by Coralie Moss
Daniel.
He liked curls of lemon peel in his espresso, and he’d comment on her sweet tooth every time she ordered a frothy café mocha. She inhaled the tendrils of memory wafting off her fingertips and the dessert plate, suddenly desperate to recall the scent of Daniel’s skin.
She had no problem remembering the feel of his skin, smooth and flawless. She had loved lounging naked against him, fitting herself into and around the curves of his arm and shoulder muscles and his high, tight butt.
And if she was so inclined, she could put down the dessert and take that memory into her bedroom, along with her bag of goodies, and test the efficacy of her birthday bonanza.
Oh, my God. What are you doing, Anna?
She struggled off the floor, closed the refrigerator door, and took her treat into the living room. As if on cue, her computer pinged, announcing the arrival of an email. She set down the plate, washed and dried her sticky, lemon-scented hands, and didn’t bother sitting before opening the letter.
My dear Annalissa,
Finding you, and now writing to you, has somewhat of a surreal quality, I will admit. It was one thing to find you, and it is another thing altogether to picture seeing you in person.
Thirty years is a lot of time to cover in writing. I have been asking myself what I want from our correspondence. I imagine providing you some details about my life would be appropriate at this point.
I have never been married. I do date, but there is no serious romantic partner in my life. I live in New York City and travel frequently to oversee my business. If you follow the link below, you’ll see what I do.
Aside from my sister and her son, I am the only one left of my immediate family. I never fathered any children.
I didn’t mean to sound pushy. What matters is I have found you. I’m eager to hear about you and your life, and I agree, a phone call will be a good start. Let me know when you feel ready.
Hopefully yours,
Danny
She followed the link in his email signature to his website. The last bite of cake hovered on the tines of the fork as she scrolled, mouth agape, through page after page of exquisitely photographed interiors. She even recognized the names of some of his clients.
A realization blossomed across her chest, burning at the old bra she’d grabbed from her underwear drawer. She would need more than new underwear to meet Daniel Strauss’s aesthetic. She would need a total makeover.
Collapsing onto the couch, head draped over the back of the couch cushions and dessert plate empty but for crumbs, she gazed past the pink-and white-striped box and scanned the horizon of her past. Once upon a time, she’d attracted the handsome and talented Daniel Strauss.
Anna wasn’t at all confident she could do it again. She wasn’t at all convinced she should want a second chance.
She looked for clues in the rafters and beyond the windows, wished more memories from long-ago would surface, wished more pieces of the wild and fearless Anna would visit, take a seat on the couch, share their secrets.
She and Daniel arranged their first conversation for the next morning at nine o’clock her time, allowing her ample opportunity to shower, fret, and obsess. The water was either too hot or too cold, she ran out of conditioner which meant her hair would frizz, and her eyebrows were in dire need of shaping. She could use one of those pencil thingies, but she never wore make-up and now wasn’t the time to start.
Also, she had no idea what to wear. If she called Gigi for advice, she would have to offer an explanation, and she wasn’t ready to tell her daughter that mama wanted her groove back.
She called Elaine.
“Stay away from black,” she counselled. “It’s funereal on you. Rub coconut oil through your hair, makes it glisten, and if you don’t have coconut oil, use olive oil.”
“Olive oil?” Anna asked, incredulous. She was so woefully out of practice.
“Anna, he’ll be talking to you, not smelling you. Go for a V neck top, something that’ll give you more height, and make sure the camera is at eye level or higher. You don’t want him gawking at all that extra skin under your chin. Call me later. I need details.”
Extra skin?
She lifted her chin, pressed the tops of her fingers against the droopy section, and turned her head side to side. Her charcoal gray turtleneck sweater would elongate her neck and camouflage the “extra skin.” She brushed her teeth while fussing with the position of her computer’s camera in case they decided to add video to their chat and slipped sterling silver hoops into her earlobes as she stood at the bathroom sink.
The only thing left to do was answer the phone when Daniel called.
Or was she supposed to call him? She sat at the computer and reread their email exchange. She was calling him. The terrifying thought shot her to her feet and sent her pacing, unable to get her breath past her upper chest and into her belly, where she needed it to soothe the building swell of hysteria.
Wait. This was Daniel. Picture him naked. Wasn’t that the advice she’d heard about public speaking? She took a deep breath, sat back in her chair, and smiled at the reflection in her computer’s monitor.
She could do this. She picked up her cell phone, hand shaking, and dialed his private number.
“Annalissa.”
The voice coming through her cellphone knocked her back thirty years.
She wasn’t in her shabby living room any more—she was in Daniel’s apartment, sprawled face up in his bed, with him on top of her in a tangle of white cotton sheets after a second round of Sunday morning sex. And for once, he wasn’t rushing through the afterglow to get to the design studio in his constant push to stay at the head of the pack.
“Daniel,” she said, closing her eyes, lingering in the sensory recall of his bed at her back, their legs intertwined. “Your voice sounds the same.”
“I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”
“I keep having these memories from when we were at school,” she admitted.
“Me too. And we’re usually horizontal.”
Nothing like getting right to the point.
“We had some vertical moments, Danny, lots of them,” she teased.
He gave a soft chuckle. “Like that time on the fire escape?”
“I was referring more to times we were vertical with clothes on,” she said, giving into the urge to flirt. When was the last time she’d flirted with someone? And why were her nipples tightening?
“Tell me about Annalissa Granger. I’d like to get to know her again.”
“I don’t know where to begin.” She really didn’t. He already knew the big details of life, the all-consuming ones that defined her days.
“Start from when we last saw each other,” he suggested. “You drove off in your car and…”
She quietly took as deep a breath as the constriction in her throat allowed. “I drove off in my car and arrived at school without you, and it felt strange not to have you there anymore.”
“We lost touch after that weekend, didn’t we?”
Anna nodded, riding a wave of memory that began at his family’s cottage on the New Jersey shore and crested at the threshold of a three-story Victorian, the loneliness of her first apartment, and the start of her third year of art school.
“What did you do after that summer?” she asked.
“I went to Europe, fell in love with everything about it, came home, and moved to New York City. My parents helped me buy a loft, and I’ve lived here ever since.”
“Would you send me a picture?”
“One is on its way,” he said, his voice as richly luxurious as the velvet she found the day before. “Does this mean I get a picture of you?”
“Soon,” she assured him, hoping a little lie wouldn’t hurt. “The camera on my phone is broken.”
An email with attachment arrived. She downloaded the photo and double-clicked. Either Daniel had a huge couch, or he was in bed. His ankles were crossed, and past his polished loafers was a space with
a soaring ceiling, light-colored walls, huge paintings, and modern furniture.
“Nice feet, Danny.” She grinned. It appeared he still eschewed socks.
“Those feet could be next to yours on a beach,” he said, his voice deepening further. “Is your passport up to date?”
“It is. Why?”
“Well, I was thinking I’d fly out to see you, but then I looked at your weather. You must love rain.”
“You get used to it.” She shrugged. You get used to the rain and the incessant gray sky during certain months, just like you get used to the quiet in the house when the kids move out and the empty half of a bed.
“How about some sunshine? Mexican sunshine,” he said. “Here, I’ll forward a couple of websites to you. Pick one. My treat.”
“For what, a winter break?”
“An October break. I can clear my calendar, take a few days before I leave for Berlin. Or right after I get back. Can you get away, say, in two weeks?”
“I’ll think about it,” she mused, smacking at the inner Anna waving wildly and bouncing off the walls. Her breasts were ready to pack a carry-on and fly to wherever Daniel Strauss booked a room.
“What’s to think about, Annalissa?” he asked, his laugh soft, throaty. “I’m inviting you on an all-expenses paid trip, and all you have to supply is a bathing suit and something to wear to dinner.”
This Daniel, the man who took charge, was familiar. She wanted to hear more about him.
“Tell me about your work.” She steered him away from the beach, the outer banks of flirtatious, and led him back to the more neutral topics of work and family. Chatting casually about meeting in Mexico was a conversation she was not ready to have. When noise in the background of his office alerted her the hour allotted for the call had passed, Anna didn’t want their conversation to end.
“The rest of my assistants will be back in a few minutes,” Daniel said, “and I don’t want to hang up, but I also have clients coming in.”
“I understand. I should get to work too.” Back to swooning over all-inclusive resorts was more likely. She had quietly clicked on one of the links Daniel sent while he was in the middle of describing a difficult client, and she’d almost squealed into the phone.
“Let’s talk again in the next couple of days,” he suggested.
“I’d like that.”
Anna stayed seated at the desk long after the call ended. Her palms sought the wood’s smooth surface and pressed down.
If she went to Mexico, she would need resort clothes. Cabo San Lucas was on a beach. A beach meant a bathing suit. She’d stopped wearing bathing suits after the last one lost its elasticity and the inexplicable vagaries of menopause had rendered her waistline obsolete.
She owned one dressy dress, the olive-and-black-striped number she had no intention of wearing again. The horizontal stripes were too close to the all-weather fabric on Gary Jr. and Suki’s deck furniture. Burning questions begged her to prioritize. She could shop for underwear in Vancouver on Friday, before the breathing workshop, and schedule salon appointments when she went to see Gigi about the dress. She was beyond overdue for a haircut. What about highlights? Should she wax or shave? And what about pre-tanning?
If she went to Mexico, she would meet up with a man she hadn’t seen in almost thirty years.
If she went to Mexico, she might get naked in front of the aforementioned man, and she hadn’t been naked in front of a man in five years.
Shit.
Talk about dire straits. Daniel had last seen her body two pregnancies and almost three decades ago, and now he wanted to see her in a tropical location where there would be swimming pools, soaking pools, and beach walks. And she was such a water baby she’d kick herself if she didn’t get into all of them, especially the ocean.
Anna added a bathing suit to her shopping list. Agony would ensue. But maybe if bouts of nerves kept dampening her appetite, she’d have fewer excess pounds to worry about.
She’d better get to baking.
An hour later, two pans of lust-inspired apple crumble she would freeze for Gigi bubbled in the oven. Anna had added freshly grated ginger root, chopped walnuts, and dried cranberries to her regular recipe and sprinkled maple sugar over the top. The smells wafting from her kitchen almost distracted her from the next problem.
Elaine had forwarded an email from the woman who would lead the workshop. Attendees were supposed to come up with names for themselves, a word that reflected their inner beauty or something to that effect. Anna had no idea what that even meant.
“I have mine already,” Elaine said, “from the class I went to with Richie.”
“What is it?” Anna asked as she pirouetted in her kitchen, pulling drawers open in a futile search for oven mitts.
“Ruby.”
“Ruby? Is that your birthstone?”
“It’s the name I gave to my yoni.”
“Your what?”
“Your yoni is your vagina, Anna. Ruby is what I call my vagina.”
Anna guffawed. She never thought to name her vagina, and why the oven mitts were in the spice drawer, she had no idea.
“So,” her best friend cajoled, “what’s your secret name going to be?”
“Hmm…” Running a finger over the jars arrayed in front of her, she stopped at small vial holding a few precious, bright orange threads. “Saffron. I think I feel like a Saffron.”
Friday’s excursion into the world of lingerie shopping consisted of entering an exquisitely decorated dressing room lit with skin-enhancing light bulbs and trying on a variety of shockingly priced items.
It seemed the less flesh covered, the more it cost.
The specialized boutique recommended by both Elaine and Gigi also carried pajama sets in summery lightweight materials. Anna sampled linen drawstring pants in shell pink and white, and silky T-shirts in matching colors. They would be perfect for the beach in Mexico, filled the requirements for Friday’s workshop, and what the heck, she hadn’t bought nice anything in a long time. A very, very long time. She added a cozy cashmere wrap sweater and a pashmina shawl to her purchases and managed to look nonchalant while fending off the urge to faint when her credit card rang through.
Elaine texted she’d meet Anna at their hotel’s ground-floor bar, another adult thing she hadn’t done in forever. The elegance of the high-ceilinged room nudged her to sit up taller and suggested she might consider applying some lipstick. She was adding a trip to the make-up counter to her shopping list when her friend breezed in and signaled she needed a visit to the ladies’ room first.
Three minutes later, Elaine plunked her butt into a plush leather chair, groaning as her oversized purse slid off her shoulder.
“Are you ready?” Anna asked.
“No, but I’m working on it.”
A waiter showed up to take their drink orders. Once he was out of earshot, Elaine leaned closer to Anna and whispered, “Have you tried any of your birthday toys?”
A blast of heat crept up the front of Anna’s throat.
Elaine waved her hands in the air. “Never mind. I don’t really need to know,” she said. “But let me tell you, they work. I bought myself the same set, and between them and what you learn tomorrow, you’re going to be a whole new woman by the time the new year rolls around.” Lifting her glass, mischief playing at the corners of her mouth and eyes, Elaine toasted Anna.
“Here’s to the adventures of Ruby and Saffron.”
Chapter Three
Anna, Elaine, and two dozen others were ushered into a room with tall windows lining the two exterior walls. Gauzy curtains filtered the late-morning light, and pillows arranged on the floor in a wide oval beckoned, each one situated on a yoga mat.
In the center, a circle of lit candles ringed an oversized vase of white orchids. Subtle instrumental music played in the background. Like everyone else, Anna had left her jacket, boots, and handbag at the periphery of the room, drawn a number as she walked in, and seated herself at the correspond
ing spot on the floor. The fact that there was a recognizable order to everything was comforting. Her new clothes were comforting too, like she wore her favorite blanket, one that had been upgraded to a cashmere blend.
Then again, they’d arrived less than five minutes ago. Those fuzzy feelings could go to hell in a handbasket at any moment. She scanned the room for emergency exit signs and found it anxiety-producing that she and Elaine were separated by three cushions. The one to Anna’s left stayed empty until moments before the leader’s introductory remarks.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to the Intimate Breathing Workshop. My name is Gaia Moonflower.”
Anna kept her eyes on the speaker in the center of the room as a man sat next to her. When he settled, she darted a glance without turning her head. Her stomach clenched. She recognized the guy from the market, the one who couldn’t find the coffee grinder. Elaine was sitting too far away to let her know someone from the island was sharing their circle of intimacies. It didn’t matter that she didn’t know him well. She knew how he liked his beans ground, and that was one step closer to knowing if he preferred to brush his teeth before or after his first cup of morning brew.
“Each of you is here for your own reasons, and each of you, no matter where you are on your journey of self-love, holds untapped potential you want to explore.”
Did shopping for lingerie count as part of her journey? And what about her impending trip to Mexico? That certainly qualified as a journey. A big one. And what about the man sitting beside her? What had brought him to her island?
“One of our goals this afternoon, and over the rest of the weekend, will be to provide you with tools to help you meet that potential. Today’s workshop is an introduction to our work. If any of you decide you’d like to learn more, we do have a few spaces available in tomorrow’s daylong event.”