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“And now?”
“Now I’m here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Lauren smiled, safe in the knowledge that Carly couldn’t see. “It’s a very good answer. It’s a room. It has a door. Some days it has a damp patch.”
“Lauren.”
It was the bathroom voice. Stop deciding in advance that yourself won’t be enough. Lauren’s hands paused for half a second.
“Fine,” she said. “If you want the stupid version, I’d like my own clinic one day. A proper one. Two rooms, so I could bring someone else in eventually. Somewhere on the high street with a sign over the door and a decent couch that doesn’t need a beer mat under one leg. Rehab, sports massage, injury stuff. Partnerships with the clubs round here, because every team I’ve ever played for has had at least three people limping around on something they should’ve had looked at months ago.” She heard herself and went to cut it off at the knees. “It’s a pipe dream. Obviously.”
“Why obviously?”
“Because it’s me.”
Carly was quiet. Lauren worked a knot and waited for the polite noise people made at this point, the aw, you should totally go for it that meant nothing at all.
It didn’t come.
“What’s the rent on a unit like that?” Carly asked.
Lauren blinked. “What?”
“Two rooms. High street. Roughly.”
“I… don’t know. A lot?”
“How many clients do you see a week now?”
“Twenty-five? Thirty, if I take evenings.”
“And how many of those are repeat?”
“Most of them.” Lauren frowned down at Carly’s shoulder blade. “Why?”
“Because if most of them are repeat, you don’t have a pipe dream. You have a client base.” Carly shifted slightly under the towel. “You’d need to know your break-even. How many hours a week you’d have to fill to cover rent and rates, and how quickly you could let the second room. You’d want the clubs signed up before you open, not after. Jenna would do half of that for you if you asked. She’d do it if you didn’t ask, actually. And there are grants for small businesses, if you know where to look.”
Lauren had stopped working entirely. She only noticed when Carly said, “Is that it?”
“No. Sorry.” She started again, but her hands felt strange, as if they belonged to someone with a business plan. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I’ve thought about it for two minutes. You’ve thought about it for years.” Hard to tell through the face cradle, but Carly’s voice had softened. “Write it down. The numbers. If you want, I’ll go through them with you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I took over a business I didn’t build and nearly sank it in the first quarter. I know what the numbers look like when something’s viable.” A pause. “And because I watched you on Saturday.”
Lauren didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.
A pipe dream was a safe thing to have. It couldn’t fail if you never tried it. You kept it in a drawer and got it out on bad nights, and nobody ever asked what the rent was. Now someone who ran a whole chain of gyms and could make a spreadsheet beg for mercy had asked, and treated it like a plan.
Lauren concentrated very hard on Carly’s lower back, because the alternative was crying onto a client.
“Change of subject,” she said, when she trusted her voice again. “Before I make it weird.”
“You’ve been making it weird since I walked in.”
