Page 66 of The Titan and the Trainer

Later that morning, Callum was in a personal training session with a new client when Rosie suddenly screamed his name from reception.

“Callum, Callum, come quick!”

He sprinted across the gym, grabbing the first aid kit from the wall on the way. When he got to Reception, instead of some medical emergency, Rosie was pointing excitedly at the TV, shouting, “Look, look, it’s Julian. He’s on TV.”

Callum stopped and looked up at the small TV screen tucked away in the corner of the reception area, which usually played MTV or some kind of newsfeed.

Sure enough, it was a news channel, and Julian was there on the TV. He looked sharp in a smart dark grey suit. It appeared he was opening the New York Stock Exchange. What the hell, Callum thought. He never mentioned anything about this to me. A couple of hours ago they were sitting in sweatpants on his fire escape, drinking coffee out of mismatched chipped mugs.

“What’s he doing, Cal?” Rosie asked, squinting to read the small text on the screen.

Callum’s eyes were much sharper. “It says ‘Vance Global signs $10 billion deal with Chinese giant Totantu Enterprises’ - whatever that means. Probably another company deal, I guess.”

“$10 billion. My God, that’s a crazy amount of money,” Rosie added, looking worried.

At that point, Jack walked in. “What are you both looking at?” he said, then saw the TV screen. “That’s Julian, isn’t it?” leaning in to read the ticker text himself, “$10 billion deal. Wow, if he can afford that, maybe he can give us a few bucks to sort this place out, hey Cal?”

Oh, here we go again, thought Callum. Let’s not be having this argument again. “Yes, right, I’ll just ask him to give me some money to throw into this pit, shall I?”

“Well, we need to do something, Cal; we’re in limbo here, pal. We can’t move forward, we can’t develop, we can’t grow, we can’t make any more money. We can’t invest in the place. We’re fucked, Cal.” Jack’s face was now flushed with anger. “You need to speak to Julian. He has to help us.”

Callum paused and took a breath. “He doesn’t have to do anything at all, Jack. This gym isn’t anything to do with him, and it’s not his responsibility to bail us out.” Callum said it, slowly and calmly, not rising to Jack’s bait. Rosie just looked on, saying nothing.

“We’ve got to do something, Cal. Doing nothing ain’t an option any more, mate. Julian is a good guy; I talked to him yesterday. If you asked him to help out, maybe invest in the place, I think he’d do it. He’d do it for you, Cal. He loves you, buddy; you can see it. Just ask him, hey?”

Callum didn’t respond at first. He wasn’t happy that they were having this conversation in the reception area, where everyone could hear them, and in front of Rosie. The timing and location weren’t great.

“Look, Jack, I have spoken to him about this place.” I’ve been honest with him. He knows the score. I think he wants to help, but I’d rather it was advice than dollar bills.” Jack did not look happy at this and went to speak, but Callum put his hands up to stop him. “How will we learn and grow from this, Jack, if we just take a handout? What do you want, $50 thousand, $100 thousand, a million, a billion? That’s just money. It solves the issue, but not the problem.”

Jack’s eyes lit up at the amounts of money Callum was quoting.

Callum continued, “I think advice from his years in business and the success he’s made of it is way more useful to us in the short term, Jack.”

“Pah, I’m not sure, buddy. Yeah, we need advice, but we also need cash.” Jack wasn’t convinced. “Your mind seems pretty made up. I don’t think anything I say will change it, so I might as well not bother, hey!” With that, he turned and walked out.

Rosie looked helplessly at Callum. He didn’t know what to say.

Was Jack walking away from the business or just going to cool down?

“I’ll talk to him, Cal,” Rosie said, grabbed her purse, and ran out after him.

***

Callum didn’t see Jack again that day. Rosie returned and said he was taking the day off to cool down and ‘do some thinking’. Callum covered his sessions, wondering what he would do if Jack just walked away.

Callum texted Ben, his driver, still thinking about how odd it was to have a driver, asking to be picked up at 5 pm. Ben arrived on time in the black Jeep Wrangler SUV that Callum had chosen. It was brand new and only had 20 miles on the clock. Callum preferred sitting up front with Ben, who he really liked. He was a young lad, 25 years old, ex-Marine, rock solid and tall. They chatted happily as they drove to the penthouse at Peck Slip.

Julian wasn’t there when Callum arrived upstairs, so he decided to go work out in the gym while he waited. About halfway through his routine, Julian came through the door in the same grey suit he’d seen him in on TV.

“Hey, bf,” he said, “Keeping in shape for me?”

“Ha, yes, of course,” Callum replied. “When we were sitting on my fire escape this morning, in our sweats, drinking coffee from my shitty mugs, you didn’t think to mention to me that you were opening the New York Stock Exchange a couple of hours later and announcing a $10 billion deal?”

Julian was halfway through removing his suit jacket, laying it neatly across a nearby bench. “Err, no, not really. It’s just work. Not something I’d bother you with.” Completely nonchalant, like it was nothing special.

“You are crazy. Of course you should tell me about things like that. It’s a big deal, isn’t it?” Callum quizzed, as he finished his last set of pull-downs.

“Well, yes, I guess, but I didn’t think you’d be interested, and I’d rather talk to you about other things.” He walked over to Callum.