“Does it work?”
“Not in the least.”
“Seriously? There’s not some magical place where everything is better?”
“Easier. Better. Kinder. I’ve looked for it all. Never found it.”
“You must never have gone to Hawaii.”
I smiled and squeezed his hand. But he didn’t smile back.
“So, what, then?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess we learn to stay. I can’t keep running. I had a bad experience a few years ago, and it really woke me up. Everything I’ve done since then has been for this moment—owning a part of Bloom, planting a garden.”
His gaze was hard on me. “What happened?”
I shrugged.
“Hannah?”
“I didn’t tell you everything about that guy, my yoga teacher and boss.”
His mouth thinned.
I held up a hand. “He didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
His face didn’t relax. I blew out a breath.
“After he broke up with me, kicked me out, and fired me, I didn’t want to stay in town. Turns out he’d been sleeping with a friend of mine. So, I just cashed out my bank account and took off in my car. I headed to Santa Fe, where my best friend lives. I stayed with her for a while, but it was crowded with her boyfriend, and they were fighting. I felt like a burden, so I left. I had some money, but not a lot. Foolishly, I’d been spending everything on him, making him fancy dinners and going on trips I couldn’t afford. And I let him pay me less than I deserved. I just…I really thought he was the one. That we would be together forever. That kind of BS.”
I took a breath. Why was I telling him all this?
“The crux of it is, I was used to taking off, casting my fate to the wind, and landing on my feet. But this time, I fell on my face. I—” This was harder than I expected to say out loud. “I didn’t have anywhere to go for a while. I lived out of my car for a bit.”
“How long?” he demanded.
“Not long. A few weeks. But it freaked me out. I felt alone. Really alone. And hungry and scared. And I vowed I would never go back to that place again. I vowed I would avoid anything that had the potential to hurt me, and guys are at the top of that list. Especially guys who affect my ability to take care of myself financially.”
He swore under his breath.
“I worked my butt off and got really good at making and saving money. I saved ten thousand dollars in just over a year, enough to invest in Bloom.” I picked up a rock and tossed it into the serene lake. “I’ve tried really hard to throw away the part of myself that fucked up.” I grabbed another rock. “I wish I could just get rid of it, you know? The part of my past that’s weighing me down.” I threw the rock into the water. “Good-bye, past mistakes.”
Jake picked up a bigger rock, leaned back and chucked it as hard as he could. It splashed in the middle of the still mountain lake, sending ripples outward in circles. “Sayonara, nightmares.”
“I hope you get jock itch, Danny.” I tossed another stone.
“Fuck you, IED.” He threw a freaking huge rock out into the water. It landed with a thwunk and a splash.
Slowly, without hurry, the still surface of the lake came back to calm. And, as I stood there, I felt the ripples of my heart smooth out too.
All that work and fear had led me to this moment. I had done the best I could every day leading to this one, including the bad ones. And now I was here in the gorgeous mountains at this gorgeous lake with this gorgeous, hurting man, and I was happy. There was nothing to get rid of. My life was my life. It was part of me. “You know, maybe we shouldn’t be throwing these rocks.”
“You mean like ‘leave no trace’? Because we’re not going to hurt the fish.”
“No, I mean…” I picked up a stone about the size of my palm and held it. “All this time, I’ve been trying to get away from feeling uncomfortable, which is totally ridiculous because I’m just a bundle of nerves and that’s not going to change. So maybe I just need to accept it. Invite my nightmares in for tea.”
He glanced at me from the corner of his beautiful brown eyes. “Is this some yoga stuff?”
“It’s a Buddhist story. The monster comes in, the lady screams. The monster comes in, the lady screams. The monster comes in, the lady invites him to sit down for tea. I mean, he’s just going to keep coming back, so why not have tea? She’s still scared but learning to sit with him at the same time.”
“Huh.”
“So maybe I need to just hold my rock, the shit I want to get away from, and have tea with it.”
“Sure. If that makes you feel better.”
“Maybe I—” I took a shaky breath, ignoring the skepticism in his voice. “Maybe we need to accept it happened so we can move on.”
He turned to me, his face a hard mask. “Fuck that. I’m never going to accept that my friends were blown to pieces.”
I tried not to cringe, both at his aggressive tone and his loaded words. I didn’t know his full story, but I wanted to help him. “Maybe it has nothing to do with liking it or not liking it. It happened. Full stop.”
His brow lowered, and his jaw hardened. I’d probably crossed a line and said the wrong thing, but it was too late to stop now.
I picked another rock, bigger this time, and dumped it into his hands. He had no choice but to catch the rock or have it fall on his toes. He didn’t say anything, just gave me a what the fuck? look.
“I don’t need therapy.”
I ignored his words and picked up a rock for myself. My chest felt buoyant, wide open, and free. How had I never thought of this before? “What if we didn’t throw our past away? What if we didn’t try to get away from it as quickly as possible? Didn’t bang it against our head until we are bleeding? What if we just held it? Just sat here and held it?”
He glared at me like I was talking crazy.
I pressed on. “I don’t like this rock, its heavy and cold, but I don’t have to like it. I just have to hold it.”
He turned and looked out over the lake, silent, brooding. I stood looking out too, half-elated and half-worried I’d upset him. My past was nothing compared to his. What did I know of war? I was a yoga teacher who had a short stint of homelessness. He was…a warrior. A survivor.
We stood like that for what felt like forever, looking out over the serene water.
“I want to break this stupid fucking rock with my bare hands.” His voice was low. So low I almost didn’t hear it.
“Me too,” I said, encouraged. “But our past is a part of us, now. If we keep destroying it and throwing it away, we’ll be lost. Constantly broken in pieces.”
He stared out at the lake and the mountains. The rock, which took me two hands to lift, was clutched in one big fist hanging at his side.
I swallowed. “I’m just now realizing that the trick is to let it be there and stop fighting it. It’s not going away. And the fight only causes more suffering.”
He scowled but didn’t tell me to shut up. I took one last chance.
“It’s hard, I know.” I slid my free palm under his, cradling the rock with him. “That’s why we need other people sometimes, to help us hold the stupid fucking rocks.”
We stood there like that, hand under hand, holding our rocks, listening to the big mountains breathe. Listening to the sky and the clouds and the beat of our hearts.
Chapter 30
Jake
I hit the week running. Literally. I woke up before dawn Monday morning and completed a fifteen-mile trail run that gained a total of four thousand feet in elevation. My training was on course. My knee was better. And I felt good. Really good. Ready for Alaska in three weeks.
After my run, I did twenty minutes of yoga at the trailhead. Just standing poses. I forgot their names but remembered how to do them.
Hannah was at the front of my mind. She’d been there for months now. Not just her boobs and her ass but her smile. Her shy smile, and her laughing smile, a
nd her silly smile.
We’d pretty much spent the weekend together. I was going to take as much of her as I could get, as often as I could get it, for the next few weeks.
And then…I’d deal with the rest as it came.
A creek was flowing beside the parking lot. I took off my shoes and put my feet in the cold water. It was freezing. Snow-melt cold. And burned. But I stayed in anyway. For the hell of it, I picked up a handful of smooth river stones. Hannah’s words had gotten to me.
Just hold the rock.
Could it be that simple?
I picked out smooth stones, one for each of my buddies that was gone, and put them in my pocket. I carried them with me the rest of the day.
Worked kicked my ass Monday and Tuesday. I was tired and sore but motivated to get on schedule. I was more than willing when Brian suggested we get a beer after work Tuesday. It had been a while since we’d hung out. Usually we got together once a week for dinner. He would rag on me about my early morning training schedule. I would tell him he was getting a beer gut. You know, guy stuff. But Hannah and training for Alaska had interrupted our cozy twosome. Then work stress and his anger over the Carter Project had put a wedge between us. We needed to get back on the same page.
Brian ordered us both shots of tequila as soon as we sat down at the bar.
I raised my brows “Wow. Straight to the point.” I wasn’t opposed to the venomous Ta-Kill-Ya, but I was wary. Usually our nights ended after a few beers. Something was up.
Brian clinked his shot glass to mine. “Here’s to Kathleen Miller.”
I laughed and took my shot. Kathleen Miller was my middle school crush, but I stood aside when it was clear she liked Brian better. God, it had killed me, but bros first. Or, in Brian’s case, cousins first.
“That’s right,” I said. “Don’t you ever forget about Kathleen Miller. You owe me.”
Brian shook his head. “I looked her up on Facebook once. Married with three kids. But still hot.”
“Three kids? That’s crazy.”
Brian shot me a look from the side of his eye. “You think that is crazy? Not climbing twenty-thousand-foot peaks?”
I shrugged because I knew it would annoy him. “Potatoes, po-tah-toes.”
He laughed and took a gulp of beer. Yeah, something was up.
“Did you contact her?” I asked. He couldn’t have brought me here to talk about Kathleen Miller.
“No way, man. She broke my heart.”
We ordered our burgers and watched the baseball game on the TV. He was gearing up to something, and I was giving him time. Things had been stressed between us lately, and I just wanted to sit and enjoy a beer with my oldest friend and cousin.
“Nice work on the Carter Project. It’s your best design yet,” he said around a bite of burger.
“Thanks. I’m glad they approved the final plans.”
Silence settled again.
He finished his beer and ordered another, then turned to me.
Here is comes.
“How’s Hannah?”
I didn’t expect that. “Fine.”
He nodded. “She okay with you leaving?”
“She knew the deal from the start.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re always good about that,” he said, referring to the other women I’d dated in the past few years. I made a point to be upfront about it being casual, and that it ended when I left town.
But Hannah was different, and I didn’t want to lump her in with those other girls. They weren’t even on the same playing field. But I didn’t know why or how this had happened. And I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it with Brian.
He drained his beer. “Okay, look, I’m going to get really girlie on you for a moment. Just, you hear about veterans and…can you talk to someone?”
I heard what was under his words, and I drained my beer too. “I’m not going to kill myself.”
“Not on purpose,” he muttered.
Fuck. Were we really going to do this?
“Aw, are you worried about me?” I asked in a little-girl voice.
“Fuck you.”
I glanced at him, slumped over his empty beer, frowning, and worried about me. I knew what it was to lose a close friend.
“I’m being a dick.” I scrubbed my hand over my jaw. “I’ll come back in one piece. I give you my word.”
I was making a promise that wasn’t mine to keep. I couldn’t say for certain what would happen out in those mountains.
“I really do need to hire someone to replace you.” He studied the baseball game. But the guy gave two shits about sports. “Maybe there’ll be enough work for you to pick up a project in November.”
“All right.”
“It’s fucking hard to manage you.”
“I’m sure it sucks.” Truth was I liked my job. I liked working at Marshall Architecture.
“You know any other boss would fire your ass.”
“You already have. Twice. Problem is you can’t get rid of me that easy.”
“Don’t I know it.” Brian watched the game, silent. Then turned to me. “Just don’t go out there thinking you’re all alone and shit. Because that’s a fucking lie.” He said this last in a rush, like it was what he’d wanted to say all along.
I didn’t know how to reply. But he didn’t seem to be waiting for one. We’d hit our maximum conversation capacity.
Eyes on the TV, we ate our meat and drank our beer. Just two guys having dinner.
We gave each other a hard pat on the back at the end of the night. And something was jarred in my chest, like he knocked it out of gear. Something clanked and sputtered and ached.
Two hours later, I leaned back on the hard rock and looked out over the shadowed valley. On the spur of the moment, I’d scaled Bear Peak. It was almost a full moon and my favorite time to hike. I liked this reverse world, where dark was light.
I popped open my water bottle and finished it, my mouth dry from the beer and tequila. I rubbed my chest, where it felt like the gears were grinding instead of running smooth.
“Just don’t go out there thinking you are all alone and shit. Because that’s a fucking lie.”
I wasn’t a hermit like my dad. I knew people cared about me. Even my dad worried about me in his own quiet way.
But something was bothering me.
Maybe I was being selfish, going out on these expeditions. I’d heard people argue that before, but I’d always brushed it off. Just because someone had a personal goal didn’t mean they were selfish.
But, looking out over the moonlit valley, I felt guilty.
I felt like I was running away.
I was a man. A soldier. I faced my responsibilities.
I thought about that speech for the VFW. I thought about what I had to do.
Chapter 31
Hannah
The studio was silent and bathed in early morning light. There was something still and full and calming about an empty yoga studio. All that dedicated practice, it changed a place. So many focused thoughts and prayers and good intentions drifting around in the sunlight. I just sat down in the middle of the wood floor and breathed it in.
My shoulders dropped. My heart opened. And something like joy filled me.
It was simple. The simplest of simple. Like soft rain.
Like letting go.
Life was good. Being with Jake was changing everything. And I was happy.
The door opened, and the first of my students arrived.
“Good morning, Meredith,” I called, pressing up to standing and walking toward the front desk. “It’s a beautiful day for yoga.”
I was walking on a cloud.
Six women showed up for class. I led them through a slow series, something new for me. The room was thick when we finished. Like how a movie theater feels after a good drama when everyone’s been crying. Like reality and dream world have collided. Maybe it was just some chemical reaction from all the deep breathing, more carbon dioxide or something. But,
whatever it was, there was magic to it. No one jumped up after class. We all just sat there, basking in the glow like lying out in the sun after a long winter.
Then the hammering started.
I was so content, I didn’t even mind the noise. I put on a beautiful Gregorian chant and chatted with my students as the room emptied. My heart was full in a way that could not be threatened.
Crystal came in for her class. I greeted her with a smile and wrapped my arms around her. And held her. I didn’t even feel weird. I just hugged her because it felt good.
“You’re learning.” She patted my shoulder as I pulled back.
“I had an incredible class this morning. Has the room ever felt thick to you?” I could ask her this. She wouldn’t look at me like I was some woo-woo hippie blowing rainbows out my ass.
“All the time.” She tilted her head to the side. “How does it normally feel for you?”
“I don’t know. Pumped up. High on endorphins.”
“And how did this feel?”
“Like…like a sunny field under water.”
“Interesting… I think it’s prana. Life force, you know: chi or spirit or whatever you want to call it. The energy that’s always already here. It gets magnified when we focus on it.”
“It was just there this morning. Like I sat down, and it was everywhere. And I think it’s always there.”
“We do all this dramatizing and get in our own way. I think being happy is the simplest thing. It’s what happens when we stop worrying about everything.”
I nodded. Had I been missing something in my yoga practice all these years?
My phone dinged. I scooted behind the desk and searched through my bag for it. Crystal popped open the front door and lit some incense.
Jake: Dinner? My house?
Hannah: I’m always hungry
Jake: For me, I hope
Hannah: Delicious
Jake: Bring stuff to stay over. I couldn’t sleep without you last night
Hannah: Aww
Jake: I can’t get enough of you.
I bit my thumbnail. Jake wanted to throw himself all in. Even knowing he was going to leave soon. Even knowing there was hurt lurking on the horizon.
Breathless (Yoga in the City Book 1) Page 24