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“Less than a minute now. Focus.” She walks away. “Now, move in to Triangle pose. Take your right hand with your palm open, arm extended, and lift your fingers to the ceiling. Keep your eyes on your fingers. Don’t push. Do what you can, but this shouldn’t hurt. It’s about balance. Do as much as you can without—”
As if he planned it, Mattis topples one way, swearing, and taking Reed with him.
“—falling,” Livy finishes.
The laughter that erupts in the room breaks my Livy haze and reminds me again why I’m here.
I have to stop thinking about her soft hands on my back and forget the feel of her at my hips. If I think about how flexible she is or how bendy she could get, I’ll have to stay in downward dog because my dick will be doing a sun salutation like it wants to do right now.
Speed. Endurance. Flexibility. Those thoughts don’t work.
Old shriveled-up balls.Grandmothers with saggy tits.
Better.
Now I have a semi, but at least it’s not waving hello at the instructor.Cold showers. Getting caught masturbating by your parents. Now we’re getting somewhere.Getting caught doing the deed by your kids. Depends on how hot their mom is.
Fuck.
“What is it, Layton?”
Oh shit. I said that out loud.
“Nothing. Just want to get the most out of this and realized my breathing wasn’t right.”
She will never believe me.
“Don’t criticize yourself. The idea here is to be stronger with each practice.”
“So Mattis not falling is a win?”
Mattis chuckles and grunts in agreement.
Reed mutters, “For me it is.”
“Aren’t we lowering the bar a bit too much?”
“This is about development. A week from now or a month from now, is there improvement?”
And then, to prove her point, she folds next to me, chest to thighs, nose to knees, placing her hands on the floor. She raises up as if into a handstand—not something I’ve ever been able to do after the first attempt left me with an egg on my temple when I was eleven—and presses up, folding her knees into her armpits.
Her breathing is steady, and there she floats, human origami in front of me. Quietly, she says, “Does it matter if it took weeks of attempts to succeed? What if I failed for a year? What about two? Does it negate the results? What if—” She bends her elbows, not losing the line of her body, and straightens one leg toward the ceiling. “What if it took years to master? Was it worth it?”
My mouth is agape. I’m trying not to feel the burn in what she calls Downward Dog and she’s holding herself on some hidden fulcrum of balance.
“All of life is about progress. Otherwise, you’d be on the JV team, dropping passes, hoping for ice cream after the game.” She unfolds herself, placing one foot and then another on the ground and standing once again.
“‘If you’re not growing,’” I start.
“… ‘You’re dying.’ Lou Holtz.” She holds my gaze for a beat too long before walking back to the front of the room. “Let’s finish today with some meditation.”
I don’t know whether to be embarrassed at being called out, encouraged, or flat-out impressed. All three is more like it.
And she knows it too.
Fuck my life.
* * *
