While it obviously can’t hurt to check my reports this early on, I’ll admit that I ghosted that spin bike simply because I was over it. That, and...exercise still freaks me out. I know a spin bike isn’t a race, but since driving the heart rate up is how Decker had a stroke, I guess The Jeaner isn’t the only one who is oscillating between what if and who’s next.

That said, Gemma’s question is valid. If I was that quick to leave the sauna-like group exercise class, will there be others who jump ship in the near future, too?

The answer is simple: no. There won’t be. That room is full of young twentysomethings who are way too worried about sweating off the fried goat cheese balls they ordered from SUR this weekend. By no means would anyone in there take workout cues from me—a pushing-thirty exercise hack who lasted a mere five minutes in the saddle before slumping over the handlebars.

Finally, it’s just me and my computer and the SoCal sun pouring through the windows of WeHot, which heats up the smell inside like dinner simmering on the stove. Only the ingredients in this stew are Chanel No. 5 and kitschy Instagram handles. I remind myself (not for the first time in the past twenty minutes) how this client is paying a cool twenty-five grand for my company—for the company I work for, rather—to be here.

I find myself with too many tabs open on my laptop and distracted by one in particular. Well, two, to be honest. The Google search results for “los angeles mausoleums” that I haven’t yet gone through and an old Match.com tab from a few days ago. The Match.com tab is blinking with a new message from William, a thirty-four-year-old artist from the Atwater Village neighborhood, who just messaged me.

His “dating headline” says, Could U B the 1? Out of habit, I start to copy and paste some of William’s data into my compatibility algorithm, but I notice someone walking toward the locker room area and tilt my screen down. The last thing I need is Gemma to see in the reflection of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that I’m surfing the dating web.

I hear a familiar voice behind me. “Hello, Charlotte.”

I look up and right into the face of Brian Jackson. The Zack Morris of every friend group he’ll ever be in. His coolness is the reason that I instantly cast him for the plastic surgery segment all those years ago. It’s also how he got that bomb internship in the first place, how he was featured in Luxe LA’s “40 Under 40” issue (I know this because Monica wasn’t the only person I recognized in those pages), and it’s also now the reason he’s able to waltz into my work completely unannounced after not really seeing each other or speaking to one another for the last four and a half years. All the while, he makes it seem like he’s just casually stopping by a birthday party that I invited him to.