Chapter 9
brEATHING LESSONS
Sera
The weight of night without lights settles over the room, completely void of even the moonlight trickling in through the window.
I wave my hand in front of my face and can’t see a thing.
I’ve never before experienced that kind of dark, but after the long day I’ve had trying to keep myself together in front of Thane, it matches my mood inside.
I nestle into my half of the bed and sigh deeply, waiting for sleep to take over.
But the nearness of him next to me makes it impossible to relax, much less sleep.
The sound of his breathing just inches from me, the way his warmth has no respect for the boundary I put down the center of the bed, and the way I suddenly want to confess everything expose a vulnerability in me.
It’s almost too much to bear. I can’t decide whether I want to bawl or scream.
I shift on my edge of the bed. I punch at my pillow.
I flip from my back to my side, then back again.
“You okay over there?” His buttery voice cuts through the stillness.
“Ugh! No. I can’t get comfortable. I can’t sleep. Too much coffee at Waffle House, I guess,” I lie.
“Neither can I, with all that flopping around over there. You’re like a fish on dry land.”
“I’m sorry. I can go over to the bloody tornado bed,” I offer.
“Nah. It’s fine. Is… there something bothering you?” The timidity in his voice betrays his breezy facade from earlier.
“Nothing that a ton of shoving it deep down inside won’t fix.”
“That sounds healthy.”
“Healthy or not, I’m a pro at it,” I say with a shrug.
“If it’s any consolation, there are a few things I’d like to say to clear the air. But if you don’t want to talk about it, it can wait.”
When I don’t respond, he changes the subject.
“I have a suggestion that might help you sleep, though.”
I sigh and wave my proverbial white flag.
“At this point, I’m ready to try anything other than have a hard conversation. I’m tapped out emotionally today.”
We lie there for a moment, silence inundating us.
His hesitation causes my heart rate to rise in anticipation of what bomb he’ll drop.
That’s the thing about Thane: he’s unpredictable.
One minute he’s teasing me like he used to, the next he’s getting all uncomfortable and serious.
I’m not sure which of those I prefer. They both twist things inside me that I want to avoid.
We’ve been apart for so long, parts of him make him a stranger to me now.
Yet I know every dimple and mole on his face. I know the flecks of gold in his pale brown eyes, and how he got that scar above his lip—that beautiful, Cupid’s bow scar. It has tempted me every day since he split his lip open defending me at school.
I always expected Bash to be the one standing up for me, since he was my big brother.
But Thane was the one there when I needed him most. When the star quarterback on the football team made an inappropriate comment about me in the locker room, Thane was the one who punched his lights out.
Even after he got suspended, he told me he didn’t regret a thing.
I will always adore that beautiful scar on his mouth. It’s a symbol of his loyalty to me. It haunted my dreams for years, and right now—my reality.
“When I lived in California, I met this guru at the beach. He had a ‘breathing studio’ where high-end clients would come and have sessions with him. He taught people how to breathe with purpose, from their diaphragm.”
“A breathing guru?” I ask with a laugh. “Breathing happens automatically! That’s like paying someone to teach you how to blink!”
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” he replies. “It relieved a lot of stress for me.”
“You? Stressed? That’s impossible. You’re the most laid-back person on the planet.”
“Maybe back in high school, before the whole world came tumbling down on me…”
My mind immediately flashes to the accident and the burden he quietly carries because of it.
We never talked about it after that night.
It was the redheaded stepchild of conversation between our two families, and even within my own family, it was a sore subject.
Something we brushed under the rug and completely ignored, until we pretended for so long that the elephant in the room became part of the decor.
“I think you could use a breathing session. You carry a lot of tension in your shoulders,” Thane continues.
“Well, I have a very demanding job. I’m on my feet all day, and one small mistake can really mess up a macaron. Meringue is very temperamental, you know.”
“Then you definitely need to learn diaphragmatic breathing. You can’t carry the pressure of a messed-up macaron on your shoulders.” He laughs. “And this is something you can do in the walk-in fridge or outside on a break if you need to.”
“Okay, Breathing Guru, teach me how to do something my body does involuntarily already.”
Thane’s thick laugh rumbles again on the pillow next to me, and I want to bask in its rich warmth like a lizard on a rock.
“You can do this sitting, standing, or lying on your back. Just find a position that is most comfortable to you.”
“Okay. I’m ready,” I say, adjusting.
“Next, put one hand on your chest, and one on your stomach.”
I move my hands into place.
“Now, take a regular breath in. Notice how your chest rises more than your stomach does?”
“Yeah.”
“Now breathe in and out again, but this time do it from your stomach. You want your bellybutton to rise and fall. Did it?”
I nod. “Mmhmm.”
“This time, breathe in as deeply as you can without causing tension in your chest and shoulders, but enough that it really stretches out your lungs.”
I take a deep breath in and hold it at the top of my capacity.
“Now, slowly let it seep out of your mouth like you’re controlling the airflow out of the end of a balloon.”
Instinctively, my lips purse and I make a pffft sound on my breath out.
It’s loud and goes on forever. About halfway through my flappy-lipped exhale I realize that I’m the only one who sounds like a whoopee cushion.
Thane’s is more like wind through a small space, and a whole lot quieter than mine. That is, until he bursts out laughing.
“What?” I say, letting the rest of my breath out all at once.
“You weren’t supposed to make the balloon noise, just control the air through your lips!”
“You didn’t say that! You said like a balloon! So that’s exactly what I did!”
I lie there, my face flushing as I hold back a weird combination of embarrassment and the urge to laugh.
Thane’s poor attempt at self-containment shakes my side of the bed, and I elbow him in the ribs.
“Ouch! Okay, I deserved that. Let’s try it again. This time, make a circle with your lips. You’re blowing the air out slowly, not doing a Bronx Cheer.”
“That would’ve been helpful information the first time around,” I say sarcastically.
We each take a deep breath in, but as I near my lung capacity, I begin to laugh. It forms deep within, and once it starts, I can’t stop it. Kind of like those times in church as a kid when I knew I wasn’t supposed to laugh. But the forbiddenness of it made it that much harder to hold in.
Yeah, it’s one of those kinds.
Thane’s laughter weaves in with mine, and the joyful sound swirls all around us.
For a moment, it’s just like old times. We could always get each other laughing—much to the annoyance of Bash, who hated it when I tagged along.
But Thane and I had a friendship unlike any I’d ever had with my girlfriends.
He was slightly inappropriate—yet gentlemanly—and matched my sarcasm beat for beat.
He knew exactly what lame, cheesy jokes would make me laugh until I cried.
And the best part was that he reserved that side of himself just for me.
Laughing with Thane made me feel special. Loved.
And then, one day, it stopped.
The joyful light dimmed and extinguished with the stitches across his forehead and his black-and-blue eyes. Our special bond was gone, and a part of my heart broke when I realized that I’d never have that part of him again.
Lying there in the darkness, laughing like teenagers again, is cathartic. It tapes the rips in my broken heart—albeit temporarily—but I welcome every part of it in spite of myself. I never realized how much I’ve missed it in my life until tears collect and drip from the corners of my eyes.
When a fist pounds on the wall next to us, followed by a “Quiet down! People are trying to sleep!” we temper the volume. Although, like church laughing, the snickering doesn’t stop.
I catch my breath and wipe my eyes. “Okay, I’ve had enough of your breathing lessons. My face hurts now, and I still never did that diaphragm-whatever-you-call-it breathing.”
“Diaphragmatic. And it’s a real thing. I promise.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. I think that guru took you for a fool and stole your money.”
“He had a belly-laughing class too,” Thane says with a chuckle. “Even a fake laugh can release endorphins.”
“So you’d sit around and fake-laugh?”
“Yep!”
“And you paid for that?”
“Maybe… But in my defense, it felt so ridiculous that the laughs turned into real ones pretty quickly. That was his most-attended class.”
I roll over toward him. “I seriously can’t believe you paid someone to teach you to breathe and pretend to laugh.”
“I seriously can’t believe you haven’t done it. Who’s the one missing out? Definitely not me,” he says, rolling to face me too.
Our faces are mere inches apart, sharing the same space, the same air.
Our energies synchronize, and the fact that we can barely see each other allows for a vulnerability that daylight can’t give.
One where I can be more honest because I can’t see the expression on his face or the honesty in his eyes.
And who am I kidding? It’s so he can’t see those things in me, either.
The mood shifts as my mind races with what I want to say next.