Bad Case of Loving You

by Deborah Cooke

  The applause in the lobby was deafening, and Theo tried to dismiss his nervousness as the camera light went on. Would Lyssa be watching him? The possibility was thrilling and troubling, and made him more agitated than he’d become on camera.

  “You’ve seen the first two pop-ups,” he said, remembering his lines. “And Kyle has outdone himself. I think New York did a great job, too, but it’s up to you. It’s time for you to vote for east or west.” He listed the website urls and the hashtags, knowing they’d appear on the screen below him. “Don’t forget to watch for our pop-ups tomorrow, no matter which coast you’re on. Remember that sharing your video of us makes you eligible for the daily win. We’ll pick our first daily winner tomorrow at noon Eastern.” He pointed both fingers at the camera. “Is 2019 the year you join a club? If so, Flatiron Five, east or west, is the place to be.”

  The people in the lobby applauded with enthusiasm.

  “Got it,” Blaine said from behind the camera and gave Theo a thumbs-up. “How are we doing?”

  “The finished videos look great,” Theo said. “I don’t know how you get them done so fast.”

  “Well, we have the choreography and a plan, so we’re shooting with the end product in mind.” Blaine shook his head, though. “I don’t envy the F5W team, though. Kyle’s already shown a tendency to improvise.”

  “The wink at the end?”

  “And other moves. He’s something else.”

  “Wait until he hits his stride,” Theo said, smiling when Blaine looked alarmed. “He’s a natural performer. As the audience builds, he’ll improvise more.”

  “You say that like he’s different from you.”

  “Polar opposite.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Theo. You’re a natural and that integrity really comes through.”

  Theo was flattered. “Thanks. When are we going to film the feature?”

  “Give me an hour to grab a bite,” Blaine said. “It’s been kind of intense today.”

  “I’ll meet you in the office. Take your time. Awesome job.” They fist-bumped and parted ways, and Theo headed toward the office. He was stopped on the way six times, to have his picture taken with someone or to sign something. One woman gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, which startled him. His reaction made her laugh out loud.

  Sonja held up the phone at the front desk. “Tyler for you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s worried that you two are exceeding the budget.”

  “Not me.”

  “Umbrellas and dry ice?” Sonja asked.

  There was that. “Can you compile some early results for me, please?” Theo asked her. “If it’s working, it might be okay to exceed the budget.” He took the phone from her. “Hey, Tyler.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Ty said immediately. “It looks fabulous but I can’t believe Kyle stayed within budget.”

  Theo was skeptical, too, but was surprised to see how many memberships they’d already sold. He transferred the call back to the conference room, and invited Sonja to join him there. It would take two of them to reassure Tyler.

  As well as some promising early results.

  Lyssa was sitting on the couch in the suite she’d rented at the hotel, watching the F5 YouTube channel. She’d practically memorized Theo’s dance steps at Wollman Rink and was devouring all the other content available for viewing.

  He was making up for being invisible in a hurry.

  There was a new video posted just then and she wondered if it was live. Theo looked fabulous in his dark suit, so perfectly elegant that he could have become a model himself. It was the same suit as the one he’d worn to invite viewers to vote, but a different tie.

  It must be recorded, then.

  “I’m Theo Tremblay of Flatiron Five. Like most fitness clubs, F5 has great facilities but I think our strength lies in the people who work here. We have a fabulous group of instructors and coaches on our team. You saw a lot of them dancing in our pop-ups today, and I thought we’d take this chance to get to know some of them a bit better.”

  How like Theo to share the spotlight. He was such a gracious man.

  Lyssa settled in to watch.

  There was an empty take-out box from pizza in the trash can and the suite smelled faintly of pepperoni and cheese. Lyssa and Logan had agreed that it hadn’t been nearly as good as the thin-crust pizzas Giancarlo always made on their first night in Tuscany, although Lyssa had managed to get an arugula salad at the local bodega. She’d even indulged in a bottle of red wine, which was going down a little too easily.

  It had been so very long since she’d indulged this much.

  Extra skipping in the morning, for sure.

  “Who’s that?” Logan dropped on the couch beside her. He was wearing plaid pajamas and his feet were bare.

  “I thought you were going to bed.”

  “I came to kiss you goodnight.”

  “Teeth brushed?”

  He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. “Who’s that?” he repeated, eying her phone.

  “One of the partners of the Flatiron Five fitness club. I saw them do one of their lip-sync pop-ups today at the rink in Central Park when I was coming to meet you. It’s a promotion they’re doing.”

  “Sounds like he’s English.”

  “It does.”

  “Do you think he’s hot?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “Because Simon thinks Selena Gomez is hot and he watches her on his phone. All. The. Time.” Logan rolled his eyes.

  “He is handsome. Don’t you think so?”

  Logan shrugged. “That looks like a good suit.”

  “I think it is.”

  “You’re not watching him for the suit.”

  Lyssa smiled. “No, I’m not. I’m watching because I liked their event. It was fun. Here, I’ll show you.” She brought up the official video of Theo on the ice, then gave her phone to Logan. He watched it solemnly, then handed it back to her.

  “He’s a good dancer, on skates, too.”

  “I thought so.” Lyssa put down her phone as if less interested than she was, knowing she’d check for more after Logan was asleep. “You’d better get your rest for a big day of apartment hunting.” She indicated the bedroom, pretending to be stern, and Logan stayed on the couch.

  “Don’t you like guys?” he asked.

  That was new. “I like men a lot. You just caught me watching one. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering. We had a class about marriage. And gender roles and gender identity.” He said the last word carefully, then spared her a look. “How come you never got married?”

  “I did get married. I married Justin.”

  He made a sound of disgust. He and Justin had never gotten along. “But you divorced him fast, like it never happened. I don’t even remember you being married to him.”

  “I’m thinking that doesn’t keep you awake nights.”

  He made a face. “So, why not marry someone else?”

  Lyssa hesitated. She knew that love wasn’t for her, but maybe it was for Logan one day. She shouldn’t burst the romantic bubble for him too soon. “Maybe I just never met the right guy,” she said, taking refuge in the usual excuse.

  “Does that mean I’m a mistake?” He studied her closely as she struggled to hide her dismay. She hadn’t anticipated that question and felt she should have.

  “No! It means I thought your dad was the right guy.”

  “But you were wrong?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  He gave her a look but Lyssa pointed to his bedroom. He plugged in his phone in the main room—house rules—then ran ahead of her to get into bed. Lyssa followed him and sat on the side of the bed. She smoothed the patchwork quilt over him with one hand, finding the mix of textures as reassuring as ever. It was a crazy quilt that her grandmother had made when Lyssa was a little girl, and it was the one thing that she always had with her. Logan had adopted it as his own, and she made sure it was always on his be
d, wherever they were staying. On this particular night, she was thinking of the quilt in the sunlight of an attic apartment, long before Logan had even been a gleam in her eye.

  Theo’s kiss had plunged her right back into those memories.

  “Was he?” Logan insisted.

  “I’m not sure,” Lyssa admitted. She and Logan had a relationship that was closer than that between most parents and their children. She shared a great deal with him, and he with her, which often made her feel that they were more like friends. She traced the pattern on one patch with her fingertip. “I was afraid to trust him, so I left.” She grimaced. “I kind of ran away.”

  “And then you married Justin.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “But it wasn’t.”

  Lyssa shook her head.

  “You never talk about my dad.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “You have too many questions,” she teased, giving him a tickle.

  “Didn’t he want to be my dad?”

  Lyssa sobered. “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Don’t you think you should have?”

  “Yes. I made a mistake. And that’s why I have a plan, but until I know whether it’s going to work or not, it has to be a secret.”

  “I told you that I wanted to live like normal people and have a bedroom of my own, and that I wished I had a dad. Are you going to talk to my dad?”

  “You’re too smart for me to keep secrets,” Lyssa complained easily.

  “You give too many hints.” His eyes narrowed. “Or are you going to marry some other guy so he can be my dad?”

  Lyssa smiled as she tucked him in. “You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”

  “Was my dad like the F5 guy?”

  Lyssa was startled, but knew she shouldn’t have been. Logan just had to look in the mirror to know he was of mixed race, and she doubted that she’d ever shown much interest in any other black man than Theo.

  What if Theo didn’t want to know his son?

  She tapped Logan on the nose, protective as a mama bear. “You know he had to have been black. I’m not saying anything more tonight.” She made a motion with her hand, as if zipping her mouth shut and throwing away a key.

  To her surprise, Logan threw himself at her and gave her a tight hug. “I knew you would fix it,” he said with a confidence she wasn’t quite feeling. “You fix everything, Mom.”

  Lyssa kept score a little differently from her son. She was pretty sure she’d messed up a lot of things, but she was touched by his conviction. She knew she’d gotten his upbringing right, but also that a big part of that was his nature. Logan had confidence and curiosity, as well as a good measure of compassion. Even her mother would have approved of Logan’s manners—if she’d ever met him. Lyssa hugged Logan tightly and kissed the top of his head. “No reading in bed,” she admonished, aware of the big science book on the night stand. “Tomorrow will be a busy day.”

  “Okay.”

  “And no complaining that looking at apartments is boring.”

  He laughed. “But we’ll talk to Franco and Giancarlo first, right?”

  “Right. Sleep tight.” She kissed him again and turned out the light, pausing to close the door a little bit so the light wouldn’t keep him awake.

  “What’s his name?” Logan asked.

  “Who?”

  “The fitness club guy. The British one.”

  Lyssa bowed her head and fought her smile. “Theo Tremblay.”

  “I like that he can dance.” He rolled over then and she heard his breathing slow. He could fall asleep in a heartbeat, no matter where he was.

  She supposed that was a legacy of his childhood.

  “Me, too,” she whispered. She moved silently back to the couch and watched the video of Theo talking about F5’s employees, using her earbuds so that the sound wouldn’t disturb Logan. She closed her eyes and listened, her toes curling at the sound of Theo’s voice.

  He could have been whispering in her ear.

  She wanted one more time together with a ferocity that should have been a warning. Maybe it hadn’t been as good as she remembered. Maybe she was holding other guys to a standard that wasn’t even true. Maybe she could banish the memory of Theo with one hook-up and be able to move on to a new relationship.

  Maybe one more taste would just leave her starving for more.

  Lyssa listened and lusted, and told herself that indulging her desire would be a very bad idea.

  A part of her, though, wasn’t nearly convinced.

  Theo wasn’t sure whether he should tell the team that Angel would appear on New Year’s Eve or not. Should he trust her to keep her word? He stayed late in the office, catching up on his correspondence as he wrestled with the decision, until Chloe came to tell him that she was leaving for the day.

  “Some mail for Chynna was delivered to the front desk by mistake,” she said, referring to the artist who had opened a tattoo shop in the lobby. “I’ll take it over to the shop on my way out.”

  “Don’t you usually go the other way?”

  Chloe nodded. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “I’ll do it. You head home. You’ve pulled a long day already, and on a Saturday.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Let’s both call it a day, then,” he suggested.

  Chloe smiled and handed Theo the envelopes, then headed out. “See you Monday! I’ll tell Sonja to make sure you don’t work late tomorrow.”

  Theo laughed, then talked to Raylene at reception. The new membership registrations were pouring in. He locked up the office and crossed the lobby to the tattoo shop. Hunter was coming in to work an evening shift in the dance club and they greeted each other in the lobby.

  Chynna was in the shop alone, talking to her pet raven. She was older than Theo and he’d always thought that she had a sad aura, even though he wasn’t usually sensitive to those things. He’d wondered before if she was healing from a loss. He tapped on the door and she glanced up, smiling when she saw him.

  Her style of clothing wasn’t quite punk—the details were too romantic for that—and she wasn’t quite Goth. She was wearing a white sleeveless blouse that was very full, with black tights and tall black biker boots. There was a frill of lace at her throat, like a gentleman’s cravat but more delicate, with a stone that looked like an amethyst set in silver swirls pinned in the middle of it. There was a long frock coat in patterned velvet in purple and black hung on the wall. Her hair was cut short and spiky, and so blond it was almost white, with red tips this month. Her lipstick was deep purple and her eyeliner was black and striking.

  Theo wondered what color her hair was naturally and guessed from her lashes that it was brown. He was used to people making their bodies what they wanted them to be, but with exercise. Chynna seemed to treat her body as a work of art, one that could be painted and dyed to suit her whim. Her attitude reminded him more of the staff members at F5 West, which he’d helped to set up with Kyle.

  “Some of your mail came to the front desk,” he said, offering them. “They look like bills, unfortunately.”

  “I could have just picked them up.”

  “But this gives me an excuse to peek in.”

  The tattoo shop was black and white with red heart accents. Chynna looked perfectly at home in it. The raven tilted its head to study him and Theo wondered how clever it was.

  “Damon designed the space,” she said. “We had a talk about colors and light, and then he came up with this.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I love it. He’s a very talented designer.”

  “So he is.” Intrigued, Theo crossed the shop to look at Chynna’s tools. Her tattoo guns were displayed on a shelf and it was clear—by use and wear—which one was her favorite. He was amazed by tattoos, that people endured pain to put designs on their bodies, then realized that Chynna was watching him. “And you do a lot of tattoos here?”

 
“Yes, it’s a great location for business.”

  “But you had another shop before, right?”

  “I did. Imagination Ink. It’s in Chinatown. I sold it to Rox, who was working for me. She does the best dragon tattoos, by the way, if you ever need one.” Chynna smiled as she said this, as if knowing that Theo wouldn’t.

  But he was curious. He reached out to the tattoo gun, his finger hovering just above it. “Does it hurt?”

  Chynna shrugged. “Everyone is different and every location is different. Arms aren’t bad for most people. Hands can be tougher.”

  “So the short answer is yes.”

  “At the very least, it burns a bit, but only for a while.”

  He had to tease her. “You’re not going to say ‘no pain no gain’?”

  Chynna smiled. “That’s more of a slogan for your business than mine.”

  “Then what would a slogan for your business be?”

  She looked around, obviously thinking. “‘Art hurts,’” she concluded.

  “I like it.” He couldn’t help but think of Lyssa and how she had struggled with her painting. He hoped she did start again. He’d always thought she had promise.

  “I’m going to guess that you don’t have any tattoos.”

  “No.” Theo realized that he might have spoken too firmly.

  “Blank canvas,” she teased as Theo smiled.

  “All original equipment,” he replied and she laughed.

  “Thanks for bringing the mail.”

  The raven made a sound that was more of a croak than a chirp, and both Theo and Chynna turned to look at him. The bird seized something from the counter and flew toward Theo. In the last minute, the bird turned, dropped the invitation and landed on Chynna’s shoulder. It was a smooth move, as if the bird had planned to drop the card at Theo’s feet, practically on the toe of his shoe.

  Theo bent down to pick it up. It was a wedding invitation. “Is this a match from one of your secret heart tattoos?” Chynna gave away a heart tattoo on the full moon each month, one that was supposed to bring true love to the recipient.

  “It is.”

  The bird knocked another card from the desk to the floor. Chynna hurried to pick it up, but Theo had seen that it was an RSVP card.