Chapter 6
Six
Jason
“I’m going to take a shower,” I announce, and the words feel abrupt in the stillness. Victor startles visibly, and shoves back from the sofa’s edge as if I’ve hurled something at him. Great. This week in Costa Rica just became even more awkward. A full seven days together, under one roof?
I have no idea how I’ll survive it.
I lift the paper cup for a final swallow; the coffee is lukewarm now and bitter on my tongue. I push myself to my feet, fighting the heavy drag of jet lag.
“Um…” Victor clears his throat. He’s standing on the other end of the sofa now, hands clasped behind his neck.
“Yeah?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
“Before you take that shower—” My eyes betray me by drifting to watch how his arms flex under the thin cotton of his T-shirt.
“I’m leading yoga sessions in the evenings before dinner, and in the mornings before breakfast.” He unclasps his hands and checks his watch, one of those bulky digital activity trackers that looks almost delicate on Victor’s wrist. “I figured I’d start around five-thirty, and we’d go about thirty or forty minutes, to give folks time to shower and change for dinner.
Kelsey and Adrienne said they’ll join.” He ducks his head, then meets my eyes again. “Would you like to come?”
I shift my weight. “I’m not very good at yoga.” Leah dragged me to a class once, in a studio with mirrored walls and a spongy floor. Everyone else unfurled their mats in seamless synchronicity while I fumbled behind them, my hamstrings protesting every stretch.
“You don’t have to be good at it, Jason.
Yoga isn’t about accomplishment. It’s about balance.
” I must look unconvinced because he softens, shaking his head with a smile.
“Some stretching might help after your flights, is all I’m saying.
Tonight won’t be intense. And I’m a very good teacher, if I do say so myself. ”
He doesn’t need to add that I owe him some courtesy for being a dick earlier. He brought me coffee—hell, even a cold beer—after I’d been a total asshole. He’s gone out of his way to be kind.
I owe him this.
“Sure,” I say before I can overthink it. His grin lights up his face so suddenly it catches me off guard. Is Victor that easy to please? “Tonight, anyway. No promises about the rest of the week.”
I cannot think too hard about pleasing Victor.
“No pressure,” he says. “Though you may be surprised at how much it helps.”
We’ll see about that. I move toward my suitcase, which Victor must have moved from the entryway to a corner of the suite. “What the fuck am I supposed to wear for this?” I mutter, tipping the suitcase on its side and unzipping it.
“Something comfortable,” he answers, and shit, I didn’t think he’d be close enough to hear me. “We’ll be barefoot and the pavilion has mats and props.” He moves behind me, voice softer. “You’ll be fine.”
I root through the contents of my suitcase until I find a T-shirt and a pair of blue running shorts that I brought with the probable delusion of jogging while we’re here.
“You know,” Victor says behind me. “You can unpack your clothes and stuff in the bedroom. There’s plenty of closet and drawer space.”
I glance over my shoulder and see that he’s already shouldered my black garment bag.
He disappears past the arch into the bedroom and I hear the scrape of wood sliding against wood—the closet door opening, I presume—and the metallic click of hangers.
By the time I get to my feet and reach the bedroom doorway, Victor already has my garment bag unfolded, unzipped, and my suit jacket and pants for the wedding hung neatly in the closet, next to his nearly identical set, only slightly larger.
“I don’t…There’s no need…” Victor tosses a look over his shoulder at me and I snap my mouth shut. “Okay.”
The bedroom is only slightly smaller than the main room of the suite and the closet is a big, freestanding wooden cabinet with plenty of hanging space, plus a set of shelves where Victor has already arranged his toiletries in neat rows.
There’s a wide, low dresser, too, and he gestures at it.
“I took the right side. Left drawers are all yours.”
I exhale, surrendering to his kindness. “All right. I’ll unpack later.”
His grin blooms again. Mother of God, I will not survive this week if Victor smiles at me like that every time I agree with him.
He ducks into the bathroom while I strip off my travel clothes and pull on the T-shirt and shorts. I hang my blue slacks in the closet after stuffing my shirt and undershirt into a mesh laundry bag. Victor emerges and claps me on the shoulder. “Ready?”
My heart thumps off-beat, reminding me how out of place I feel here. As I’ll ever be, I guess.
We step onto the meandering stone path that winds between tropical foliage.
The air is thick with humidity and colorful heliconias and orchids line the path.
The grounds are stunning and I can hear quiet hoots and trills of birds settling in for the evening.
I’m itching to take my binoculars out tomorrow morning.
A carved wooden sign points to a “Birding Platform” and I clock the direction for tomorrow. Victor passes the sign without a glance and keeps going.
A dozen yards later, another arrow reads “Yoga Pavilion.” We reach a circular structure, woven from bamboo poles and thatch, open on the sides to the surrounding rainforest and cooled by gentle cross breezes.
Inside, Kelsey and Adrienne are already settled on mats.
There’s a young man a few years younger than Kelsey on the other side of her.
Victor makes a beeline for a set of cubbyholes that have extra mats. He hauls one out and hands it to me, then grabs a second for himself. He gestures at a pile of blocks made out of cork or something similar. “Take two of those, too.”
I manage mat and blocks in an awkward juggle, then settle on an empty space next to Adrienne.
“Nice to see you, Jason,” she says with a smile.
She’s wearing a stretchy band of fabric in a bright pattern of blues and purples to hold back her curly hair, green leggings, and a loose tank over a sports bra.
“Hi, Dad.” Kelsey leans around Adrienne. “How was your nap?”
I shoot a glare at Victor for tattling, but he’s unrolling his mat in front of our line and doesn’t even notice. “Fine,” I say. “I’m glad to see you, sweetie.”
She leans back and gestures to the young man on the mat beside her. “This is Silas, Dad. Adrienne’s law partner’s boyfriend. Silas, meet my dad, Jason, and my other dad, Victor.”
“Nice to meet you, Jason,” Silas says. “And you too, Victor.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I say. Silas looks to be barely half my age, mid-twenties, at best, and is lean and athletic in his own yoga attire. I wonder how old Adrienne's law partner is. He’s got to be older than Adrienne, given that she was one of the youngest in the firm’s history to make partner.
I finish unrolling my mat. I expect I’ll meet Silas’s boyfriend at dinner. I wonder what he’s doing instead of yoga with his young boyfriend. Whatever it is, I’m kind of wishing I were doing it too.
“Let’s begin,” Victor says. “Find a comfortable seat and let’s focus on our breath.”
Comfortable seat, my ass. No position I try feels remotely comfortable.
I start by folding my knees and sitting on my heels, like Victor, but my ankles refuse to bend that way.
Adrienne and Kelsey are sitting cross-legged, so I try that, but they’re both far more flexible than I am.
My knees are pointing nearly to the ceiling.
“You can close your eyes, if that’s comfortable,” Victor says.
I close my eyes, but my eyeballs immediately twitch and roll around under my lids.
“We’ll take five slow breaths in and out.
” I can hear the others inhaling deeply.
“And…exhale,” Victor says. His voice is coming from the other side of the room and my eyes open to locate him.
He’s rustling around in a big storage container near the wall of cubbies and brings a thick, padded cushion to me. “Sit on this so you can elevate your hips above your knees,” he says in a low, soothing voice.
I tuck the cushion under me and tentatively cross my legs in front. The ache in my ankles and hips subsides and my spine lengthens. Victor pats my shoulder in approval and returns to the front of the room.
“Inhale,” he says, resuming his seat on his folded legs. “And exhale.”
It’s easier to concentrate on breathing now that I’m more comfortable. I feel the gentle breeze on my skin, the day’s heat sliding away. We breathe in unison a few more times and then Victor says, “Now open your eyes if they’ve been closed and let’s move to our hands and knees.”
He takes us through a series of what he calls cat and cow stretches, then we all stand. “Let’s flow,” he says with a wide smile. Fuck if I know what that means, but everyone else seems to.
He gives step-by-step instructions, though, thankfully.
I mix up stepping back with the wrong foot occasionally, but it’s actually easier to follow than I thought it would be.
After a couple rounds of reaching up, folding forward, and stepping back, we end up in a pose Victor calls Downward-Facing Dog—I’m not even going to try remembering what he said the Sanskrit word for it is—which he tells us to hold for five breaths.
It’s much harder than it looks when Victor does it. My arms start shaking after breath number two and I grip the mat, my knuckles whitening. Victor’s been walking around in between demonstrations and he comes up alongside my mat. “Can I touch you to help adjust your pose?”
“Ungh,” I grunt, which I mean as consent and luckily he takes as such.
I don’t know how much longer I can stay like this.
He steps behind me, braces his bare feet on the outer edges of mine, and hooks his fingers in the creases at my hips.
Then he pulls my hips sort of up and back at the same time and damn if that doesn’t shift more of my weight onto my legs instead of my arms.
“Huh,” I say, still sort of muffled because I’m still freaking upside down.
“Better?”
“Yeah,” I manage. He pulls my hips up and back a little more, then smoothes his hands along my sides.
“Knit your ribs together.” I have no idea how the hell to do that but somehow, something shifts under his hands.
“Now turn your upper arms out and your forearms in.” Another instruction that makes no damn sense, but in trying to follow it, the strain in my shoulders eases and I feel more stable.
“There you go, that’s much better.”
He lets go of me and steps back. I immediately lose all the adjustments he made and my weight shifts back onto my arms and wrists.
When Victor tells us to bend our knees and rest our seat on the soles of our feet, I tell myself that I’m just glad to be out of that dog pose and not that I miss the warmth of his hands on my body.