Chapter 18 Angeni Luna #2
“Yeah, it is. I posted something about it. Anyway,” she said, stopping short of asking Sitka to read the post and give her thoughts right there on the spot. Since when was Angeni so insecure? It was the book project getting to her, making her question her abilities and worth.
“I’ll probably take Freya into the forest today while you write, if that’s okay,” Sitka said. “It’s so beautiful out.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Angeni said. “Send me photos. I like to feel like I’m there too. It’s so hard to be inside when it’s beautiful out.”
“How’s the writing coming along?” Sitka asked.
“Can I be honest with you?”
Angeni needed to be honest with someone, and she surprised herself by deciding that person was Sitka.
Sitka finally looked up from feeding Freya and said, “Of course.”
“I’m struggling with it. The book.”
“Oh,” Sitka said. Her face morphed from surprised to pensive. “Well, it is a book. I don’t suppose you’ve written one before?”
Angeni shook her head.
“I mean, that’s quite the undertaking, writing a book. I can’t imagine you thought it would be . . . easy?”
Angeni had a hard time deciphering if Sitka was empathizing with the difficulty of the task at hand, or if she was calling Angeni foolish for attempting it.
“Maybe not easy. But I thought it would be easier than it is.”
“I’m happy to read anything if you want feedback,” Sitka said.
But that was the problem—Angeni didn’t have much of anything for her to read.
“Thank you, I’ll keep that in mind,” Angeni said.
A brief silence followed, and Angeni felt compelled to fill it. “My editor wants me to include more personal information in it. I think that’s what’s tripping me up.”
“Oh,” Sitka said. “I can see how that would be new territory for you.”
“Not new,” Angeni said, defensive. “I share so much about my life with my followers.”
Sitka shrugged like she didn’t agree.
“What?” Angeni asked.
Sitka shrugged again. “You share what you want people to see. You’ve said so yourself, right?”
Angeni had said something like that, but Sitka’s phrasing made her sound disingenuous.
“I don’t see how my personal story should matter as much as my teachings,” she said. “My personal story could be a distraction.”
“It would sell more books,” Sitka said. “I’m sure that’s what your agent is after.”
“I mean, it’s not like my personal story is that interesting.”
Though it was.
Sitka gave her a hard stare. “I wouldn’t know,” she said.
As Angeni was trying to understand her cold tone, her hidden meaning, Sitka’s face rearranged again. She smiled and said, “You said you and Erik are having a date tonight, right?”
Angeni had asked her to watch Freya after dinner so that she and Erik could have their time together. She’d called it a date because that sounded better, more romantic, than “sex appointment.”
“Yes, if that’s okay. Erik and I haven’t spent true quality time together in ages,” Angeni said. “If you can watch her, then bring her to me to eat at bedtime, that would be great.”
“Okay,” Sitka said.
Sitka continued feeding Freya, who was enjoying every bite, tapping her fingers together in the way they’d taught her to request “more.”
“Can I ask how you two met?” Sitka asked.
“Erik and me?”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t a story Angeni and Erik shared publicly because it didn’t paint either of them in a great light.
Erik had just gotten out of rehab and been told by his sponsor not to pursue any romantic relationships for at least a year.
Angeni was in her own recovery program of sorts, a group of Indigenous natural healers who had taken her under their wing.
It was this group that introduced her to shamanic rituals using a psychoactive brew called ayahuasca.
And it was on one of her ayahuasca journeys that she committed to a year of celibacy as part of decentering men in her life and finding her way back to herself.
Three weeks into that commitment, she met Erik.
It was at a spiritual retreat on Orcas Island.
Erik was there with Matt and Jer, who he’d met in rehab and come to consider his brothers.
Angeni was there alone. She had actually planned for it to be a silent retreat for herself, the ultimate exercise in going inward.
The organizers of the retreat knew that was her intention and had said they would support her.
On the first day, everyone was informed of her planned silence.
Erik flashed her a smile, his white teeth gleaming, and she smiled back at him.
A handful of hours later, they were already talking.
It was in the buffet line for dinner. Erik stepped behind Angeni and, as she dished out a helping of salad onto her plate, whispered, “I know you can’t talk to me, but I just have to say I feel so pulled to talk to you.”
Just those words sent a pulse of electricity through her body. She felt her cheeks redden, revealing to him wordlessly that she found him charming.
“If you want to talk to me, meet me behind the yoga studio after dinner,” he said. “It can be our secret. If not, no worries. If we’re meant to be, we’ll find each other another time.”
He stepped around her then, his arm grazing her side as he did, sending more of that electricity through her.
She watched him at the end of the line as he placed a brownie on his plate.
He didn’t look back at her, though she was sure he could feel her eyes on him.
For a second, she wondered if she’d heard him correctly, if this movie scene of a moment had really happened.
She sat at a table alone to eat, glancing up every now and then to see him eating his meal.
The idea of meeting him was tantalizing.
Our secret. When he rose from his table and took his plate to the bin of dirty dishes, he looked over at her, flashed that smile again.
As if under a spell, she stood and took her own plate to the bin. Then she followed him outside.
The yoga studio was a yurt structure at the far end of the retreat property.
She watched him disappear behind it and, after looking around for any witnesses, went to find him.
He was sitting on a wooden bench, one leg crossed over the other, looking satisfied with himself in a way that made her doubt coming.
He’d asked for her presence, and she was just giving it to him, demonstrating to him that she was willing to abandon her principles for a stranger. This wasn’t who she wanted to be.
“You came,” he said.
She nodded, not sure if she should break her silence for him just yet.
“You’re so gorgeous,” he said.
She finger-combed a strand of hair behind her ear.
Men had always told her she was gorgeous, and she had always mistakenly considered that enough of a reason to fall madly in love.
When you grow up feeling unloved by your primary caretaker, you assume you are unlovable.
In this year of celibacy, she was supposed to be focusing on healing and seeing herself as worthy of love.
She was supposed to be tending to her wounds, caring for herself for once.
“I don’t know why, but I feel this attraction to you,” he said. “I mean, you’re beautiful, but it’s more than that.”
She sat next to him on the bench, communicating her willingness to hear him out.
He told her his story, how he’d started drinking when he was thirteen as a way to cope with a stressful home life, two parents constantly fighting, one of them always leaving for days at a time without any assurance of a return.
She nodded enthusiastically so he would know she understood the pain of a fleeing parent.
That was when he took her hand, held it in between his two hands.
He told her that he’d been numbing himself for his entire adult life and now, after rehab, he had a clarity he’d never had before.
His sponsor had reminded him that his growth had been stunted starting at the age of thirteen, when he effectively chose alcohol and checked out of life.
Despite his adult body, he was a quasi-teenager, going through phases of rebellion and discovery on his way to mature adulthood.
He was not supposed to pursue a relationship while in this stage of his life.
It was only fair to his partner to have that mature adult version.
“That may have been too much information,” he said. “But I felt you should know.”
He was still holding her hand, tightly, like he intended to never let go.
Angeni spoke. “It’s not too much information. Thank you for sharing.”
“She speaks!”
She shushed him. “I’m on a silent retreat.”
“Right, right,” he said. “Well, anyway, maybe we can stay in touch, and when my mature adult self is ready for action, I’d love to take you to dinner.”
Angeni nodded.
But the next day, they met at the same bench and kissed for two hours.
Erik confided in her that while his primary addiction was alcohol, there had been “a thing with sex.” An addiction, he meant.
He said the two went together—the booze and the bodies.
There was rarely one without the other. He was a changed man, though, no longer interested in sex outside a committed, growth-oriented relationship.
“I want the physical, mental, emotional connection,” he’d said. “The trifecta.”
The day before the end of the retreat, they sneaked into the yoga yurt and had sex on a stack of mats.
They looked into each other’s eyes the entire time.
This was new for Angeni, who was accustomed to closing her eyes and going somewhere else in her mind.
This was connected sex. It was something she hadn’t had before.
She usually faked orgasms, but she didn’t have to use her acting skills with Erik.
They came together, something Angeni hadn’t thought was really possible.