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CHAPTER 17
Maxx Boot Camp has partnered with FreeFormed Yoga in Key West. For the next few days we will call their studio home. It benefits both parties. We get a location for the last leg of the competition, while they get all the press.
Dean and I show up before the crack of dawn to get acquainted with the small space before the cameras get set up. Julie is running around as usual, moving things until she feels they are in the perfect place.
“How’d you sleep?” Dean grumbles at me.
“Like a rock,” I lie. All I could think of was Dean, and with Reese sleeping in the other bed, the two-finger relief was unavailable to me. “You?”
“Like the dead. If the dead were awake all night with a chainsaw sleeping beside them.” He motions to Tony, who looks fresh as a daisy. “Snores louder than you do.”
“You mean in the other bed?”
“Nope. We got a king bed.” Dean purses his lips. “Sometime around one o’clock I fell asleep, then woke up twenty minutes later when he decided to use me as a body pillow.”
“Oh, that sucks,” I say laughing.
He glares at me, then his look changes into something completely different. My laughter stops, as does my breathing. “Coop, you can’t look at me like that. I’m already on edge. Stop it!” I swat at him when his nostrils begin to flare. “People are going to see.”
“I want you, Cat. It was hard to hold back before, but now that I know what it’s like, it’s impossible. I’m in pain,” he groans.
I moan, pressing my legs together, making sure to keep Julie in my sights. “Don’t tell me that.”
“We could rent a car,” Dean offers.
“I already thought about that. We can’t afford to get arrested for indecent acts. I can send Reese away tonight for an hour,” I suggest.
“All I need is five minutes.”
“Five minutes!” I say a little loudly. Julie looks over, frowns, and goes back to her conversation with the studio’s owner.
“I can make you cum in one, kitty cat,” Dean says once we’re sure they’re not paying attention.
“Can’t argue with that. Okay… Oh shit, I forgot. My sister will be here with Sher. They’ll be sharing my room.”
Just then Julie walks up, ending our plotting. “Alright, guys. Here are the shirts you need to wear today.” She hands us white t-shirts with the Maxx brand on the front, and FreeFormed on the back. “You will each direct one camp. Both will be televised on Maxx Tv at all Maxx Boot Camps and the local channels. I want you to keep in mind that though the camp here will be limited to ten people, you are essentially training every single Maxxer in the country. Talk to the camera. Engage it as though it were a person.”
“Engage the people. Got it,” I say, going into a boxer stance hop. “Coop, you got it?”
“Got it.” He winks at me.
“I want to stress that this is live television. Please be on your best behavior.” Julie looks at me as she says it.
I clap my hands, ready to take this on. “Best behavior. Got it. You got it, Coop?”
“She wasn’t telling me,” he says.
“I’m telling the two of you. But especially you, Cat. You have a tendency of forgetting people are watching.” Julie’s definitely talking only to me.
“You know…” I don’t finish, because she’s right. “I’ll remember.”
“Alright.” She looks over my shoulder. “Looks like the cameras are here. Get dressed. You’re up first, Cat.”
I like this place. Sort of. It’s quieter than I’m used to, the energy more muted. Could be because it’s meant to relax, a space to meditate and recover. There isn’t much color, with plain natural grass panels covering the walls and gray rubber to cushion our feet. Not even a mirror in sight to distract the mind. Which of course makes it near impossible for me to focus on my job. There’s not enough to drown out my own thoughts.
Two reporters with handheld cameras have been allowed into the tiny space, made to feel even smaller with the staff from both Maxx and FreeFormed, ten new “Maxxers” all rearing to go, and other random stragglers that somehow crashed this party.
About a thousand classes under my belt are doing nothing now to ease the butterflies in my belly. And it has nothing to do with the cameras getting ready to go live, or the fact that Julie looks ready to eat someone alive if anything goes wrong.
