Cera
THIRTY-ONE
The Easter Parade: New Orleans answers Lent with a parade of open carriages and bonnets, faces lifted bare in the daylight, a procession with nothing hidden. She chooses slowly, in the light, with her eyes open and his face plain in front of her.
My phone beeps while I'm cross-legged on my apartment floor, sorting the Sol House invoices into piles. I look toward the sound but don't see it.
It beeps again, so I stand and walk to the kitchen and spot it on the counter by the sink. I pick it up to see two texts from Wells.
Hey. Great seeing you the other night at the opening.
No pressure at all. If you're ever up for coffee, I'd love to catch up.
I read them twice. If he'd pushed, asked outright for a second chance, leaned on what he built for me, I could have shut it down without blinking. A low-pressure ask with no hook in it is what gets under my guard before I can set it.
I type back before I can talk myself out of it, because the longer I sit on this, the less sure I'll become.
Great seeing you, too. I don't think that's a great idea, Wells. Wish you the best.
I hit send, and my stomach drops the second it's gone. My thumb hovers like I can pull it back out of the air, like once I move it, it's too late.
Declining him is the opposite of everything I want.
I want to know how he became the man I keep catching pieces of, the one who stood in front of a crowd and talked about giving kids a place to land, who quit smoking and shows up to yoga and doesn't carry himself like a man hiding anymore.
I want to know how a gutted building behind a chain-link fence turned into rooms full of kids and light.
And I want to tell him about India, about the dark mornings before the sun came up and the one where I woke and didn't hate myself, about the kids on the other side of the world who giggled through tree pose.
The words crowd up in my chest. I don't send them. I set the phone facedown back on the counter and walk back over to the floor.
I know this pull. I know the hunger to believe someone who has hurt me, to believe this time will be different. Wanting to be loved has never once kept me safe. That's why I sent it. I press my palms flat to my thighs and breathe through the ache like India taught me to.
Lin taps his pen on his notebook and looks down the table. "Youth programming. Cera, how are the classes landing? You've been here a month, now, so what kind of feedback can you give?"
"Things are really good. Better than good." The early afternoon light off the tall windows catches the rim of my water glass. I turn my notebook around to my own scrawl.
"Monday and Wednesday after-school are full.
Thursday's close. I've got regulars now, kids who come early to claim the same square of floor every week.
One of them, Kelly, walked in last Tuesday and dropped straight into tree pose before I'd said a word.
She's been practicing at home and is so proud to show me. "
Lin grins. "That's the whole point."
"The little ones giggle through every balance pose and fall over and get back up."
He makes a note and asks if I need anything. A few more blocks for the older kids, nothing urgent. The meeting rolls on around me, paint supplies and a basketball league and parent feedback that runs mostly warm, and I sit in it taking notes, part of the machine that makes the place run.
A year ago, I watched a dream like this through a fence. Now I'm at the table inside it, and the kids come because there is a place here that is safe and warm and fun.
Lin wraps it, and the staff scatters. I pack up slowly because I still have some time before the kids get out of school.
I haven't heard from or seen Wells since the text after the grand opening party. It's probably best, but I still think about him every day. Maybe he's no longer doing yoga, or maybe out of respect for me, he found a different yoga studio than Om. He took the no and left it where I put it.
Every man I've known has treated a no as the opening line of a negotiation, a thing to wear down until it tired into yes. Wells just stepped back, and the empty space where the pushing would be is the thing I keep circling.
Downstairs, twenty minutes before the session, I roll the mats into rows and line the blocks and straps along the wall.
The kids trickle in, Marcus first, claiming his back corner without asking, then Kelly barefoot with her ponytail half-loose, and by four, I've got a dozen of them spread across the floor.
We start with breath. I talk them down into it, four counts in, hold, slow out, and the room settles a minute in, the wiggling stilling, even the bouncers going quiet.
Shaking it out, everyone stands into mountain, into tree, and I tell them to pick a spot on the wall and lock their eyes to it.
Half of them topple and laugh and climb back up.
Moving through our normal routine, warrior first, then triangle, I walk the rows, adjusting a hip here, a shoulder there, until the breathing goes deep and the energy in the room drops into something soft. Then I bring them down to their backs, feet falling open, palms up.
"Close your eyes. You don't have to do anything right now. Just be here."
I sit at the front and close mine, too, and breathe with them. With a smaller class today, a dozen kids breathe in time. When I open my eyes, Wells is in the doorway.
He's leaning against the frame at the back, arms crossed, still as the room. He doesn't wave or smile. He watches, and he doesn't break the quiet, just settles into it, calm like the old Wells never managed.
I bring the kids up slowly and thank them for showing up. They wipe down their mats with the sanitary wet wipes and make sure their space is as they found it. It took a couple of weeks for them to get used to our protocol, but now they do it without me asking.
After I finish stacking the blocks at the back of the studio, I walk toward him rather than hunt up another chore to hide behind.
He straightens off the frame. "Meant to make the staff meeting earlier, but got held up at the office. I had to drop something off with Lin and saw you teaching. I hope you don't mind that I watched the end of your practice."
"No, of course not."
"Everything going well here for you?"
"It's really been better than I could have imagined. How are things at Stone?"
"Good. We finally hired someone for the graphics work you used to do." He lets a beat go. "She's not as good as you were, but she keeps the board happy enough."
The compliment lands with nothing hooked to it. I'm smiling before I decide to.
"I'm actually leaving early today. I have a dentist appointment."
"I'll walk out with you. I've already talked to Lin."
We come out into the afternoon together, and I cross to the rack where I locked my bike this morning. Wells waits while I work the lock. I get my hands on the bars, and the question is out before the fear can catch it.
"You want to walk down to that juice place we went to? The citrus cure must have done the trick."
He smiles, unguarded, before he folds it back into the restraint that's always been his. "Sure, that'd be great. Do you have time before your appointment?"
"Yeah, I've got a little time."
I wheel the bike off the rack and angle it between us as we start down the block. The tires tick against the concrete in time with our steps, and the frame gives my hands something to do.
For the first stretch, neither of us fills the quiet. He's off my left, matching my pace without crowding it. He's so easy, which unsettles me more than talking would. We took this same walk in the spring, him and me, and a juice and a whole open afternoon.
"They're good with you," he says. "The kids. You were born to do this."
It's the first thing either of us has said since the bike rack, and it's true enough to loosen the knot under my ribs. "We're good for each other."
His mouth does the thing that isn't quite a smile but wants to be. We keep walking, and the quiet squeezes back in.
The green awning comes up three blocks down, the red hand-painted sign coming into view. I lean the bike on the wall. He holds the door for me to walk in.
"You want a Citrus Cure, or another of that green sludge you had last time?"
"Great memory. I think I'm going for a Citrus Cure this time. I'm thinking it must be magic, or something."
He remembered. Over seven months and everything that came after, and he remembered.
I wrap my hands around the cold cup and look at the table, not at him.
"I owe you a better answer than the one I gave you." It comes out before I decide to let it. "The text last month after the opening."
He goes still across from me.
"It wasn't that I didn't want to get together." I make myself keep going. "It was that I did, and it scared the hell out of me."
I turn the glass a quarter circle on the table. "I'm not telling you that so it means more than it does. I'm not looking to fall into anything. I just couldn't keep pretending I don't want you in my life."
He takes a breath like he's setting each word down with care. "That's fair. A juice every once in a while works for me."
The tension in my shoulders gives a little.
"I've probably got to go to make my appointment, but wondering if I could cash in on a rain check on that coffee?"
"Unlimited rain checks," he says as he takes a sip.
"Okay. I'll text you."
We walk out together, and without asking, he walks me back to my place. It isn't awkward, and I don't wish he wouldn't.
I've sat with this for nine days.
I've drafted a text four different ways and deleted all four.
How about that coffee?
Done. Sent. There's no going back now.
I get to Rosie's first and take the table in the back by the window. He walks in a few minutes later. There it is again, that settled quiet he carries now. He used to fold himself into the smallest corner of every room and choose the dark. Now he strolls in easily, like he knows he belongs here.