Chapter 22
22
Omg, I can’t go out there wearing these , I type out to the flat’s group chat and send alongside a mirror selfie of the leggings given to me by the gym’s receptionist.
Alice replies immediately.
What are you on about? You look hot!
I stare at my arse in the women’s changing-room mirrors. These yoga pants are the tightest things I have ever worn. I was already dreading doing stretches in public when I noticed the elasticated seam going straight through my butt crack.
I type out: I can’t go out like this.
Why not, you look cracking!
Not funny! I reply, a smile pushing against my lips.
Yeah, Al, that joke was pretty half-arsed... Yemi chimes in.
Sorry, guys, I’ll try butt-er next time , Alice replies.
I think this group chat has hit rock bottom , I reply.
Thankfully, the white HEIMACH branded T-shirt they gave me runs to about halfway down my butt cheeks. I head into the gym and immediately bump into Bancroft coming out of the men’s changing room. We both unabashedly study the other’s outfit choices under the guise of ridicule.
I examine his all-black clinging T-shirt and expensive-looking yoga pants. “Was ‘Douchebag Warehouse’ having a sale or something?”
“I bought these for full retail price at ‘Douchebag Warehouse,’ thank you very much.” He lifts his eyebrows and I try to stop my lips from curving.
Calming flute music and jasmine incense float on the air as we enter the now-crowded gym and sit on the two remaining squishy black mats.
“This must be a really popular class,” I say with a giddy smile. After what I’d seen on the hotel’s Instagram, there’s double the number of people I was expecting.
Bancroft ignores my comment, instead choosing to scan the crowd with a clenched jaw and a wild panic in his eyes. I tilt my head, furrowing my brow at him, but before I can ask what the matter is a woman at the front of the class holds her hands out to everyone. She has curly silver-gray hair and is wearing a lime-green matching bra top and tight high-waisted leggings.
“Welcome. My name is Crystal and I’ll be guiding you through today’s session. Please, sit. Before we begin, please turn to the side and take your partner’s hand.”
My head whizzes around as other people in the room turn to one another; rising panic bubbles in my veins.
We stare at each other, both poker-face expressionless as we reluctantly lay alternate hands palm up and place the opposite hand on top. His palms are warm and coated in the lightest sheen of sweat. As instructed, we push our hands against each other like a New Age arm wrestling match. My entire hand almost fits in his palm, his fingers rising over the tips of mine like sea-foam waves crashing over rocks. Bancroft’s pupils dilate and he conceals a smirk as I strain and try my hardest to win the non-competition, tensing my arms. He’s barely making any effort to push against me—he probably finds it more entertaining to watch me struggle. He shifts, not pressing but holding steady as my skin pushes against his. Crystal eventually raises her hands and we stop, returning our hands to our sides on the mats. The echo of his strong palm pulses lightly against mine.
“See how much energy is wasted when we work against each other? In this session, we will focus on togetherness.”
Pure, raging panic shoots up my spine and explodes in my brain like a firework.
“Wait, is this... couples’ yoga?” I whisper, eyes wide.
His jaw ticks as he stares past me toward the exit. “It certainly wasn’t meant to be. Christoph must have booked us into the wrong class.” His cheek twitches.
I swipe a palm through my hair and huff a laugh. “Or he thinks we’re a couple, just like everyone else bloody does.”
His face goes stony as he pushes his hand on the floor. “We should go.”
“What? We just got here!” I protest.
“We can’t do this,” he snaps, shrinking pupils darting around the gym for the most subtle exit route. Maybe out of the window?
My eyes crease as I examine his body language: shoulders tense, jaw taut, wrinkled brow. You would think he would do whatever it takes to make sure this partnership opportunity goes off without a hitch, but he can’t stand the thought of crossing the line if it’s made out of my stretching limbs? A vision of him, feet up on my desk, telling me I’d be too uncomfortable to take on this project with him, sears its way into my mind. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with him at every opportunity when I could have been uncomfortable, and he’s trying to duck out the moment things have the potential to get too awkward. I could let him walk and take the credit for the partnership by myself, but I can’t do this class without a partner. And I’m not backing down.
He gets up into a crouch position so I wrap my fingers lightly around his wrist, only encircling half the width but keeping him down on the mat with me. “We just spent the past two hours learning about every lightbulb and doorknob in the building to secure this partnership.” Other people in the room start to watch our exchange, him trying to get up, me trying to pin him down. He moves again, trying to stand and assuming I will let go. When he realizes I can be just as stubborn as him, he makes a fist, tenses his arm and lifts me up to him until I’m off the floor, my body almost pressing against his.
He blinks at our closeness but starts to speak: “I don’t think I can—”
I swallow, taking in the panic in his eyes. “If we refuse to do this class, we risk offending a very chatty German man into reconsidering a partnership with us and who knows who he’ll tell the story to,” I interrupt him with an angry whisper, wide eyes locked with his, pleading with him to stay. His pulse pounds under my fingers but I ignore it, too annoyed to think about why. After everything that’s happened over the past few days, he can’t leave me here now.
“First move to get us warmed up, the Bridged Butterfly,” announces Crystal, side-eyeing us as the only couple in the room not paying attention to her.
Bancroft’s face creases, undecided.
In a state of panic I change my tactic, pulling in closer and tracing my thumb lightly over his skin. “Think about it: the room offer, the restaurant, the launch party. It’s all perfect for Ditto,” I whisper seductively. “All we have to do is a little balancing and core exercise. You can do that... right, hotshot?”
He lifts his head to the ceiling as he closes his eyes for a few seconds. “Fucking hell.” Then he sighs: “You want to be the butterfly or the bridge?”
“Dealer’s choice.” I smile triumphantly, relief relaxing my muscles.
“We’ll start by choosing who is going to be the lead—just like dancing,” Crystal advises all of us and I watch the other couples subtly confer with each other. I let out a quiet huff of laughter through my nose. Dancing is what we’ve been doing this entire time. The push and pull. To say it is anything but a dance would be an understatement. Even when we could barely stand being in the same room together, we were still dancing. Aware of each other’s presence as we swayed and dipped our bodies, attempting to avoid each other. At Crystal’s instruction, we stand up and I turn my back to Bancroft. He places a hesitant, warm palm on my waist so lightly it’s almost hovering, leaving room for the charged atoms to rest in between us. Even the shadow of his hand makes my skin heat.
Crystal pads over to us and places a hand on Bancroft’s shoulder, lips pursed. “You’re going to need a firm grip here, sweetie.” He clears his throat awkwardly as Crystal moves his hands onto my hips. “Your girlfriend is going to need the support.”
A jolt of electricity shoots up my legs to meet his splayed, twitching fingers and I am so grateful we aren’t face-to-face right now.
You are pissed off at him, I remind myself, trying to temper my fizzing blood.
Crystal directs the class to move into the next part of the position: my feet balancing on his bent knees as I lean forward into downward facing dog and immediately regret my insistence on staying for the session. Once my hands are firmly on the mat, Bancroft leans backward and places his hands on the mat behind him. My eyelids are locked closed as my body shakes for the entire sixty seconds of pose-holding. My heart pounds and my palms couldn’t be sweatier, but I can’t be sure if it’s the yoga or the yoga with Bancroft that’s causing my body to react this way.
The next position—“For bonding,” Crystal explains—involves us standing back to back, bending down as though to touch our toes but instead holding each other’s hands through our legs. We both try not to laugh as we make eye contact between our thighs, releasing the tense elastic band in my chest before it snapped.
“Are you feeling bonded?” he mouths quietly, eyebrows up. Well, down. His face still looks perfect despite being upside down.
I stifle a smile. “My arse is feeling pretty bonded with yours right now.”
He bumps into me playfully, trying to lighten the mood. “Speaking of, nice leggings, by the way,” he whispers.
I shake my head. “I didn’t choose them, they were the only ones they had in my size.” My face goes red owing to all the blood rushing to my upside-downedness, and not because of how the compliment swept through me like a gush of summer wind.
“Remind me to send Christoph a thank-you note,” he deadpans and I roll my eyes.
“Maybe send him a painting instead. You love to do that.”
“Time to switch into a new position. Please slowly bring your hands up like this until they are above your head and inhale in mountain pose,” says Crystal, demonstrating a wide sweeping motion with her arms.
We copy her, breaking our rigid grips on each other’s hands, swinging our arms up and turning to face each other. We’re standing close, but come on, it is couples’ yoga. This is fine, totally normal. This close I can make out the dark blue lines in his eyes, chasms of depth in a vast ocean exaggerated by his flushed face. His face is as red as mine feels but somehow he still looks good. We take deep breaths in unison, releasing them slowly.
“I reserve sending paintings to very special recipients.” His tone is a cold martini on a hot day.
“Stop it,” I plead. Our arms lower and I have nowhere to put them except my hips.
“What?” he says, mimicking my movement and stepping imperceptibly closer.
“ It .” I look him up and down, leaning forward. “The trying-to-get-back-in-my-good-books Bancroft Charm thing.”
“There’s a ‘Bancroft Charm thing’?”
I raise my eyebrows in his direction, giving him a look that I hope says “don’t act like you don’t know.” He smirks, wetting his lips and confirming he does, in fact, know.
“Yeah, and I’m not gonna fall for it this time.”
His chin tilts, eyebrows furrowing in confusion for just a second before softening as he realizes to what I’m referring.
Shit. Why did I just say that?
“Not that I was thinking about when we—”
“Now we move into our penultimate pose.” Crystal’s voice bounces around us like an angel trying to save me from saying something stupid.
Bancroft lies on the mat, holding my legs in the air as I plank above him, gripping his calves for support. His firm but supportive hold on my ankles turns my blood molten.
“So,” he says with a grunt, pushing my legs higher, “in the spirit of ‘togetherness and honesty,’ on a scale of one to ten how much do you hate me right now?”
His question comes out in his usual blasé tone but in between the strands of hair falling over my eyes I see his throat bob as he asks. He’s not just talking about the fact that he is getting dangerously close to dropping me on my face.
Shifting my hands further up his legs for better purchase, I say, grunting, “Probably about as much as you hate me. Urgh—did you have to be so tall? This position doesn’t work.”
“Sorry.”
I sigh. “I forgive you.”
“For being tall?” He pushes and I can hear the smile on his lips.
“I forgive you for William and for Jeffrey but I can still be hurt by how you handled everything. I can be really fucking sorry about the Christmas party and also mortified. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“True,” he says, straining to hold me in place as I re-adjust my grip.
“I get why you kept William’s profile from me... but you knew something important about my life that I didn’t.” My right arm shakes so I move again, trying to get a better purchase on his thigh to steady myself. “It was a huge violation of privacy.”
“Ummm, Grace?” His voice is strained, lips twisting inward.
“Yeah?”
“It’s going to be a huge violation of privacy if your hand moves like an inch higher.”
“Fuck, sorry.” I snatch my hand away immediately and my whole body falls to the side. He catches me with his arm, blocking the right side of my body from hitting the floor. With his hand tight around my waist, he pulls me upright and I land in his lap, my hair covering most of my face.
He leans up into a sitting position, swiping my hair behind my ear in a movement so delicate my limbs feel liquid. “I’m sorry too, again. About everything.” His arm holds steady around me as we both swallow air, trying to recover. “I haven’t been able to sleep knowing I let you down like that,” he admits, eyes creasing as my breath hitches.
“Me neither,” I agree, wiping a bead of sweat from my forehead. “I think we need to work on being better friends.”
Crystal clears her throat. The sound brings us both back into the room, blinking: the room full of people where I am sitting in Bancroft’s lap, his arm around me, both panting heavily.
“You good?” he asks, looking anywhere but at me as he launches me off his lap.
“Yep!” I reply quickly, keeping my head up and focusing on the suddenly fascinating multicolor tapestry on the wall as I leap to my feet.
We balance in silence for a few moments, heat growing in my cheeks as I try to avoid cataloging every place we’re touching. We switch into the final cooldown position, sitting cross-legged with knees touching the floor, our faces inches apart. I avoid eye contact, choosing instead to stare intensely at the evaporating imprint my sweaty hand left on the mat.
“I can’t keep the painting. It’s too much. You should return it to Calico.”
“Hastings!” he mocks, appalled, breath caressing my cheek. “You’d take a large sum of money out of the hands of a starving artist because of your own pride?”
I want to grab him by his face and shake him. “Urgh, fine. But why don’t you put it in your apartment?” I compromise.
His lips form a smooth line as he considers for a second. He finally shrugs. “Ah, you know, I’d love to, but I just don’t have the wall space.”
I meet his stare, eyes gawking at his stubborn insistence. “Buy a bigger apartment, then!”
“How about this? I can technically own the painting, but you can keep it as long as you want?”
I lift a suspicious eyebrow. “You’re not going to give up, are you?” I let a half smile form on my lips.
“I doubt it.” He shrugs, lips matching mine.
“OK,” I sigh. “New truce. I keep the painting if we agree that as friends we have no more secrets.”
I hold out my hand for a cartoonish “put ’er there” shake as something flashes behind his eyes. He takes my hand slowly, tracing his fingers along my palm before squeezing the side of my hand with his thumb.
“No more secrets,” he repeats, keeping his soft grip on me while mulling over the idea. “Friends.”