7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
A t the start of personal training session three, Beau asked, “Did you lose the red shades?”
“Didn’t feel like wearing them today,” I answered. If he expected me to give 110%, I could no longer hide behind the red tint.
We put in a thirty-minute easy round on the bike. My T-shirt, a rainbow-colored chameleon labeled The Only Constant is Change stuck to the sweat on my back.
“You’re not getting enough power on the bike because your legs are tight. We’ll focus on your lower body today.”
Focus on my lower body? He’d have no arguments from me.
He put on a track of some chimes ringing over and over again to make the stretch session more vibey and relaxed. I bent over, giving my legs a slight bend to graze the ground with my knuckles.
“Move from side to side to release the tension in your back.”
I swayed like an elephant swinging its trunk. The tension in my lower back relaxed.
“Now roll up carefully, vertebra by vertebra.”
I popped up. No big deal. Was this the worst Beau could throw at me?
“Slower. You’re moving too quickly. Try it again.”
I folded myself over again, with the slight crook in my knees to relax my arms. He stepped behind me, the tip of his sneakers only a few inches from my heels.
“Can I touch you?”
I nodded. Though naughty mommy ideas of those sneakers wedging between mine and his long fingers digging into the full part of my hips entered my mind. I gave my pelvic floor a preemptive squeeze at the idea .
Instead, he put two fingers on either side of my spine right above my coccyx.
“Really imagine your body in a C . Hollow out your abs, exhaling. Now roll up.”
I flexed my glutes and tipped my tailbone down. His fingers followed my spine. “Do you feel the difference?”
A part of my back clicked loudly into place, announcing my age. His fingers walked up on either side of my furrow. “Roll your shoulders, move your blades toward your spine as you move up.”
His fingers were now at the base of my neck. I lifted my head into place. My eyes slowly opened. In our reflection, my gaze met Beau’s penetrating one. I shifted, rubbing my thighs together and licked my parted lips.
“Feel more aligned?” he asked.
I was feeling something alright. I nodded, but I was in a daze. That was the Beau Bishop effect.
His gaze followed my body from head to toe. He was checking me out. Did I, Sir Hooper, possess the desirability of my decade-younger self?
Ooh la la. Yeah right. What was so enticing? Gravity’s pull on my boobs, which dropped bit by bit every year? The newly emerged “hormonal gut” which granted my belly even more of a curve? No, Adonis-like personal trainers were monitoring form, which sometimes resembled checking someone out. I needed to tell my brain and my neglected libido to chill.
“Get on all fours,” he rasped.
Wait… wh-what?
I dropped to my knees, locking eyes with him as I moved down. If he was going to bring a naughty edge to these sessions, I was at least going to project the same energy right back. Two could play this game.
He met me on the mat, parallel to me.
“There are a few lower body stretches I like doing from here. First, we’re going to do a cat-cow. It’s a yoga move we’ve done before. It helps stretch your core muscles, and you find equilibrium with the curve of your spine. If you like being a good girl and receiving extra credit, you can tuck in your toes and get a foot stretch out of this as well.”
He had me at good girl. I had to bite my lip as he modeled, and I mirrored him, stretching my tailbone and chest up, cow, and then curling both down, cat. I attempted tucking my toes. Yowzah! My foot arches felt like they were being pulled apart. Untucking my toes, I settled for regular credit and being a regular ole woman over being his good girl.
“Do a few more for me.” He jumped to his feet and seemed to study my body flexing, as if I was some sort of mammal presenting herself to her alpha, and he watched the C’s my tailbone drew in the air. “In cow, push your shoulder blades together. In cat, push through the floor and find the room between your blades. Your back will thank me.”
I completed one more cat-cow, trying my best to incorporate the pointers. My back muscles loosened thanks to Beau’s expertise.
He dropped to the mat and demonstrated some stretches to help release my psoas. Next, the calves. He showed me how easily he lifted his body into a downward dog, stretching his calves by reaching his heels to the floor as his hips angled up and back.
“If you bend your knees a bit, you’ll feel where your hips need to be to get the most out of this position.”
I did what I was told.
“Straighten your legs. Now, hold it.”
He slid behind me and his hands went for my hips. Holy shit. He tugged them back. “Good. Keep your hips back. Your shoulders are lifting up too high. I find if I treat my arms like rope and imagine them twisting, my shoulders find the right position.”
I followed the word picture. My weight distributed itself equally among my fingers. The pressure on my index finger was the same as on my pinkie. My shoulders found more space in this position, and my hips slid farther back—closer to him.
“Good. Now I like to walk my dog, meaning I pedal out my calves.” He scrambled back down to his mat and demonstrated what the hell he just meant. Shifting my weight from calf to calf stretched my legs inch by inch. They were tight. Really tight.
I sucked air through my teeth.
“Is it pain or is it discomfort?” he asked.
I breathed in and out. “Discomfort.” I experienced a similar feeling twenty years ago when I had sex for the first time.
“Then your calves really needed this. Listen to the chimes. Breathe, relax into the stretch.”
I didn’t disappear into the music. I lingered on the memory of him pulling my hips back to him.
“Sir?”
I shook myself out of my stupor.
“Lie on your back,” he said.
Sometimes I wished I were less polite. I’d tell him his orders are hitting all the wrong parts of my brain. I was not recognizing an instructor honed in on improving my physical fitness but a fellow dirty mind taking me down a whole other path of physical fitness .
He handed me a yoga strap. The timbre as it dropped to the ground sounded like a loosening belt buckle. He stretched out next to me, causing another anticipatory twitch of my Kegel muscles.
“Leave one leg straight and raise your other leg like so.”
He lifted his leg, again at a perfect ninety-degree angle. What was it about exercise and ninety-degree angles? He placed the strap under the ball of his foot and pulled the ends. With the help of his arm strength, he lowered his shin toward his face. He grunted, obviously finding discomfort. “This is one of my favorite hamstring stretches.”
I expressed the equivalent of the meh emoji. How could anyone have a favorite stretch? Particularly one that seemed to be digging into the minutia of my muscle fibers and eking out any bit of pain.
He rolled to his knees and stood up at the end of my mat. “Can I help you straighten your leg? One hand would be on your ankle and the other above your knee.”
“No objections from me.”
He kneeled at my feet and did as he said. What I wasn’t prepared for was the warmth radiating from his hands that sent so many embarrassing sensations up my thigh to sizzle below my belly. Frankly, he was not charging me enough for these sessions. The pressure he put on my leg was light, helping achieve a deeper stretch.
“You don’t want to force it when someone helps you stretch. Tighten the hold on your strap.”
I pulled the ends of the strap, gathering the fabric inch by inch. He let go of my leg, and I maintained the length he had helped me achieve.
“Other leg,” he said. Strangely, breathy and low.
I lowered my stretched leg and lifted the other. I looped the strap around the arch of my foot and pulled the ends of it toward my shoulder, gathering the excess in my hands. His hand met right above my left knee to straighten my leg. I gasped.
“Good?”
I blinked and nodded, inhaling and exhaling through the stretch. If this was as close as I could get to Beau, I could die a happy woman.
Soon the hamstring stretch was over. He showed me a couple more moves—something for the IT band that combined the concepts of horrendous and orgasmic. Opposing forces contributing to my restoration or blah blah blah.
“Honestly, I could see myself using these moves into old age,” I said as I packed up my gym bag.
“I’m glad to expand your horizons.”
“I should put on the Yelp review so good you’ll need a cigarette afterward .” I laughed, expecting him to join in, but he narrowed his eyes. That immediately put my giggles on mute.
“Was that a sex joke?” His eyebrows expressed all the shock.
I lowered my gaze. It would take me another swipe of my credit card to buy the time to explain all the innuendo he let pass, and I mistakenly interpreted the vibe. Got it, keep the pervy shit to a minimum. “Yup.” I popped my p , to make my shame linger.
His face relaxed. Sweet little crinkles surrounded his eyes. “Good one. See you tomorrow.”
I had it bad. Why did I prepay?