After meeting you, though, I see that definition of yoga and it sounds like the perfect description of love. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever see you again. But every single time that I practice yoga from now on, it will carry with it the memory of our brief union and the lasting transformation it caused in me.
Every pose will make me think of you for a different reason. As I find my way into my expression of each posture, there you’ll be.
You are downward-facing dog, the asana that at first feels so unfamiliar and strange, that literally turns you upside down, but that soon begins to feel like home.
You are sirsana, headstand, the scariest of poses, the one that requires a leap of faith, that does not tolerate any hidden inhibitions, but that, once you find your way into the right alignment, feels stronger and safer than any other posture.
You are savasana. Complete ease and relaxation, a letting go of everything that I don’t even know I’ve been holding, becomes possible with you. I release, I’m at ease, and true peace seems possible.
She’d continued on writing through the night, covering every pose in her asana manual. For each one, she didn’t have to think for more than a moment about how Danny embodied the position; it became clear almost immediately. It took her many hours, but in some ways it was the easiest thing she’d ever written.
After she’d finished, the faint glow of sunrise had begun to push out the night sky, and she crawled into bed and immediately fell asleep. When she awoke, disoriented, only an hour or two later, she suddenly became acutely aware of the fact that the vans were departing in thirty minutes and she hadn’t begun packing. Her cabin-mate Diana seemed to have already packed her things and left.
In a ten-minute frenzy of adrenaline and flying sports bras, Adele managed to cram everything—even her water-logged laptop—into her bags, throw on some sunglasses and a sweatshirt, and even brush her teeth. She said a final goodbye to the small hut that had been her shelter for the past three weeks, and tugged her suitcase down the steps of the front porch and toward the grassy field. She left her front door open, a practice she sadly realized she’d need to abandon once she returned to the States.
As she passed Danny’s hut, she paused. She held the pages she’d written in her hand, and hadn’t yet made up her mind about whether to give them to him. She’d been putting off that decision, thinking the right answer would just come to her. But there was no putting it off any longer, and no answer had come.
Before one more thought could cross her mind, she set down her bags in the long grass and began walking toward the hut, papers in hand. She crept up his steps as silently as possible, and placed the pages so they were peeking out from under a sculptural piece of driftwood that Danny kept on his porch.
“Hello?” Her heart stopped. His voice. He was talking to her—even if he didn’t know it—something she hadn’t been sure she’d ever experience again. “Someone there?”
She resisted the urge to respond, knowing she wouldn’t know what to say, that the van would be leaving in minutes, that it made no sense. She stayed perfectly still, holding her breath.
After what seemed like several minutes, she heard him speak again. “Good luck, Adele. And goodbye.”
Those words were too much for her. She fled down the steps, not quite as carefully as before, and toward her bags. Had he known it was her? He couldn’t have. Regardless, those words—good luck, goodbye—carried with them such fatal finality, such tragic poignancy, that she couldn’t keep the tears inside.
She hastily wiped any residue of tears from her face as she approached Yande, waiting patiently by his van smoking a cigarette, and silently willed him not to ask her if she was okay. He didn’t. She took a middle seat between Priya and Janine, all the other seats already occupied. The ride up to Ubud was strangely traffic-free and silent.
Chapter 25
Leaving the large corporate meeting room, Adele marveled at how wonderfully strange it was to emerge from a conference room with such a sense of calm, clarity, and contentment. She’d been teaching the lunchtime office yoga class for a full month now, three times a week, and was still struck by this realization each time. Her co-workers filtered out around her, many rubbing their eyes, gradually transitioning back into a fully awake state after coming out of deep relaxation. Many of them gave sleepy, happy smiles to her as they passed.
“Great class, Adele,” said Margie, the matriarch/office manager of the place, giving Adele a squeeze on her shoulder.
“Thanks, Margie,” Adele said, smiling. She pulled the elastic from her ponytail, letting her hair tumble onto her shoulders. “Did you like the music? I’m experimenting with playlists.”
“Oh, sure,” Margie said absently. “To be honest, hon, I’m concentrating too much on trying to figure out how to get myself twisted up the way you are to notice the ambience very much.”
Adele laughed. “You know it’s not about making your body look like mine,” she said. “Your version of a pose might look very different from my version, and that’s fine.”
“Well okay then,” Margie said, smiling as she let her hand drop from Adele’s shoulder. “Back to the grind,” she said, and ambled toward the ladies’ room to change.
Adele waited until the class had emptied out—in case anyone had questions or a concern they wanted to bring up privately—and then headed to her office. She felt a little guilty watching so many of her coworkers flock to the public restrooms, where they would squeeze into little stalls to change, when she had an entire room by herself to do so; but she’d worked her butt off to get this position, and continued to do so, so she didn’t feel too bad about slipping off her yoga pants in comfortable privacy.
Once she was back in her work clothes—slim-fitting khaki pants, a crisp blue button-down, and a pair of snake-print stilettos for a little kick—she slid behind her desk and picked up the lengthy document she’d been reviewing before class. It was a dense piece of legislation, filled with jargon and footnotes, and she’d been having trouble getting herself to focus.
That was actually an unusual phenomenon these days. For the first two months of her new job—as chief legal counsel for an independent lobbying organization working to help small farmers and fight government subsidies for big corporate farms—she’d been happily surprised at how much the work enthralled her. She believed in the cause, and liked her coworkers, and felt extremely valued. She was even emailing Kelly with some questions, and was close to convincing her boss to hire him as a consultant.
This had been quite unexpected. The day after she’d returned from Bali, when she’d woken up in her apartment, her brain thick with jetlag and her small room cramped with luggage, everything had seemed bleak. So bleak, in fact, that she hadn’t left her apartment for three full days, ordering food and watching horrible reality TV on her (new) laptop. The combination of heartbreak, confusion, and physical exhaustion had formed a thick blanket of despair that kept her cozy in her unmade bed.
But then, her Type A personality had come to the rescue. She’d fought against all her impulses and dragged herself out of bed and back to the yoga studio; to a coffee shop where she sat at her laptop for hours and applied for jobs; to job interviews; and, eventually, to her first day of work. And now, the bleakness she’d felt that first morning seemed a distant memory.
Yet somehow, the heartbreak of the last time she left Danny’s hut remained as vivid as ever. In spite of her overall happiness, her secure knowledge that she was doing exactly what she was meant to do, she couldn’t deny that her heart was broken. She’d brushed off suitors, deflected questions from friends about whether she was dating, and—most important of all—allowed herself no opportunity to reflect on this difficult emotion. But it was undeniably still there, a heavy cloud that hung at the edge of even the bluest sky.
The words on the page below her blurred. She wasn’t ready to dive straight from yoga class into this impenetrable document; she needed to ease her way back in.
She
swiveled her chair around to face her computer and opened up her email. As the page loaded, as always, her stomach fluttered with butterflies. Of course, she knew it was silly—no, stupid—but she couldn’t help it. Maybe, maybe this time, there would be something from him.
Nothing.
She scanned her other emails—nothing interesting, nothing urgent—and turned back to the thick stack of papers on her desk. Soon, she was absorbed in her work.
The following week was gray and gloomy, even by Seattle standards, and Adele was relying on lunchtime yoga to give her a little jolt of brightness and energy. She came to the conference room early, set up her music and yoga blocks, and watched the room fill up. It was more packed than usual—even for a Monday, when people tended to flock to her class in penance for weekend overindulgence. Adele felt a little burst of pride at the thought that this might be because of rave reviews circulating the office by word of mouth.
She wandered through the room, helping arrange mats so that everyone fit. As she headed toward a particularly congested corner, she saw the clock tick from 11:59 to noon and pivoted on her heel. She felt strongly about starting her classes on time—one hour of yoga was barely enough, she didn’t want to skimp by minutes on either end, plus it looked like someone had taken charge of the crowded corner and laid order to the mats.
She rang the small gong she kept at the front of the studio, and watched with gratification as her students (her colleagues!) settled quietly onto their mats, legs crossed and eyes closed. They looked so at ease. She felt the same way. She began class.
Despite the fact that Ajuni had sometimes taken “hands-on” instruction too far, Adele felt she’d benefited greatly from the individual attention he’d given during practice. Because of this, she strove to provide the same tailored teaching to her classes, moving through the room as she taught. It was a little contest she had with herself to try to have a one-on-one interaction with each person, whether it was a physical adjustment, a compliment or suggestion, or just eye contact and a smile. Today’s larger-than-usual class made that task a bit more challenging, but she was giving it her best effort.
She was standing behind Ted, a heavyset accountant who had surprised her by becoming a regular early on, trying to guide him into a better aligned warrior two.
“Set your feet a bit wider apart from side to side,” she said quietly, and held his torso gently as he did so, stabilizing him. He wobbled, his sizeable midsection leaning heavily back into her, and she almost fell over. She quickly caught herself—and him—and assessed his stance. “Much better,” she murmured, and continued on toward the back right corner of the room.
“Set your focus about a foot and a half in front of your right foot,” she said. Now begin to pour all the weight into your right leg, feeling your left become lighter and lighter until it just—woosh!—lifts itself off the floor. As slowly as you need, bring your upper body forward and down, letting your right fingertips rest lightly on the floor or a block,” she continued, glancing around at the myriad forms of half moon pose taking shape throughout the room.
Her eyes alit on one pose, a man—the person who had dealt with the mat congestion in the back corner, if she wasn’t mistaken—whose hips were too square to the floor, rather than opened up to the left side of the room.
“Let your hips open up to the side of the room,” she said to the class as she moved toward the man, her eyes on his still un-aligned pelvis. He would need a little more help. She stood behind him, assessing how best to help. Leaning down, she said to the back of his head, “I’m going to adjust your hips, is that okay?” The sandy blonde head made a tiny movement of assent—full-on nods could seriously throw off your balance.
She straightened herself and gently wrapped her hand around the sturdy curve of his left hipbone, her fingertips pressing lightly into the firm flesh of his lower abdomen. Her other hand rested just above his right buttock, which she couldn’t help but notice was the most perfectly formed ass she’d seen in recent memory. She chided herself internally for having the thought—he was a student! And a colleague! Double no-no!—but allowed herself some leeway because of the incredibly close-fitting black yoga shorts he had on. Most men in the office wore schlubby sweatpants or basketball shorts to yoga, and though she’d never imagined that male yoga shorts could be a sexy thing, apparently they could.
Ushering the thought out of her mind, she focused on the adjustment. She needed to guide her mind toward thoughts of open ilia and stacked scapulae, and away from the supple, rounded curvature of his muscles, the suggestive concave slope of his stomach. Careful not to disrupt his balance, she carefully lifted his left hipbone up toward the ceiling, guiding his right to follow. His hips opened up the side of the room, legs in perfect alignment for the pose. Seeing that his balance looked solid, she decided to challenge him to make the pose more difficult.
“If you feel comfortable here, slowly start to turn your head to look up at your left hand,” she murmured, conscious that the class was getting antsy and she’d need to move them to a new pose soon.
The man obediently began to turn his head, rotating in small increments from the floor, to the side wall, to the ceiling. As he did so, she felt her heartbeat quicken, her stomach flood with butterflies, her knees weaken. Her brain hadn’t yet processed what she was seeing, but her body had gone into full-on freak-out mode. After what seemed like an eternity, her brain caught up: this perfect ass, this sandy blonde head, this upturned face—they belonged to none other than Danny.
Involuntarily, her fingers clenched, and the abrupt squeeze threw him off balance. He wobbled on one leg, she reflexively gripped harder to hold him upright, and by the time she heard his hoarse whisper of “Jesus Adele, let go!” it was too late. They both tumbled to the floor, Adele sitting down hard with a thump, Danny landing belly-first, half on his mat and half sprawled over her legs. Their eyes met, a pregnant moment of silence passed, and then they both exploded with laughter.
Adele’s entire body convulsed with laughs, her lungs laboring and stomach aching with the effort. Tears streamed down her face, her hands trembled, her face contorted into an expression she could tell was the opposite of sexy. It felt great. Of course she should resume class soon, she could see heads turning out of her peripheral vision, but not yet. She’d never abandoned herself so fully to a feeling—at least never in public.
Finally, as her breathing began to return to normal and the body-shaking guffaws had subsided to giggles, she felt a light touch on her arm. Danny’s hand. As soon as it had come, it was gone, discreetly returned to his side, so that she almost wondered if she’d imagined it. Then he looked at her, a few straggling chuckles escaping his mouth, and gave her that sparkling wink. It had been real.
“Okay everybody, sorry about that,” Adele said, standing up and adjusting her rumpled tank top. “But that’s a perfect example of how yoga doesn’t just mean doing all the poses perfectly—it means embracing the moment, even the ‘mistakes,’ and finding joy in them.” She was just thinking out loud, buying time as she walked to the front of the room and tried to regroup, and yet the words sounded right. “Let’s all meet back together in downward dog.”
The rest of the hour was a blur. She did her best to focus on getting the class through their practice—they deserved their yoga, after all—though she couldn’t help but sneak glances toward Danny in the back corner every few minutes. Was she hallucinating? Would he be gone the next time she looked? But every time, there he was, hanging down in forward bend, hips thrust toward the sky in bridge pose (Adele may or may not have added that pose at the last minute…), lying serene and still in savasana.
When class ended, she lingered as she normally did, though this time for a different reason. Though she felt guilty admitting it, she made a show of looking intently at her phone while the class filtered out, trying to discourage anyone from approaching to ask a question or chat lest they prevent her from getting to talk to him. When she sensed it was safe, she gl
anced up and looked around the room. Her stomach dropped—what she’d been fearing all class had come true. He was gone.
Chapter 26
Danny hadn’t expected the yoga class to go that way. Though, to be honest, he hadn’t had any idea what to expect. Just less…emotion, perhaps? He’d envisioned it as a gesture of peace, equally tinged with playfulness and the suggestion of romance, but hadn’t really taken the time to think about what the actual class would be like.
As soon as he’d walked into the room and seen her standing up front—her ponytail bouncing enthusiastically as she chatted happily with an older woman, her breasts pressing against the taut neckline of her bright tank top—his knees had almost buckled and he had to stop himself from calling out. It had only been two months or so, but it felt like he was seeing a long-lost love. And then when she’d touched him. Even focusing on Aunt Gladys serving meatloaf in her swimsuit didn’t seem to do the trick; if she hadn’t sent them both tumbling over, he would’ve been fully hard in moments.
Not that the intensity of the class had been bad. In retrospect, it couldn’t have happened any other way. If it hadn’t been electric, explosive, exhilarating, he would’ve questioned everything he’d spent the last two months thinking about. But it did throw him off a bit. He didn’t feel prepared to stay and talk with her afterward as he’d planned. He couldn’t even remember what he’d planned to say to her.
And so as soon as savasana was over, he’d left, sneaking out the door shielded by a trio of young men in basketball shorts. He didn’t even risk changing in the office bathrooms, and instead went right outside in his yoga shorts, any embarrassment at his outfit trumped by his desire to get somewhere he could think. Unfortunately, his hotel was more than 20 blocks away, and the September air had taken on a decided chill. He found a coffee shop, ordered an espresso, and sat down by the window.
Paradise Lust Page 15