Page 30 of Christmas with my Three Best Friends

“Do the inventory again when we get back. Make sure all three are present and make sure they sign the stock sheets. Then have the accountant revisit the figures and see where you stand. Then call a meeting with us, then with the reception staff once we decide how we’re going to proceed. Either we fire all three or we take the loss out of their pay. There’s no other way around it.”

“I think I was happier when I was just training clients.”

“But you love the management side of things. And you’re really good at it. I doubt our gym would’ve worked as well without you behind it,” I tell him.

He smiles softly. “Thanks, Shay… but it’s not working as well as it should be. You know it, I know it, Jax knows it. Richard definitely knows it. We just can’t take any more hits at this point.”

Marius is right. We can’t afford losses on the drinks stock. We can’t afford missing gym passes. Tardy receptionists. Fewer clients altogether. We can’t afford any sort of dent, not when we’re so close to failing entirely. I reckon we will need to sit down and talk about this before we even go back to Seattle.

The accountant always makes sure we’re all carbon copied into her emails, so if Marius got these figures, so did I, and so did Jax and Richard. I’ve done my best to keep my nose out of my work email while we’re at the spa, but I’m pretty sure Richard won’t resist the temptation of checking his soon—if he hasn’t already.

Just as I suspected, Richard did read that email.

We meet downstairs at the restaurant for lunch, fully aware we’ll be broaching this hot topic. Jax looks tense, his shoulders tight and his jaw clenched as he cuts through his steak. Richard seems calm, but it’s the kind of calm that settles before the storm. I can almost smell the rain coming as he works his way through a plate of pasta. Marius and I were more or less prepared for this, but I still don’t like the feeling, the uneasiness with which we sit in silence and just… eat.

I break the silence eventually. “There’s an elephant in the room that we need to address, guys.”

“I was hoping we’d get to dessert, first,” Richard sighs and puts his fork down, his plate now cleared of most of the ricotta and spinach ravioli he ordered.

“Honestly, I didn’t want to talk about the gym at all,” I reply. “But that email…”

Jax shakes his head slowly. “It’s the second time.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I was hoping we’d talk about it and reach a reasonable conclusion together,” Marius says. “We didn’t take action the first time because we were still in the beginning and there was a lot of stuff going on at the time. We had multiple errors and holes to patch, and things got lost in the shuffle. But now, we’re two years in. We shouldn’t have an issue like this at this point.”

“I agree,” Richard says. “For the sake of fairness, I’d say charge all three receptionists for the lost amount. We don’t fire them. Yet. If they want to quit in protest, that’s their problem.”

“Oh, I’m all for that,” Jax says. “Charge them. They need to pay for carelessness. The company paid enough the last time.”

I wonder what Alice will think of that. She is usually the loudest and often going on about workers’ rights without having done any of the work in the first place. I look to Marius for guidance in this conversation, mainly because he is usually the one who deals with the reception issues.

“What do you say?” I ask him. “Do we just charge them and see how they take it?”

“They’ll have to take it or leave it,” Marius replies with a tired shrug. “I’m done covering for them. I’m done rewarding incompetence. There’s no point in keeping people around if they’re sinking this ship we’ve worked so hard to build.”

Richard gives him a slight frown. “We’re not firing anybody.”

I think he’s trying to tell us not to fire Alice if she rebels and says she’s not going to pay the charge for our missing stock. I’m compelled to respond, however, but not before a long sip of rose wine.

“Richard, if they want to leave, we can’t stop them. But like you said, we have to charge them.”

“Right. No, I agree,” he quickly backs down.

It irks me. I never liked the subtle favoritism he showed towards Alice, and while I understand their previous history, I do worry that he might still be holding her to a higher rank than the other reception staff.

‘Is there something we don’t know about Alice?” I ask bluntly.

He gazes at me. “She’s lived a tough life. But you’re right. She doesn’t get to take advantage. We’ll treat them all the same.”

“We can’t sustain another loss like this.”

“We should definitely implement new fitness programs,” I say. “Lyle and Marius have their project; I’ve agreed to give them my full support on the matter. And Jax has new martial arts training programs he wants to advertise. We need to get our marketing team on top of that.”

Richard gives me a soft smile. “Always our rock, huh, Shay?”

“We’re in this together,” I reply. “And I want the gym to work as much as you guys.”

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