“She would love to meet you. She cried when she heard ‘Distance Between Us.’ Like, ugly cried. At her desk. During a work meeting.”
“That’s...very flattering.”
“Her boss sent her home early. She said it was worth it.”
Dean appears at my elbow, already in workout clothes. “Brittany. Stop terrorizing my brother.”
“I’m not terrorizing. I’m networking.” She grins, and there’s something scrappy about it—the smile of a woman who’s been through some stuff and come out the other side. “Besides, it’s good for business. Celebrity sightings boost membership inquiries by like thirty percent. I read a study.”
“Was it a real study?” Dean asks.
“It was an Instagram post, but it had graphs.” She leans forward conspiratorially toward me. “My mom would literally die if she met you. Actually die. I would become a motherless child at forty-two, and it would be your fault.”
“That’s...a lot of pressure.”
“She’s very dramatic. I get it from her. Also from my ex-husband, who thought buying a boat during our divorce proceedings was a reasonable financial decision.” She waves a hand. “Anyway. Different story. Not important.”
Before I can respond, a door bursts open and a sweaty woman in her late sixties emerges from what I assume is the spin studio. She’s wearing a headband that saysSPIN TO WINand her face is bright red.
“Brittany, that instructor is trying to kill us. I swear she gets some kind of sick pleasure from—” She stops dead. Her eyes go wide. “Oh my.”
“Mom—” Brittany starts.
“Am I dreaming? Delusional?”
“Mom, please don’t?—”
“You’re Levi Cole.” The woman presses both hands to her chest like she’s checking for a heartbeat. “You’re Levi Cole, and I look like a tomato that got run over by a truck.”
“You look fine,” Ilie.
“I’m SWEATING. I’m sweating in front of Levi Cole. Brittany, why didn’t you warn me?”
“I literally just found out he was coming?—”
“I need a picture. I need seventeen pictures. Janet is going to lose her mind.” She’s already fumbling for her phone, which is tucked into her sports bra in a way that makes retrieval complicated. “Janet said you’d never come to Twin Waves. She said I was delusional. She said—hold on, it’s stuck—she said celebrities don’t go to small towns unless they’re filming a Hallmark movie.”
“Mom, maybe let the man work out first?—”
“This will only take a second. Smile!”
She finally extracts her phone and holds it up. The angle is approximately forty-five degrees from flattering. I smile anyway because Dean is making a face behind her that suggests he will never let me forget this moment.
“Beautiful. Perfect. Janet is going to eat her words.” She peers at the screen. “Oh, I look terrible. Let’s do another one.”
“Mom.”
“Just one more. Maybe without the headband.”
We take four more pictures. In the last one, she insists on doing a thumbs up, and somehow I end up doing one too, which means somewhere in TwinWaves there now exists photographic evidence of me looking like a complete dork.
“Thank you so much,” she gushes. “This is the best day of my life. Don’t tell my husband I said that. Or Brittany.”
“I’m right here,” Brittany says.
“You were born on a very rainy Tuesday, and I was in labor for twenty-six hours. This is better.” She pats my arm. “You’re taller than I expected. And your brother is very handsome. Good genes in your family.”
“I’m going to go work out now,” Dean says flatly.
