47. Wide Open
Summer
I was still giggling, my insides fizzy as sparkling water, though that was possibly heatstroke. Out in the anteroom, which felt absolutely polar after the heat within, Karen rubbed her head with a second towel she’d had the foresight to bring along, making the strands of short hair stick up in spikes, stuck her feet into jandals, and said, “Best yoga class ever. Except you realize we can never come back.”
“Of course we can,” Poppy said. “Give me that, Karen. They can let our unruly selves flow around them like water around the stones in the river. It’ll be good spiritual practice. Ugh, this towel is disgusting.”
“Are you dissing my candle?” Karen asked. “Happiness never decreases by being shared. Sweat, though … Jax would say, if he’s not fighting beside you or in bed with you, he doesn’t want to share your sweat. But, hey, you asked for it.”
Poppy was still patting her face, which was nearly as red as the ginger hair that stood out around it in fuzzy curlicues. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?”
“It’s good for you,” Karen said. “Yoga composes the mind and relaxes the body. I’m relaxed, anyway. Though I have to say—there’s hot yoga, and then there’s Mississippi. It must have been 110 degrees in there, and, what? Sixty percent humidity? The teacher should sue for inhumane working conditions. Oh, sorry, Poppy. And Roman. Forty-three degrees. I feel like a noodle. A cooked one.”
“Ha,” Poppy said. “I think I compressed my vertebrae with that elbows-on-knees thing, because I fell on my head. It’s easy for you to say it’s good for us. You’re eleven feet tall and run kilometers on end because you think it’s fun and have one child. Hope and I have four each, and I don’t know about her, but the only time I run is when I’m chasing somebody or when Matiu’s chasing me, and I let him catch me pretty bloody quick. I also don’t think I have enough non-separated abs for this anymore. Enjoy it while you have it, Summer. You don’t know how lucky you are. You know the real reason you could talk Roman into this? Because you’re not married. He’s still trying to impress you.”
I’d been laughing with the rest of them, wishing that I had a second towel of my own, still remembering Roman cannoning into me and the look of a room full of women wobbling and falling, not to mention the sweat rolling off Roman’s body as if it were trying to turn him to jerky. Now, though, it was an effort to smile. Which was when Hope said, “Tell me we get to go for coffee now. And breakfast. Roman? Summer? Please come with us. I’m sure I didn’t actually burn as many calories as it feels like, but I’m thinking avocado toast with poached egg. Or maybe eggs benedict with smoked salmon. I’m a petite women who’s given birth to four children, but still. The circumstances are extreme. I’ll eat salad when I’m back home.”
“Creamy mushrooms and poached eggs on toast,” Poppy said. “Only if everybody else in the place is sitting upwind, though.” She sniffed her underarm and made a face.
Karen said, “We’ll sit outside in the sunshine, enjoy the cooling breeze on our sweaty bodies, and wrap ourselves in our moral superiority. Except we need to leave now, before the teacher comes out and yells at us. Though I think she should just yell at Roman. He’s the one who fell over onto everyone. You can go toe to toe with her, Roman. You’re a powerful man. I’m supposed to be a powerful woman, but unfortunately, I always forget that when I’m around women like her. I’m sure I’d just laugh and make it all worse. Quick. Let’s go before we get arrested for causing a disturbance.”
When we were outside, I said, “I really am feeling too sweaty to go out. Like I said. Long night.”
“Oh, do come,” Hope said. “I wanted to thank you for what you said to Maia. And ask how you thought of it. She can get overtaken at home, since she’s the quietest, and I don’t always notice.”
“In other words, we’ll talk about our children,” Karen said. “It’s a very long list. Run now, Summer. Well, walk. Ooze. Whatever.”
Roman hadn’t said much, I realized, though he also hadn’t had much of a chance. He said, “Have a heart. I’m going to slink off home, take a cold shower, and tell my male pride it wasn’t really that bad. Come on, Summer.”
Karen said, “You really are Hemi’s brother, despite the sexy green eyes and slightly less Neanderthal levels of command presence. You don’t have to do what he says, Summer. It’s better for him if you don’t.”
“Oh, that’s—that’s OK,” I said. “He is my date, and you go home with the one who brought you, right?” I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but I did want to leave, and Roman did have my hand and was exerting a little pressure, so …
“Stop by later,” Hope said with her sweet smile, “if you can. Seriously. We’ll all still be at Karen and Jax’s, I’m sure, swimming and probably eating some more, but it’ll be more casual than yesterday. Hanging out, enjoying the day.”
“We’ll see,” I said, since Roman wasn’t saying anything. “It was great to see all of you again and, uh, knock you down and all. Have a good breakfast!” I said that last one as I was being pulled away by Roman.
“Bye,” Karen said. “I’ll do yoga with you guys anytime. Awesome stuff, Roman. Seriously brilliant. Jax is going to howl.”
“What”I asked Roman when we were half a block down the street and he finally slowed from race-walk to military march. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of having breakfast with four women. After you did hot yoga?”
He said, “This was meant to be a breakfast for the two of us. Or skipping breakfast, if you like.”
Wait. I stopped, which meant he stopped, too, after a moment of tugging. “What?” he asked. “We have a program.”
I said slowly, “I don’t think that’s it.” I felt a bit hollow inside. Or maybe I felt naked, because I had a feeling … “That wasn’t you being rude,” I said. “You left because of me. At least I think so. Oh, and I really do want breakfast. I know I’m sweaty, and we have that program you mentioned, but I’m actually starved, so …”
He started walking again and said, “Well, yeh, I left because of you. What, I wasn’t meant to notice that?”
“What?” I asked.
“Whatever that was. Whatever made you stiffen up like that. Want to tell me?”
“No,” I said. “Not now, anyway.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and turned onto Marine Parade. There was the sea, doing its in-and-out thing. There was the mountain, too, dead ahead, rising tall and green and volcanic. And here was, yes, a café. “Best menu I could find,” he said. “Corn fritters, manuka-smoked bacon, creamy mushrooms, and all. And, of course, the sea.”
“And sitting outside,” I said, smiling at him because he’d cared enough to check, and what was even better, he’d noticed how I was feeling and had helped me get out of it. And then not pushed me to explain. And because he was still holding my sweaty hand, looking at my sweaty self, and seeming like every bit of me was what he wanted to be looking at right now. “This works for me,” I told him. “And oh, boy. So do you.”
Roman
Falling in love wasn’t something I did anymore. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I ever had. I’d thought I’d been in love both times, but I’d never felt the way people talk about. I hadn’t been carried away, or obsessed, or even all that distracted. None of that was anything I was interested in. I liked her, that was all. I liked her more all the time, especially today, but that could be lack of sleep and lack of oxygen to the brain. There she was, though, unselfconscious about her hair, sweaty tendrils of which were escaping from their high ponytail, and her snug, sweaty workout clothes, which wouldn’t have been nearly as jaw-dropping on any other woman, but were on her. Which she either truly didn’t notice or didn’t care about. And her eyes. And her smile. And her heart.
I liked her, that was all. I liked the way she looked at the sea, sighed, and seemed to sink into the sensation of it, the swells rising and crashing over and over and forever. The rush-and-roar sound they made, and the way the rhythm seeped into your bones. The sea-salt-ozone of the air, and the pied shags skimming the water’s surface, flying free. I liked the way she relaxed into that, yeh, and the way she watched the people go by and didn’t even seem to think about laughing at them. The way she patted a fluffy spaniel on a lead, and did laugh when the little dog licked her salty leg before its owner noticed and called it away. I liked the way she exclaimed to the server about the swan art on the top of her latte, but didn’t take a photo of it, just sipped around the edge. “So I can keep it as long as possible,” she told me. “And savor it. The impermanence is what makes it special, right?”
“Right,” I said, and got a bit more of that heart-opening feeling. The yoga, probably. Either I was open, or I was lightheaded.
“When you’re wide open,” she said, startling me, “the world is a good place. Sharon Salzberg.”
“Oh,” I said stupidly, but she was smiling, and my face didn’t seem to be under my control, because I was smiling back.
“I haven’t been wide open for a long time,” she said. “Maybe ever. I think I may be getting there, though. All sorts of things come up once you let them, I’m finding. When they’re rushing out, like this morning, when I cried … that’s not comfortable. It made me feel a little crazy, in fact.” She looked out at the sea again, then said slowly, “Maybe you have to let yourself feel them, though, in order to feel the rest. I’ve been numb for a long time. Maybe for years. I’m not numb now. I’m feeling …” She spread her arms and smiled at me like the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky. Like all the light in the world. “Wide open.”
“Then let’s go home,” I said. “And have some more of this day.”