Chapter Ten
Ten
Michelle
I’ve skipped Sunday Pilates for the last few weeks, and I was only too happy to get up and go this morning.
Until now, when I’ve been reduced to pile of quivering muscles, lactic acid, and pain receptors.
“It’s all that’s left of me,” I whine to Lauren, the Pilates drill sergeant Abigail swears by. “All that’s left is pain and—” My little speech cuts off as Lauren wraps her hand around my calf and twists.
I nearly scream, but there’s still not enough air in my lungs after the last set of the hundred we did.
“Rotate from the hips, not your ankles,” she barks over the pounding techno pop music. “From the hips!” she repeats, clapping her hands in time with the beat, a beat to which we’re supposed to all be kicking our legs up to our shoulders.
“With control, people!” Lauren yells, and I hold back a sob.
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
“And turn, left side. Start with baby circles, round out your stomach like a bowl, pull up through your pelvis.” Lauren meets my gaze in the mirror.
She looks perfect, with the barest sheen of sweat on her skin.
I’m beet red and drenched. I smell worse than a truck with a broken AC full of onions on July twenty-first.
“Good, Michelle, good,” she says, and I clench my teeth in what was supposed to be a smile but just comes off as a grimace. “That’s right, think about your anus. Concentrate on it.”
Someone behind me laughs, and I know what’s going to happen next, but I can’t do more than watch Lauren’s brown ponytail swing in the mirror and survive.
“You laugh now, but when your pelvic floor gives out and you struggle with incontinence, I want you to remember this day,” Lauren says fiercely.
God, she’s terrifying.
I love it.
“Mark my words, you may not think about your pelvic floor, but your pelvic floor thinks about you!”
It doesn’t make sense, but I suppose it’s metaphorical.
I’m at the point in this workout when everything Lauren says might have a deeper meaning. Hell, she might have the secret to nirvana.
I’d follow Lauren into the fiery pits of hell, and she’d probably yell at the devil himself to think about his anus.
Pretty spectacular talent, really.
“It burns,” I mutter, and the woman next to me manages a thumbs-up at me in the mirror.
If she says something about her anus while her thumb’s in the air—
“Focus, Michelle,” Lauren says, back in front of me. “Ten more reps.”
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
Somehow, I make it to the end of class.
I survive.
I lie face down on my yoga mat for longer than necessary, my body extremely unhappy with what I’ve just made it do.
“I haven’t seen you here in a while,” Lauren says.
I open one eye.
She’s sitting next to me, curled up like a contortionist, with the air of someone who regularly pretzels themselves.
I groan.
“Been too busy, yeah?”
An affirmative grunt.
“You did good today,” Lauren tells me.
I flop over onto my back, as graceful as a two-legged bulldog. Lauren hands me my water bottle.
“Thank you,” I croak before sitting up a little and drinking.
Ah, sweet nectar of the gods.
“Are you hungry?” Lauren asks. “This was my last class today.”
“I’m always starving after I work out.” My brain is hardly functioning, but my stomach? That’s working.
“There’s a good smoothie bowl place a few doors down.” She stands up and brushes off her hands, then extends one to me. “Come on, let’s go.”
I take her hand, letting her pull me up. “Are you going to talk about my pelvic floor while we eat?” I ask her, dead serious.
Her nose scrunches up. “That would be weird. Do you normally talk about your pelvic floor while you eat?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, “I can’t say that I do.”
Being upright is overrated, I decide. Lauren loops around the room, picking up anything left from the class and arranging the mats just so in their holders, all while I try to regain full use of my limbs. I spray off my mat, then roll it up and put it back where it goes.
“Is it weird that I asked you to lunch?” Lauren suddenly asks, her face scrunched up. “I was just hungry. You’re nice. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to—”
I tilt my head.
I should go home, shower, run to the office, and cross off a few more to-dos.
Tristan would hate that—in fact, I think he would be downright disappointed in me.
Oddly enough, the thought of him being disappointed is the thing that makes me finally answer her.
“I want to go. And no, it’s not weird. I don’t have plans, and I’ve been living at the office. Lunch with a friend who’s not from work sounds really good.” My stomach drops, because the minute the last sentence leaves my mouth, all I can think about is how I went to lunch with someone from work.
Someone who I wanted, however briefly, to be more than a friend.
Lauren tugs on a moss-green hoodie, pulling her long ponytail out from the neck. I toss on my own sweatshirt, my stomach growling.
“You look pissed off, even more than when I worked on your turnout earlier,” she notes.
I get the distinct feeling Lauren doesn’t have much of a filter.
It reminds me a little of Abigail, and I wish she was here, too.
“It’s a…it’s complicated. It’s not you. Or my turnout or lack thereof,” I tell her.
“Ooh.” A knowing look narrows her eyes. I follow her out of the little chic studio, and she locks the door behind us.
It’s a bit cold today, at least by LA standards, and with the fresh sweat, I wish I’d worn something warmer. I wrap my arms around myself, wincing at the fresh ache in my triceps and shoulders.
“Is it a guy?” Lauren asks. She points to the smoothie bowl place, which does look pretty cute, and I follow her down the sidewalk and through its door.
“Kind of,” I tell her. The smoothie place is a typical fast-casual chain, somehow brightly colored and antiseptic all at once.
“If I’m prying, just tell me to shut up.
I know I can be nosy. I tend to drive the other instructors at my studio crazy.
” She scans the menu, full of so many choices that I’m nearly overwhelmed.
“They always tell me I’m not allowed to teach yoga because I’d probably try to chat someone up during corpse pose. ”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad thing in your line of work, though,” I tell her honestly.
“You’d think so, huh?” she asks, with the air of someone who absolutely does not think so. “I guess it’s a good thing that they tell me like they see it.”
She rattles off her order to the young girl behind the counter, and I panic decide to get the same thing as her, without one single clue as to what it is.
Apparently, I trust Lauren with my pelvic floor and my smoothie bowl order. Who knew?
“Do you have a lot of friends?” The question pops out of her mouth as we pick a small table near the window, soaking in the February sunshine. “Not to pry. I swear, I’m just curious.”
I don’t really know how to answer that, because I don’t really like any of the answers I have for it.
“I stay pretty busy with work,” I tell her.
“I’m only asking because making more friends—like, real friends—that was my resolution for this year.” She sighs, tapping her fingernails together. “It’s February, and this is my first attempt.” Her eyebrows waggle at me. “You are the chosen one.”
That makes me laugh, and she shoots me a relieved smile.
“That honestly sounds like an awesome resolution.” If I sound a touch jealous, it’s because I definitely am. “I am nowhere near as good about going out with friends as I used to be.”
“It was easier in our early twenties, right?” She gestures enthusiastically at everything and nothing all at once before slapping her hand on the laminate tabletop. “Now it’s like everyone has a million things to do or they have kids or they’re married and meeting up is just—”
“It’s really hard,” I agree.
“Two Coco Loco acai bowls with green Get Amped blend,” someone calls.
Lauren shoots to her feet, flashing me a smile. “I’ll go get them.”
“Okay,” I tell her, bemused. Bemused, because I already forgot what the heck I’d ordered, and now that they’ve said it out loud, I’m not so sure it sounds good at all.
Lauren bounces back over, plopping a huge bowl in front of me topped with coconut flakes, fresh sliced bananas, pineapple, mango, and strawberries.
“That looks really delicious.” Relief. I would choke down something that didn’t, but wanting to eat it sounds a lot better.
“You’re gonna love it,” she says happily, gracefully getting back in her chair. Then she glances up at me. “At least, probably. I love it. Doesn’t mean you’ll love it.”
A snort erupts out of me. “Fair enough.”
“It’s great for evacuating your bowels. Lots of fiber.”
I slowly look up at her face, but she’s barely holding back her laughter.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I didn’t say anus, but lunch has only just begun.”
That’s all it takes for me to crack up, and she joins in until we’re both giggling uncontrollably, earning dubious looks from the people who work there.
“They probably have to keep the restroom extra stocked from all the evacuations,” Lauren whispers.
“I can’t decide if I’m terrified to try this now or not,” I tell her, my abs aching from the combination of Pilates and laughter. “And you made it so it hurts to laugh.”
“As long as you’re not peeing while you laugh,” she says primly, tossing her ponytail over her shoulder.
“Fair enough,” I say with a snort. Abigail is going to die when I tell her Lauren knows people think her anus talk is ridiculous and does it even more to get a reaction.
Who knew?
I dig in with a long-handled spoon that screams BIODEGRADABLE in all caps, and breathe a sigh of relief. Yum.
“You have good taste,” I tell her after I swallow. “In smoothies and friends, obviously.”
She grins at me while she chews and swallows. “Obviously.”
The blenders behind the counter make a steady hum in the background, and a constant but slow stream of customers wander in and out while we eat.
“Do you see Abigail a lot still?” Lauren asks.
“I wish. She’s been gone a lot for filming. I think she’s coming into town this weekend or next, though.”
“She seems like a lot of fun.”