Page 104 of Just One Silver Fox

There was a gasp and then silence.

Sonia didn’t even want to think about them giving up the San Francisco sister club and neither apparently did anyone else.

Kyle held up a hand. “Branching out was my idea and that club is so important to me. But I’m the one who added this to the agenda. We just don’t have the history and the membership out there yet, and we’re in debt on the building since it was new construction.”

“Tough to pay the note with no revenue,” Tyler said.

“That beautiful facility is just sitting there, empty,” Theo said with a shake of his head. “It’s so spectacular.”

“Without a schedule to re-open or even that ability to make a tentative plan, I’m not sure we should hang on,” Kyle said. “Although it kills me to admit that.”

“Do you have a buyer?” Ty asked.

Kyle winced. “The competition has made an offer. Their facility is older which is why we were gaining market share, at least until the pandemic.”

“Then if we sell to them, we lose our edge in that market,” Damon said. “It would really bite to have the competition using that place.”

“And you know they’ll offer less than it cost to build,” Ty muttered.

“We’ll lose money,” Kyle said. “Of course, they’re low-balling, looking to grab a deal. It’s just about how much we want to hang on, and whether our pockets are deep enough to do it.”

“It’s so gorgeous,” Cassie said. “I feel like we poured our hearts into it.”

“We?” Kyle said. “There’s a piece of my soul in that place.”

Theo nodded agreement.

“Selling it would feel like a betrayal,” Damon said.

“But the cost of keeping it could impact our financial situation here, over time,” Ty said. “We’re just not seeing the revenue from podcasts and virtual membership from the left coast.”

“Maybe that’s because most of our hosts are from this club,” Cassie said. “Maybe we need to make more of an effort to get our teachers from F5FW to climb aboard virtually. I mean, it’s California, Silicon Valley. Where else are people more plugged in?”

“We need to lift our game,” Damon said.

“I can reach out to the team there,” Kyle said.

“I’ll give you a list of good candidates,” Jax said.

“Maybe we need to have another round of our east-west challenge,” Theo suggested. He grinned at Kyle. “Unless you’re afraid to lose again.”

“I did not lose last time!” Kyle protested and the two began to tease each other about their moves and the voting in their last challenge.

“You can’t do pop-ups and dance numbers again,” Cassie said. “Even if there wasn’t a pandemic, you’ve done that before.”

“Whatever you do should tie into the virtual memberships and podcasts somehow,” Damon said.

“We could highlight productions, pitting east against west in a friendly competition,” Theo said.

“We could participate in special editions of those podcasts,” Kyle said. “We can do it virtually with split screens, like last time.”

“I’m totally going to Sonia’s yoga class,” Theo said with a wink for her.

“We don’t have to compromise the pod. We can use the same video editing team, just like we did with the competition,” Damon said. “They were great and fast.”

“Expensive for regular classes,” Ty said, predictably.

“This would be a special edition,” Cassie said.

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