Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  I raced to say, “I was kidding! Don’t do that!”

  He laughed, but held firm. “So if I drop out of this plank right now, you won’t judge me and gossip with the other yoga teachers about me?”

  “No!”

  “That’s all you had to say.” He promptly came down to his knees, then sat back on his heels. He looked almost meditative, save for the jeans.

  At that moment, my gaze strayed to the other students in the class, who apparently were all watching him and me. There was a mute chorus of skepticism and scowls.

  “Okay, I gotta go teach,” I whispered to him frantically, and skipped back to my mat in a very un-chill manner.

  “Great sun salutations!” I practically screamed, then modulating my decibel, slipping into something a little more relaxing, repeated, “Great work, class.”

  The rest of the class proceeded pretty much like that — I’d try to keep my eyes off Hot Boy, I’d fail, he’d grin, I’d grin, the other students would notice, and we’d start right back at the beginning. At some point, I think I told them to do a downward cow, which isn’t even a position. If I were them, I’d have asked for my money back. They were paying thirty-five dollars a pop to watch me go on an ill-conceived speed date.

  Finally, the hour hand hit one, and my torment was over.

  “You all did excellent, as usual,” I said, commending specifically the regulars. “I’m so impressed with your progress.”

  “Is that what you were watching?” Doug muttered.

  I stammered back, “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing, never mind.” He rolled his eyes and then his yoga mat. Frequent yoga doers always have their own special mat.

  My skin turned a crimson, almost glowing red. Had I been that obvious?

  Yeah, my brain said automatically. Are you kidding? Yeah.

  How mortifying. Kim, Lucy and Doug all gathered their stuff and began to slink out the classroom. I noticed that Hot Boy didn’t move.

  What does he want? I wondered. But then that thought expanded, shifting to encompass a new, burgeoning question. What do I want?

  And the answer was — him.

  Chapter 7

  Cash

  OKAY, GIVE me some credit, I think I did pretty well in that class, all things considered. And by ‘well,’ I mean I flirted like a master. The yoga… let’s not talk about the yoga. I am not a flexible guy.

  Sure enough, I’d discovered that the connection between Cybil and I was still there. Our personalities clicked, we were having fun — and, as I had remembered, she was effervescently hot. Everything was going better than even I could have anticipated.

  Well, maybe minus the fact that I still hadn’t told her my name, or the fact that we’d had some — that is to say — quite a lot of interaction only a few nights ago. But I’d already resolved on how to approach the issue of her blacked-out memory, and I was going to commit to that decision.

  So I don’t need your attitude, young lady, or young man, or young non-binary person. I made a call, and think of it what you will, I made the call because I was dead serious about pursuing Cybil. I didn’t want our origin story to be “yeah, we met in a club and I tattooed her ass.” That’s not a thing you tell your grandchildren.

  Shit. I was thinking about grandchildren.

  What had happened to the Cash of only a week ago, the guy who couldn’t commit, who fucked whatever walked by, who was laden with problems?

  Cybil had happened, that’s what.

  The class ended. I think she did a good job? I don’t know, it would be impossible for me to say, given my knowledge about yoga, which was nothing. I did know that the other students were snarking. They must have picked up on our fairly obvious flirtation. Let ‘em stare, I thought smugly. I’m gonna get the girl.

  While they left the room, Cybil turned her back to me and began blowing out the various candles that lit the space, plunging us further and further into darkness.

  “Hey.”

  She jumped at the sound of my voice, the fabric of her pants billowing. She put her hand over her heart, saying, “Jeez, you scared me.”

  “Many apologies, ma’am,” I replied as I stood up, rather achingly uncrossing myself from a seated position.

  She rolled her eyes with that little huff that was quickly becoming familiar. “Try ‘miss.’”

  “Miss Cybil.” I tipped an imaginary cap.

  “And you are?” Her face struggled to remain neutral, but I could tell she was fervently interested in the answer.

  I sidestepped the question. “A very satisfied student.”

  She laughed, and shook her head. “I don’t believe you.” Cybil tilted her chin and gave me another once-over. “What, exactly, compelled you to try yoga?”

  “Mid-life crisis.”

  “You are not middle-aged.” This she said as a declaration.

  “Is there something between a quarter- and mid-life crisis?”

  She thought for a moment, and replied, “A regular crisis?”

  I nodded. “That one.” I didn’t add that the crisis was my ever-growing feelings for her. That would’ve required more explanation than I was ready to give.

  “You’re funny,” she laughed. Then, with a little more gravity, “Funny guys make me nervous.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. You’ve always got something up your sleeve.”

  That stopped me in my tracks. Had she really just seen through me so clearly? She’d pierced right to the heart of my defense, my coping mechanism. I felt thrust under a microscope, my every truth exposed to a cold eye.

  And then she smiled again. “I’m kidding.”

  Phew. I breathed a sigh of relief and replied, “You’re a ball-buster.”

  “Why, thank you.” The comment seemed to have genuinely pleased her. I reflected once again how well she would’ve gotten on with the women in my unit.

  “So do you live in the yoga studio?” I asked. “Y’know, like a monk? Rise at five, tend the rose garden, eat cold noodles?”

  Through a guffaw, she responded sarcastically, “Oh yeah, because there are so many practicing monks in these parts.” I noticed that she revealed all her teeth when she grinned. It was an unstudied, honest smile.

  “So,” I continued, pretending to miss her joke, “any chance you — uh, what do they call monk leaders? Monkles? — would your monkle let you come out for a night?”

  This, I think, actually threw her off. She started back, and it was a full second before she regained her composure. She faltered back into the joke, replying in an uneven voice, “Uh, I’d have to ask my… monkle. What exactly would I theoretically be doing with this night off?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve got tickets for a concert on Friday.”

  “What band?”

  “Acrylic Dynasty.”

  She adjusted her sports bra without thinking — causing her tits to jiggle, I noticed despite myself — and replied, “I’ve never heard of them.”

  I waved this off. “They’re fun, pretty classic rock. Shitty beer, tiny venue, probably a mosh pit. The usual.”

  “A mosh pit?” she replied incredulously. “I’ve never been in a mosh pit.”

  “Really? I’m so sorry, that was a big oversight on the part of your family and friends. Mosh pits are awesome.”

  She clearly didn’t buy the answer, so I plowed ahead. “It’s great. You just kind of run up against everybody else, and—” I stopped. “That’s… actually pretty much it. But it’s great, I promise. And if you hate that, we’ll go up to the second floor and drink more shitty beer and glower at all the hooligans down below. How’s that sound?”

  Cybil looked to the left, and replied, “I’m not sure…”

  I moved in closer and thought I saw her breathe out, just once and very quickly. That flutter reverberated in my own heart, which picked up its steady beat, moving from a cool sixty bpm to an anxiety-clouded hundred. The military teaches you to be highly cognizant of heart rate, and I had never been a
ble to shake the habit.

  Focus, I reminded myself. We talked about this. Get the girl.

  I held out my hand to Cybil, indicating that she ought to shake it and create an insoluble pact. The appendage hung suspended in mid-air, bridging the divide between the two of us.

  “Friday,” I repeated. “At the Shakshuka. Eight. I’ll be outside wearing—” I looked down at my outfit. “Probably this.” I looked back up, and added, “Deal?”

  She bit her lip, vacillating. Was she wondering if I was a serial killer? Or perhaps she was just trying to sniff out whether or not I was as much of a cocky asshole as I seemed. I was definitely not a mass murderer, but I couldn’t exactly deny the second part. I do have a certain je ne sais quoi — erm, that is to say, yeah, I can be a cocky asshole. The second stretched into several, and I began to get nervous that she really was going to reject me. Should I just apologize now, and scram? Or wait until the agonizing decision was handed down?

  I saw, with surprising clarity, the exact moment she made up her mind. It was like a veil dropped from her eyes, and I could see their darkness truly sparkle. She had, I noted, a small freckle at the corner of her left eye that had been covered with eyeliner the last time I saw her. It was small but poignant. I’d never looked so closely at a woman.

  “Deal,” she replied, reaching out to shake my hand and pulling me from my fascination with her freckle. Her strong grasp was a match for my own, though her hands were far softer. I could sense a reckless edge to her tone, an underlying declaration of ‘fuck it.’ I usually had that effect on women.

  “I’ll see you then,” I murmured. “Until Friday, Cybil.”

  With that, not wishing to stay a moment longer — lest she ask me some betraying facts like, for instance, my name — I whirled on my bare heel, strode to the corner of the classroom, and snagged my boots. I turned over my shoulder for the briefest moment and winked in Cybil’s direction. Her mouth fell open.

  I didn’t wait to see the rest of her reaction, but pushed open the door and walked out into the daylight.

  Friday was going to be a hell of a night.

  Chapter 8

  Cybil

  THE SOUND of my own heart flooded my ears like waves rushing in to fill a vacuum.

  Had that just happened? Did the hottest guy to ever set foot in my class, maybe the hottest guy to ever merely exist in my presence, just ask me out?

  “Well damn,” I giggled to myself. “I’m going on a date with—”

  Aw, shit. I slapped my forehead. How could I have been such a ditz? I guess I was just so distracted with that hair, and those tight biceps, that I hadn’t even thought to ask his name.

  Or his phone number, my inner voice said reproachfully. Did you get any salient information besides some concert details?

  “Shut up!” I instructed my mind, though I knew the subconscious spiel was right. Damnit! I knew next to nothing about this guy, besides the fact that he was painfully attractive and unnervingly bold. I realized, for the first time in many years — or maybe ever — that I had no way to cancel on him. No text, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Snapchat — nothing. Which meant I couldn’t just chicken out and bail on him. He’d spend the whole night waiting on the curb, wondering if I’d show up. The mere image convinced me that I had to be good to my word, and arrive at… what had he called it? Shakshuka. Eight on Friday.

  I shook my head. I’d lived in L.A. forever, and knew the city like the back of my hand. Yet somehow, I’d never heard of a venue called Shakshuka. Did that mean he’d made it up? Seemed unlikely. I pulled my phone out of my pocket — don’t tell my bosses, it’s against the “meditation rules” — and quickly Googled the venue. Sure enough, it was a real place, and not an elaborate ruse to lure me to my death. I shook my head in surprise. We’d had exactly one interaction, and already he was showing me new things, opening up my worldview. My mind raced with the possibilities, the promise.

  And then reality slapped me across the face again, the very real reminder that, while I could search a concert venue, I had no information about Hot Boy. That meant that with all the mod cons, I couldn’t check his social media profiles, couldn’t do a background and okay, maybe credit check on him, couldn’t verify that I wasn’t being elaborately catfished by an actor hired from Craigslist to lure me into some kind of cult recruitment scheme.

  Do I seem paranoid? It’s because I’m paranoid.

  But how can you not be? In this day and age, any guy could be a conspiracy theory believer and supporter. You’ve gotta keep a weather eye for nut jobs. And Hot Boy — Hot Man, really — had walked in out of nowhere, totally at odds with the place, asked me out on a date and disappeared with no other information. Isn’t that just a little suspicious? I didn’t want to leave him high and dry and standing alone on a street corner, but I also didn’t want to end up dead in a ditch. And hadn’t enough weird stuff happened to me this weekend? Did I really need one more baffling thing? It was starting to feel like Mars was in retrograde, continually throwing me new and more surprising challenges.

  I called Blaire. She was my true north, my moral compass when all common sense failed me.

  She picked up after two rings. “Whaddup?”

  We tended to begin every conversation as if we’d never finished the last one. “Quick question,” I said. “So this hot dude in my yoga class asked me out to a concert on Friday but I have no way of contacting him because I didn’t get his name or phone number but I already kind of agreed to the plans so like yeah should I go or is he gonna like totally murder the hell out of me?”

  The line went quiet for a moment, and I could tell Blaire was thinking. At last, she said, “No name?”

  “None.”

  “Has he been in your class before?”

  “No.”

  “Did they get his name at the front desk?”

  I shook my head, then remembered she couldn’t see me over the phone line. “No, drop-ins who pay cash don’t have to write their names down. I didn’t see his name on the sign-up sheet, so he must’ve done cash.” I paused. “Is that fishy? Oh shit, it is, isn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Blaire. “Was he a nice guy?”

  I hadn’t really thought about that, at least not as a ‘bigger question.’ I replied, truthfully, “Yeah, he’s super cool.”

  “No weird vibes?”

  I quickly ran through the interaction in my head, scanning for red flags. “I guess not, no.”

  Blaire’s voice came through the phone with confidence. “Then you have your answer,” she said. “He didn’t creep you out, which is kind of rare these days, and he was fun to be around. Go on the date.”

  “But what if he—”

  “Cybil—”

  “No, really, what if he’s like a really smooth sociopath?”

  She sighed. “Girl, it’s a public place, and you know self-defense, and you can always call me if you’re in a tough spot and we’ll figure it out. Any other problems?”

  “But—”

  “No,” she instructed. “No more ifs, ands or buts. You — I don’t know if you remember this — but you were complaining during my bachelorette party the other night about how all of us are engaged, or married, and how you’re the only one without a serious boyfriend.”

  Ashamed, I whispered, “Sorry I was being a dick.” I felt bad that I’d made her night my own personal pity party.

  “Please, I don’t care.” Yeah, that was Blaire’s stance on most everything. “It’s hard as fuck to date. But you can’t be all ‘woe is me’ if you don’t, like, try to do something about it. If you just sit around waiting for Prince Charming to come, another girl is gonna match with him on Tinder. You gotta go get the damn guy.”

  I listened attentively, and Blaire added, “Plus, he’s already done the leg work of asking you out. Now all you have to do is show up. This is a low-risk, high-reward scenario.”

  Twisting a piece of hair around my finger, I considered her points. I knew Blaire had
my best interest at heart — and I could also hear the exhaustion creeping into her voice.

  The bachelorette party hadn’t been my first go at complaining about this. I’d been moping about it, on and off, for months. She’d patiently held my hand, assuring me that it would be okay, even setting me up with some of her friends and helping me make dating profiles. She was really going above and beyond the call of duty. So I knew, with a sudden certainty, that hearing me even debate this was probably a bridge too far for her. A handsome stranger had just landed in my lap and all I wanted to do was question my good luck? Pretty ungrateful. And, if something bad did happen, though I suspected it wouldn’t, I could call her.

  I made up my mind. “Okay, I’m gonna do it.”

  “Really?” she asked, her voice flooding with hope.

  “Really.”

  “Great,” she replied. “And if you’re nervous, I can help you get ready, drive you to the venue and wait around the corner while you kids have a good time.”

  I snorted. “Thanks, Mom, but I think I can handle it. I’ll just take an Uber.”

  “Okay, okay, fine. Promise to give me a full update?”

  “I’ll keep a diary, thoroughly documenting every second of the night.”

  She sounded satisfied as she returned, “Excellent. You better be ready to dissect it over brunch.”

  “Ha, okay,” I agreed. “Wish me luck.”

  “By the sounds of it, you’ve already got all the luck in the world.”

  We said goodbye and I hung up, thinking about Blaire’s last comment. Could I really be this lucky? Maybe I’d finally rubbed enough crystals. Or maybe I was, at last, getting what I deserved.

  Chapter 9

  Cash

  THE DRIVE back across the city passed by in an unimpeachable haze. My mind’s eye was stuck in repeating loops of Cybil. Her body, her words, our friction, our tension. For a class all about breathing, I wondered if I’d forgotten to breathe around her, for when I’d returned to my car, I discovered I was weirdly short on air. I’d been underwater, consumed by the ocean of her.