Sarah thought for a second, mentally rebalancing her weekend. Work tonight and tomorrow morning, meet Camila in the afternoon. That would work. Not at her apartment though… Sarah wanted somewhere different, too much Amy baggage from Wednesday night to deal with. She needed this with Camila to relax, not relive the intensity of Amy.
Done. I’ll book us into a hotel, will send you details x
Camila’s reply was instant.
Oohhh… how exciting. Don’t forget your bag of toys x
Sarah grinned. Yeah, Camila was exactly what she needed after what had happened with Amy.
***
She spent the next hour getting started on her work, until her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an incoming video call from Hugo.
Taking a second to shift herself into wife and mum mode, she put on her most enthusiastic smile and answered the call, “Hi! How are you all doing?”
“Hi, we’re all good,” Hugo replied. “Guess who has something to show you…” he continued excitedly as a small player of the match trophy was shoved in front of the camera.
“Oh wow, that’s fantastic!” Sarah exclaimed, desperately trying to work out which child it actually was that had won it. “Tell me all about it…”
Luisa
Los Angeles
“Three more… come on, you’ve got this.”
Luisa gritted her teeth and pushed the barbell up one more time, her arms burning. Kai stood close behind her, his hands hovering near the bar ready to spot her if needed.
“Two more. That’s it.”
She pushed through, her muscles screaming. When she finally racked the weight she collapsed back onto the bench, breathing hard.
“You’re getting stronger,” Kai said, handing her a towel and then her water bottle. “I can see how the definition has come on in your shoulders.”
“That’s because you’re a sadist,” Luisa replied, wiping the sweat from her face, but she was smiling.
Kai laughed. An easy, confident laugh that fit perfectly with his whole persona… objectively very good looking, a mix of Caucasian and Asian heritage, with the sort of physique that you’d expect from one of LA’s top personal trainers and the self-confidence that stopped somewhere just short of arrogance to go with it. They’d been training together for six months now and Luisa was well aware of the tension that sometimes fizzed underneath the surface during their sessions.
She’d thought about it, of course. Physically she suspected they’d be amazing together, a man and a woman in great shape and she knew from a friend who’d dated him briefly a while back that he’d been good in bed. Emotionally, though, they had fun together but she suspected it was only superficial and that pretty quickly they’d tire of each other. And, for so long as she was his client, she wouldn’t let anything happen… because when it inevitably went wrong she’d be left trying to find another personal trainer who was as good and, frankly, he was the best trainer she’d had in years, probably ever.
“Come on,” Kai said, offering his hand to pull her up. “Core work then we’re done.”
Luisa let him pull her to her feet and flashed a grin. “Lead the way, sadist.”
A couple of months ago he’d asked her out. Well, kind of. He’d said he had tickets to the Lakers and asked if she’d like to go “as friends”, his charming smile telling her that wasn’t what he really meant. Luckily, in her profession she had people hitting on her all the time and she’d got good over the years at letting them down nicely… so good that it hadn’t affected their professional relationship at all when she’d politely declined.
They finished with planks and Russian twists and by the time Luisa headed to the changing room her entire body felt like jelly. Getting dressed she pulled out her phone and checked her messages. In her chat with Amy there was the message she’d sent her when she’d woken up that morning:
Hey gorgeous, morning from LA. Hope you slept well. How’s your day so far? xx
No reply, but it had only been a couple of hours and, what… she did the mental arithmetic, smiling to herself at how good she’d got now at adding eight hours to her time. It was 11am in LA, Saturday, so that made it 7pm in London, also still Saturday. Amy had mentioned she was going out with her friends today, so she was probably getting dressed to go out. Luisa was relaxed anyway… they spent most of their days swapping messages at all hours, so a few hours without one really wasn’t a problem. And, of course, Amy was coming back to LA for a few weeks the coming Thursday, so not long to wait at all.
She tucked her phone away in her pocket and grabbed her gym bag, heading out into the late morning sunshine to go and meet her agent for lunch.
***
Lunch with Talia was brief but useful, the sort of modus operandi they’d established over the years. Her agent rattled off her upcoming schedule while they ate overpriced salads, talked about some things she had going in the pipeline, and asked Luisa about a few opportunities to see if they were of interest.
"The Cimarron deal... I still think you're making a mistake." She looked at Luisa with a stern expression that would have faintly terrified Luisa when they'd first started working together, but now simply left her more amused than anything. "Seriously," Talia continued when Luisa didn't bite. "Just take the cash. It's a lot of cash. Don't waste your time with equity in something that's more likely to fail than not."
