Chapter Twenty Three

“Okay… what happened here?” Brandt asked, his eyes sweeping around the family room searchingly for answers.

Lucy winced in humiliation, sitting up from her prone position on the couch, the crackle of a potato chip bag punctuating her mortification.

Just like she had done many times before when her emotions had gotten the better of her, she had turned to food.

A lot of it.

“I had sort of a bad day,” Lucy said meekly, waving a hand around at the empty potato chip bag, half opened cookie containers and large soda bottle surrounding her island of shame on the couch.

“Uh huh,” Brandt said gently, sitting down beside her on the couch and wrapping an arm around her, squeezing her tightly. “Tell Uncle Brandt everything.”

Lucy poured out her story about practically asking Spencer to take her to the woods and ‘train’ her, as a thinly veiled guise to just get to spend time with him.

She related his reaction to her suggestion – he wasn’t unkind, but she could tell he was sort of horrified and/or uncomfortable and/or unwilling to “consort” with clients, despite earlier evidence to the contrary.

She felt like a heel.

A really uncomfortably full heel, she thought, eying the pizza box with horror.

Brandt kissed her forehead gently and settled them back on the couch. “Oh honey, I’m really sorry that happened. I’m sure he meant well, but… well, it sounded like he handled it badly.”

“He did, and I did,” Lucy admitted. “I just… I feel stupid. And I just booked out of there, so it’s going to the Land of Incredible Uncomfortableness if I ever go back there to work out with him.”

“You’re going back,” Brandt said evenly. “You have to. You’re doing so well.”

“But now he knows that I… I’ve enjoyed the… ‘consorting’, and that I wouldn’t mind doing it some more. In the woods. Alone. With him.” Lucy buried her face in her hands again. “I’m an idiot.” I can’t go back there.”

Brandt was silent, his mind focused on the story that Lucy had relayed. He knew better than Lucy what was actually going on. Clearly, she was having such a great time hanging out with Sullivan, and he seemed to be reciprocating the feelings on their outings, that she naturally assumed there was a connection between them.

Them being her and Spencer – when it really should be her and Sullivan.

And so Spencer, caught in the middle, doesn’t want to hurt her feelings, and is trying to be a good trainer, but the whole twin angle is making things a mess.

If they toy with her feelings or hurt her, Brandt vowed silently, I will snap them like kindling.

Or run them over with my car, he amended silently, thinking back to the incredibly buff bodies both men possessed and realizing the difficulty he might have in inflicting pain.

The car idea might be better.

“Oh honey,” he said again. “Just… just shake it off. Go to bed – everything will be clearer in the morning.”

“Promise?” Lucy asked quietly.

“I promise,” Brandt replied. “Nikki Courtesan never lies,” he said with a wink, making her smile softly.

**

“What the hell are you doing to Lucy?” Brandt asked when Spencer picked up the other end of the telephone line. “I found her at home, sad and eating everything she could get her hands on.”

Spencer sighed audibly into the phone. “I didn’t… it wasn’t… I tried to tell her gently…”

“You tried to tell her you have a twin that she’s been hanging out with?” Brandt asked, his voice icy now. “That you guys have been lying to her?”

“No, not yet, I was going to, but before I could, she left. I was going to explain that I couldn’t…”

“Go on a retreat slash date with her?” Brandt asked hotly. “Because that’s what it sounded like. You led her to some delusion about going camping with you for healthy reasons, and instead you crushed her… well, crush.”

Brandt could practically hear Spencer wince over the phone as he continued. “I think she does have a crush, you know. On the person she’s been hanging out with off the clock, not the one from the gym. The problem is… she thinks those two entities are the same person.”

“I know,” Spencer said, his voice full of contrition. “I know,” he repeated. “And I think Sully liked her too, though he won’t come out and say it, because he’s too shy and stubborn. I want to get them together somehow, I just… I seem to be fucking it up utterly.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Brandt said coolly, pausing for a moment to consider what Spencer had just said. “Do you really think he likes her?”

“I do,” Spencer said. “I haven’t seen him like this since… since his fiancée dumped him a while back. He’s happy for the first time in a long time, and he talks about Lucy all the time, and I don’t want to… I don’t want to ruin their chances of getting together with each other, for real. But I also don’t want to lose her as a client.” He paused, and then continued. “I really have fucked this up, haven’t I?”

“She’s pretty crushed,” Brandt agreed. “Is there any way we can just throw the two of them together and let them sort it out, just the two of them? Maybe if she hears it from your brother, instead of you, that’s there’s two of you, she’ll take it better and be less embarrassed about working out with you. She was talking about not coming back to the gym.”

Spencer sighed. “I don’t want that. Not for my sake – for hers. She’s made really good progress, and I don’t want this to derail her drive to get healthier. She hasn’t talked about her brother’s wedding in a while, but I know it’s weighing on her as the date creeps closer and closer. I can help her get there, I just… her mind has to be in the game, you know?”

Brandt nodded, and then realized that Spencer couldn’t see him. “I agree. You need to straighten this out – fast.”

“Maybe we could send Sully and Lucy on the ‘retreat’ she and I were talking about? Let them talk, rejoice, get together, whatever?” Spencer proposed after a pause.

Brandt considered this. “Might work – they would be away from any sort of distractions or complications to straighten it out, and then could spend together to see if they really do like each other – as themselves, not as facsimiles.”

“So we’re basically sending them off on a hook up weekend,” Spencer said, boiling down the plan. “A widow and a dumped fiancé,” Spencer paused, absorbing that. “God, I hope this is a good idea.”

“I think it’s the only idea, dude,” Brandt said evenly. “She can’t continue like this. Make it so.”

“Aye aye, captain,” Spencer said with a small smile. “Let’s hope to God this works.”

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