Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
The worst part of this class isn’t the breathwork (strangely uncomfortable), my singing voice (laughable), or the various stretches (unexpectedly difficult, but oddly relaxing).
It’s Adrian’s shirt. At least he’s wearing one, I guess.
The problem is it’s made of some kind of stretchy material that clings to the muscles lining his back.
Pulls tight across his shoulder blades. Tucks into the underside of his arm because it can’t seem to fully contain the bulk of his biceps.
I swear he did this to me on purpose. Every time he swivels around on the mat, I try to glare at him questioningly.
Like Why must you make my life physically and irredeemably painful?
but said with my eyeballs and general aura of anger.
Adrian just smiles innocently like this is all a big coincidence.
Fifty minutes and four peace mantras later, Mom instructs us to lie on our backs. I close my eyes and try to focus on the faint lavender smell and the soft chimes in the music. All I can smell is Adrian’s cologne. All I can hear is that groan he made when I bit his—
Breathe, Kath. Focus on your breath.
As soon as Mom ends the class with a bow and a namaste, I shoot up from the mat. This isn’t going to be a graceful or polite exit. Still, I cannot be in the same room as Adrian and that blasted shirt for a single gong beat longer.
“Kath!” I’m halfway to the door when Mom’s voice halts my steps.
I mutter a curse as I turn. Mom is standing with a small group of people in a semicircle near the front of the room. Adrian is, of course, with them. Because apparently, I haven’t suffered enough.
Mom gives me another enthusiastic wave, gesticulating like she’s marshaling an airplane to a runway. Still, I hesitate, trying to find a way to leave without crushing her. Completely of their own volition, my eyes flit to Adrian’s face.
He’s smiling, but it’s tentative. Like he’s bracing himself for what I’ll do next.
My heart sinks. I’ve been so focused on Adrian’s muscles that I didn’t stop to think about his feelings.
I bolted away last night without a word of explanation, and probably left him confused at best or pissed at worst. I can be an adult and have a conversation with him.
I can be an even bigger adult and explain why I ran out. First things first, I guess.
Clinging to my yoga mat like it’s something between a comfort blanket and a shield, I slink toward the group.
“Did you have somewhere you need to be?” Mom asks as I approach.
I position myself so that Adrian is standing as far from me as possible and mumble something about a calorie deficit.
Mom rewards me with a patient smile.
“Kath,” she explains to the others, “needs to eat a lot.”
The assembled students nod like this is a perfectly reasonable explanation for Mimi’s daughter sprinting out of her own mother’s yoga class.
“But now that you’re here,” Mom continues, “I’d like to introduce you to some friends.”
She motions first to a muscular woman with a crop of gray hair that rings her headband like a mane. “This is Susan. She’s a retired firefighter.”
Susan flashes a chipped-tooth smile. “It’s great to meet you, Kath. Your mom brags about you constantly.” Her voice drops into a conspiratorial whisper. “But I think she has a right.”
“Thanks, Susan.”
Next, Mom motions to an older man with a smartly trimmed beard and brow-line glasses. “And Rob, my business partner.”
He reaches out a hand to shake mine in a firm grasp. “I’ve heard so much about you that this is a genuinely exciting moment for me.”
Mom beams at him. “Rob is responsible for this dream becoming reality,” she explains. “He’s got the head for the business side of things. And he’s very comfortable with a spreadsheet. You two would get along.”
I nod and smile, even as some kind of demonic leprechaun kicks off a dance party in my stomach. Because Adrian is the next, and last, person in the semicircle. Mom is going to introduce him. Then he’ll make eye contact with me. I might vaporize.
“Mimi is being far too modest,” Rob says tenderly. “She’s the heart of this operation. I’m just the support crew.”
Mom elbows him, and then catches my gaze pointed at Adrian’s bare feet.
“Right,” she says warmly. “This is Adrian. He’s a rowing coach!”
“Hey, Kath,” he says. His smile looks easy again, no traces of tension haunting it anymore.
“Hey,” I say, striving for the same level of nonchalance, but I’m positive that hey was approximately two octaves higher than the last couple.
Mom clearly doesn’t miss any of this because her eyes cut between us. “You two already met? At the boathouse?”
“Actually, we fought a duel for a lemon bar,” Adrian says.
“And I won,” I add.
Adrian squeezes his lips to repress a smile. “That seemed self-evident.”
I forcibly beat back the surge in my stomach. “How is it that you two know each other?”
“I offered some free yoga classes to teachers and coaches as one of the opening events for the studio.”
“They were a huge success,” Rob adds. “Just one class with Mimi and they’re hooked.”
“Nonsense.” She swats at his shoulder, but I can’t miss the glow in her eyes.
She should be proud. If I can cast Adrian’s expanse of pectoral muscles out of my mind for five seconds, I remember to be awed, too. Her studio seems to be an unequivocal success and, in the few moments during class when I wasn’t incapacitated, I enjoyed myself.
“This class was great, Mom, and the studio is beautiful. I can also see why yoga is a solid recovery tool.”
From the corner of my eye, I catch Adrian beaming. My neck warms.
Mom is now glancing between us, a small, twisted smile on her face.
“Rob!” she says suddenly. “I need to talk to you about year-end accounting.”
Rob’s bushy eyebrows draw together. “It’s July?”
“Or, you know, the other number things. The numbers we have to think about in July. We’ll just be off!” With sudden intensity, she rams Rob and Susan with her tiny hands and whisks them away.
“Wait, didn’t you need me for something?” I call after her. “You said you wanted to talk after class.”
“Oh, no,” she says over her shoulder without pausing her escape. “Rob and I have very important numbers to attend to. You and I can talk later.”
I detect the barest wink in one of her gray eyes.
God, not her, too.
Adrian shifts his weight and runs a hand through his hair. “Were you serious about being calorie deficient?”
As if on cue, my stomach growls. I wince.
“I could use another breakfast.” I pause. Adult, Kath. You’re an adult. “Also, we should talk about last night.”
Adrian nods, face inscrutable again. “I’d like that.”
. . .
Adrian takes me to a brunch place with mismatched vintage furniture and an open kitchen that’s soaking the air with the smell of freshly brewed coffee and sizzling bacon.
I would have asked him to meet at my mom’s house to avoid the expense of eating out, but I wasn’t eager to return to the scene of our fiery make-out session.
Plus, we need to have this conversation approximately a million miles away from Mom’s eardrums.
“The pancakes are top-notch,” he says, nudging me with an elbow as I scrutinize the handwritten menu on a chalkboard above the register. “The ones with apple butter have the power to make my knees weak.”
“Well,” I say, “since strong joints are quite important for rowing, I’ll stick with the eggs.”
Adrian laughs like I’m joking, but I blink back at him, not letting my expression crack.
It’s not like I have a problem with apple pancakes.
It’s just that they have no value to me.
They’ll give me, what, a rush of pleasure?
That doesn’t help me train harder or row faster, not compared to something more nutritionally dense.
Besides, if I fill up on apple pancakes now, I’ll miss an opportunity to hit some of my nutritional benchmarks, and I really don’t want to be sitting up in bed eating deli meat tonight.
Adrian’s laugh fades to a wry smile as he evaluates my expression, like, somehow, he finds my obstinance more charming than irritating. And that smile—not to mention the tender look in his eyes—somehow does make my knees feel weak.
“Suit yourself,” he says and steps up to the counter.
We perch ourselves at a high-top table under the shade of a trellis dripping with jasmine. It’s quiet, with only a few other patrons back here—some students, earbuds jammed in their ears, furiously clicking away at laptops, and an older woman with sunglasses sipping a latte and reading on a tablet.
Across this very small patio table, Adrian eyes me steadily.
For the first time since last night, we’re staring at each other head-on, and I have no distractions, no menus, no other people to buffer me against his presence.
It’s already too much. His soft smile while I’m talking.
The tilt of his head and hair whispering against his forehead.
The way his forearm muscles tighten when he crosses his arms.
I grip my fingers around my steaming tea mug, trying to distract my hands from the memories of the way those arms felt under my fingertips.
“You ran away quickly last night,” Adrian says at nearly the same time that I say, “We can’t kiss again.”
Blast him for being a thousand times better at this adulting thing than I am.
He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you think of me, Parker, but I wasn’t planning to toss this table aside and—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.” My heart beats like a furious bird trying to escape a too-small cage. “Let me try again. I’m supposed to be evaluating you for a job. My coach was very specific that I need to be unbiased. So, it would be inappropriate for us to get involved.”
Adrian presses his lips together, more serious. “That job and I…we aren’t going to work out.”
Why does he keep saying this? Does he not want it for some reason? If that’s the case, it’s slightly annoying I’ll have to spend so much time on Carla’s very extensive evaluation rubric. Then again, the evaluation is my ticket back to the training center, so I can’t complain too much. “Why not?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Who knows what will happen. But you and me?” He leans forward and his eyes don’t leave mine as he says, “I’m much more interested in what could happen with us.”
A tingle traces up my spine and into the back of my head. Like fingers softly drumming into my hair. Like the sparks I felt when he—
Pan Ams. The spot.
It’s all more important than the fluttering subsuming my body.
“You’re coaching me,” I say levelly.
“That’s true.” He leans back. “I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Hold on, that’s not what I meant.” The words crack out of me.
I want to put up boundaries, but I don’t want to make him feel that he’s taken advantage of me.
“It’s like you said before—you’re not really my coach.
This is a temporary arrangement and you don’t have any real power over me.
I wasn’t trying to say I think there’s a consent issue. ”
“Then what were you saying?”
I lift my mug and blow steam off the surface in a little riot of waves. “That coaches and athletes should be professional with one another.”
“Even when one of them isn’t really the other person’s coach?”
At that moment, our server arrives in a whirlwind of plates, giving me a chance to organize my thoughts. She sets the assortment of dishes on the mosaic tabletop, each one clicking definitively, before she whisks away.
Across the table, Adrian’s pancakes ooze with apple butter and he slathers them with syrup and whipped cream before taking a heaping bite. I watch as he pulls the fork away from his mouth and runs his tongue along the edge of his bottom lip to catch a drip of syrup. I force my gaze away.
“You were saying something about professionalism,” Adrian says as he adds another stream of syrup to his pancakes.
“Yes.” I straighten my back. “Kissing is unprofessional.”
“And the two of us must remain strictly professional because…it’s the principle of the thing?”
I realize I don’t owe Adrian an explanation. If the answer is no, that should stand regardless of the reason. Yet I can’t help but think about his tentative smile in the yoga studio. He might be assuming he did something wrong or that my reaction was somehow about him.
I should tell him the full truth.
I clear my throat. “Look. I am attracted to you. But I need to be one hundred percent focused on training this summer. I can’t afford any complications or distractions.”
“Because of Pan Ams?”
“Yes. I need to get top two to win back my spot.”
“And kissing is a problem for that because…”
His skepticism reminds me of Sofi. But neither of them seems to understand that this is my shot. Carla’s deal, the evaluation, and the race—it’s my only shot. I’m walking a tightrope, with one single, very narrow path to getting my life back.
“Let’s say I don’t make it,” I tell him.
“I know how my brain works. I’ll go back over every minute from this summer, cataloging each missed stretching routine and off practice.
If you and I are—if I’m involved in that time, I’ll wonder if that’s the reason.
Even if I might have lost anyway, I’ll always second-guess myself and wish things had gone differently.
I need to do everything in my power to get that spot back.
That way, even if I lose, I won’t have any room for doubt. ”
Adrian nods slowly, considering.
“That makes sense,” he says.
“It does?”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt you. I wouldn’t want you to regret us.”
I still for a moment, then regain my words. “Great. It’s settled: There will be no us.”
Declaration done, I shove a bite of eggs into my mouth to prevent myself from immediately taking it back.