much I needed them.

  “In case you need more convincing, I happen to have a pretty sweet beach house in Coogee,” Dave continued. “Don’t you want to end your whirlwind tour on a high note?”

  A brief vision of the Thoney girls flashed into my head. They’d be screaming their heads off for me to thrust my number at this gorgeous Aussie guy.

  So I did.

  Chapter 15

  ENERGY GLIDES IN

  First I saw the FLANNIE-BANANIE sign quaking frantically in the air at the Sydney airport terminal. Then I saw the body holding it absolutely lose control when I came into view. SBB threw her arms up, accidentally tossing her handmade sign into the face of an elderly Japanese tourist. She started running toward me.

  “Ohmygodiamsoooooooogladtoseeyou!” we both screamed at the exact same time, throwing our arms around each other. We jumped up and down in the embrace a few times before I realized that something was very different about my tiny starlet best friend.

  She wasn’t so tiny anymore.

  On anyone else, a few extra pounds might not have made much of a difference, but because SBB’s base weight had been next to nothing, even one week’s worth of bulk was a very big deal.

  “Whoa, SBB, have you been taking ’roids?” I asked, only sort of joking when I pulled back to examine her suddenly ripped biceps.

  “No way,” she scoffed. “Protein shakes and dumbbells.” When she shrugged dismissively, I could actually make out clearly defined delts (delts?!) through her layered Velvet tank tops.

  “Well, it’s working,” I said, watching in awe as the former lightweight scooped up my massive Balenciaga carry-on as if it were stuffed with feathers instead of heavy books and magazines. “Which way to the gun show?” I joked.

  “Flan,” she said, putting on her serious face, “Australia is actually a very civilized place. It’s not all hunting and bushmen.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I was making a joke. You know, muscles, guns? Yours are enormous, by the way.”

  “Not enormous enough!” she said, suddenly putting on the fierce. “They always say the early mass is the easiest to put on. What if I peaked prematurely? What if I never get to gladiatrix stature? What if—”

  She was interrupted by a loud beeping sound coming from her massive Prada pocket watch.

  “Two-fifteen,” she muttered to herself, turning off the alarm. “It’s time for my energy-bar-and-gel combo.”

  As the rush of other passengers scooted around us, I watched with horror as SBB pulled out a Kate Spade cosmetics case stuffed with the kinds of inedible snacks they always sell at GNCs. She ripped into a hefty white-wrapped bar that seemed to be about the same consistency as the compost heap Feb started making us keep in the backyard of our brownstone. SBB devoured the whole bar in four large gulps, then washed it down (if that term can be applied) with a small capsule of gel, whose packaging read Energy Glide.

  Throughout the whole gruesome scene, the look on her face was one of absolute torture. She grimaced as she swallowed down the last of the Energy Glide, wiped her mouth daintily with a tissue, then turned to smile at me.

  “Well, that’s over,” she said, looking back down at her watch. “At least for another forty-five minutes. Shall we go see about your bags?”

  I nodded, still a little dazed by what I’d just witnessed. As we took the escalator down to baggage claim, I took her hand.

  “I’m worried about you, SBB. That looked painful.”

  SBB closed her eyes and touched her pointer fingers to her temples. “No one understands the kind of pressure I am under.”

  “I’m trying to,” I said. “But there’s got to be a better way than eating anti-food according to a stopwatch.”

  “I just can’t do it on my own,” she said, looking up at me with fear in her big blue eyes. “Will you help me, Flan? Pleeeease?”

  Before I could answer, she was gripping my arm and leaning in to whisper, “Flan, there’s a model type staring at you from across carousel B. Eleven o’clock! He’s what the Aussies call a mate.”

  “SBB,” I said, trying to follow her eye toward the model type, “don’t they just call all guys mate here?”

  “Fine,” she huffed. “He’s what the Aussies call a drop-dead foxy mate. Are you over Jony yet? Because I think this one might do the trick.”

  My eyes landed on Three-Date Dave, who was smirking at me flirtily. He lifted his bag off the carousel, made the “I’ll call you” motion with his hand, then disappeared into the crowd.

  “Ohmigod,” SBB squealed. “You better start talking fast.”

  I thought about how to sum up my last plane ride and the rest of the trip leading up to it. I put my arm around SBB’s shoulder.

  “To answer your questions, yes and yes. I am over Alex and I will help you unleash your inner gladiatrix.”

  SBB practically leapt into my arms. This was an old stunt with her, but one that I realized I was going to have to ask her to limit, at least until the gladiatrix training was over. Straining to hold her up, I wondered whether it mattered that I was fibbing. I didn’t know a thing about weight training, and I didn’t know if I really was over Alex. The only thing I did know was that maybe these two things were somehow intertwined. I’d tried all sorts of indulgences this week to mend my broken heart—maybe what I needed to do was just throw myself into something completely unrelated. Something that required hard work, determination, and—

  “Oh, Flan!” SBB trilled. “You won’t regret this! How about we start tomorrow, say, four-thirty a.m.? That way we’ll beat the commuter traffic. I’ll set my watch right now! Hey, I see your duffel over there! I’ve got an idea: Will you time me to see how long it takes me to haul it back over here one-handed?” SBB thrust the Prada pocket watch into my hands. “On your mark, get set, go!”

  Oh boy. Was this a terrible idea?

  Chapter 16

  IT TAK
ES A VILLAGE TO TRAIN A GLADIATRIX

  The next morning, at exactly four-thirty, SBB slammed her Prada pocket watch against the wall.

  “Don’t these things have snooze buttons?” she moaned in the darkness, her voice muffled by her pillow.

  In the other twin bed across the room, I was just awake enough to be grateful that SBB also wanted to snooze a little longer. We were crashing at the giant sandstone party house Patch had rented right on Bondi Beach. But since he and Agnes were on their way back from a two-day reef dive, so far all we’d seen of them was the key left under the mat, complete with full instructions about how to use everything from the toilet to the light switches (classic Agnes), and the half-eaten pizza in the fridge with all the pepperonis picked off (classic Patch).

  “Oh, the guilt,” SBB murmured sleepily. “Please don’t tell JR how much you’re letting me slack off.”

  “You know,” I said, my eyes still closed, “I’m actually looking out for you. Everyone knows if you don’t get eight hours of sleep, you might as well kiss your workout goals good-bye.”

  “Ooh,” she whispered, catching herself halfway through a ladylike snore. “You’re so rational when you’re sleepy.”

  The next thing I knew, Patch was standing over my bed, shaking my foot to wake me up. “G’day, jet-setter.” He grinned. “Welcome to the land down unda. We’ve got a breakfast bonfire going on the beach. You guys gonna sleep all day or what?”

  I looked at the clock. It was almost eleven o’clock. SBB was going to kill me!

  “Bring in the rabid lions,” SBB called out in her sleep, clearly dreaming about her Gladiatrix role.

  “SBB,” I said tentatively, climbing out of bed, “I have some bad news.”

  She blinked her eyes open. “There are rabid tigers, too?”

  “Uh, I don’t know about that, but we slept a little later than we meant to. It’s—”

  “Over!” she wailed after she grabbed her broken pocket watch from the floor. “It’s all over. I can’t afford a wasted day! I’ll never get the part now!”

  “What’s she talking about?” Agnes asked, popping her head in the door. She looked much tanner than she had last week in the city, but she seemed just as full of nervous energy as she had prevacation. Right now, she was literally twiddling her thumbs.

  “SBB’s training for a part and we overslept,” I explained. “It’s no big deal—we’ll just find a way to amp up the workout.”

  Agnes raised her eyes at Patch. “Why don’t you introduce them to your meathead friend out there?” She turned to SBB. “There’s nothing Tommy loves more than talking about his fulfilling life of weightlifting.”

  “No. No. Absolutely not,” SBB said, hopping out of bed to pace the room in her pajamas. As she ran toward the bathroom to brush her teeth, she called, “There’s no time for socializing. I need to pump some serious iron.”

  “Did someone say ‘pump some serious iron’?” a voice called from the hallway.

  Then I heard the skidding sound of SBB in socks, sliding straight into the wall.

  “I guess she met Tommy.” Patch laughed, tugging my ponytail and leading me into the living room.

  Sitting on the couch overlooking the pristine beach was the most muscular beach bum I had ever seen in my life. Tommy was flipping through a glossy magazine called Mate’s Best Weights and slurping up a smoothie approximately the size of Noodles.

  “If you’re looking for workout advice,” Patch said, pointing at his friend, “you’ve come to the right place.”

  SBB didn’t waste any time. She crouched in front of Tommy on the couch and assumed a pose of such reverence, it reminded me of how Feb interacted with the guru.

  “Teach me,” she said to the mass of muscle.

  Ten minutes later, we were dressed and sitting in front of the bonfire on the beach. “Okay, the first thing you do,” Tommy said, “is start with a good Aussie brekkie. Some people like eggs. I never say no to a burger with the lot.”

  Our eyes grew wide as we watched Tommy flip a huge burger from the grill onto his plate. He loaded up his bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, pineapple(!), beets(!), a healthy squirt of mayonnaise, and hot sauce. Then, instead of taking a bite, he threw me for another loop by handing the plate over to SBB. “Now don’t be shy if you want seconds,” he said. “Flan, you want the lot too?”

  As we munched on our Aussie-size breakfast burgers, which were actually shockingly delicious—the pineapple added just the right zing—SBB described in meticulous detail her training program to Tommy, and I flipped through Mate’s Best Weights, dog-earing pages that I thought could offer SBB useful tips.

  If you asked me a week ago which profession I’d be least likely to have, personal trainer might have sprung to mind. But working out in the fresh air on this silky, sandy beach, with the crystal water crashing right before our eyes—well, it didn’t really seem like work at all. It was especially fun to feel like we had a whole team collaborating together. Agnes ran back and forth from the kitchen to the beach to make sure we were staying hydrated with her awesome lemon basil iced tea. Even Patch went down to the surf shop to bring back a few surfboards so we could use them as aerobic steps for beachside training.

  Watching SBB and me do a set of crunches on the beach, he yawned, cracked open a soda, and said, “At this rate, you two are going to be the buffest chicks at the party tomorrow night.”

  “What party tomorrow night?” I asked, instantly giving up on the twenty-seven sit-ups I had left.

  “Didn’t I tell you we’re throwing a barbecue—?”

  “An haute barbecue,” Agnes corrected.

  “Whatever.” Patch rolled his eyes. “Since you’re only in town for a few days, Agnes and I wanted to throw you a party. To show you how it’s done down under. A bunch of our friends will be there, so it’s sure to get pretty wild.”

  I glanced at SBB. “Do you think we can take the night off training tomorrow to hit this party?”

  She sighed and chewed on her lip. “Only if we really crack the workout whip during the day! And no sleeping in until eleven! And don’t we have twenty-seven more sit-ups to do? Who’s the drill sergeant here and who’s the slacker? Huh?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, lying back down in the sit-up position. “Twenty-seven, twenty-six!” I called out.

  We pushed ourselves until late in the afternoon, staying super busy and super focused on Operation Beef It Up. In fact, the sun was starting to dip down toward the horizon when I realized: I hadn’t thought of Alex all day. I’d been so busy—leading SBB though set after set of squats, calling her out when she didn’t touch her nose to the sand during push ups, and making her jump rope for a minute every time she complained.

  When I finally did think of Alex, it was because I stopped focusing on the starlet at hand to look out at an unusually large pelican fishing for its dinner. I knew Alex thought that pelicans were really underappreciated birds, especially the ones along the East River, so the sight of one just sent me on a spiral of negative thoughts.

  “What’s wrong?” SBB asked, panting after a hundred-meter sprint. “Did you pull a muscle watching me work my butt off?”

  “No,” I said, looking down at my feet. “I just started thinking about Alex.”

  “But I thought you said yesterday—oh, Flan,” she said, taking in my expression and hugging me. “I’ve been so selfish. Me and my superficial fitness goals. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “At this point, that’s exactly what I don’t want to do. I want what I said yesterday to be true. And your superficial fitness goals have been the best thing so far in terms of keeping my mind off him.”

  “Because Bianca—”

  “I don’t need Bianca,” I insisted, mentally crossing my fingers that this was true. “I need—”

  Just then, my phone started to ring. It was the ring-tone for ‘unknown number,’ and SBB grabbed it off the beach towel. “I think it’s an Aussie number,” she said.


  It didn’t occur to me that the only Aussie with my number was Three-Date Dave until I’d already picked up.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “So I’m feeling a lot of pressure to plan really something special for our fourth date,” he said with his adorable accent. Even over the phone, I could hear the smile in his voice. “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

  “Oh—my brother’s throwing a party,” I said, feeling a little let down that my time in Oz was already so booked.

  “Hmm,” Dave said. “Well there goes all my hard work planning. I’ve an idea. What if you bailed on the party so I could take you night scuba diving? Parties come and go, right?”

  I hesitated. Dave was being pretty forward, and I still didn’t know him that well. Even though scuba diving sounded awesome, I really did want to go to this party.

  “Well, it’s kind of in my honor, so I need to at least make a cameo,” I said, then I felt SBB’s smack on my arm. “Ow … I mean … you should come to the party. It’s going to be a barbecue—”

  “Haute barbecue!” Agnes yelled from the porch to correct me.

  “Er, haute barbecue,” I corrected myself. “It’s no scuba diving, but if my brother’s track record says anything, it’ll still be a blast.”

  “If you’re there,” Dave said, “I’m there. See you tomorrow night.’

  When I hung up the phone, I could feel a grin spreading across my face.

  “Well?” SBB demanded.

  I turned to my gladiatrix friend and shrugged. “Looks like Three-Date Dave is on his way to lucky number four.”

  Chapter 17

  NO PAIN, NO MUSCLE-MASS GAIN

  Early Saturday morning, the shrill sound of a whistle blowing pierced the tranquil Aussie air. When I opened my eyes, I could tell it was barely dawn. So what was SBB already doing out of bed? And who was that broad-shouldered blond gorilla hovering in our doorway?

  “You have eight minutes to get dressed, get hydrated, and meet me at station one,” the stranger barked, the whistle still stuck between her lips.