“For sure.” He nods. “And I don’t even have twenty steps to help me.” His eyes crinkle. “What’s on the agenda for today?”
“Yoga on the beach,” I reply. “And before you ask, I don’t know how to do yoga. I feel like everyone else got the yoga memo and I missed it. Overnight, everyone in the world could do yoga except me.”
“Yes!” Finn nods emphatically. “Agreed! At my workplace, no one did yoga—and then suddenly everyone did yoga. They were all like, ‘Don’t you do yoga?’ ” He waggles his eyebrows in a pantomime of shock. “ ‘You don’t do yoga?’ ”
“Exactly!” I laugh. “Anyway, I missed out on the worldwide yoga orientation session. I must have been answering emails at the time. But it’s on my list. So I will be standing on one leg any minute. Don’t laugh.”
“I wasn’t going to laugh,” says Finn mildly. “I was going to say, ‘Do you want company?’ ”
“Company?” I stare at him suspiciously. “You mean … you want to do yoga?”
Mr. Whisky-and-Pizza wants to do yoga?
“Why not?” He shrugs. “Let see what all the fuss is about.”
I have never laughed so much in my life. We prop my iPad up on the big rock, put down my yoga mat and a towel for Finn on the sand, and follow Wetsuit Girl through a series of moves. Or at least we don’t exactly follow her so much as marvel at her, ignore her, insult her, and swear at her.
“I’m not doing that,” Finn says about every ten seconds. “I’m not doing that. Sod off.” He peers at the screen and makes an incredulous noise. “OK, Sasha, you try that one. If you don’t break your leg, I’ll have a go.”
“I don’t know how she isn’t falling over,” I gasp, as I plant my hands on my mat. “This is like playing Twister.”
“She has secret superglue on her hands,” says Finn. “Also, she’s not real. She’s a yoga bot.”
Eventually we reach the cooldown. We listen, cross-legged, while Wetsuit Girl tells us what a good job we did and how it’s time to lie down and relax.
“OK, this I can do,” says Finn, lying down on his towel. “They should have cut straight to this bit.”
“Shh,” I say. “You’re disturbing my chakras.”
To be fair, it is quite relaxing, lying on the beach, staring up at the pale sky, listening to tinkly music. In fact, I’m quite sorry when the video ends.
“Thank you for the fun yoga party,” says Finn, as we both struggle up to sitting positions. “In return, may I invite you to a spot of whisky later on?”
“I’m not wild about whisky.” I make an apologetic face. “But I’ll have some more of our stolen champagne?”
“Great!” says Finn, looking pleased. “It’s a date— Wait.” He catches himself. “Sorry. An appointment.”
He looks awkward, and my stomach twinges. I don’t want anything to feel awkward between us. What does he think—that I find him deeply unattractive? It’s not him, it’s me, and I honestly mean that. I’m the one with a problem.
So why don’t I tell him? He knows everything else. He’s seen my crumpled tissues, my chocolate wrappers, my distraught mess, and he hasn’t judged or laughed. Maybe telling him would be good.
“So …” I pause, my heart beating a little faster, because this is pretty embarrassing. “So I told you I’ve gone off sex.”
“Right,” says Finn, looking shocked. “Yes. I mean … I wasn’t …”
“I know you weren’t. But I wanted to explain a bit more.”
He seems flabbergasted by my candor. And I’m pretty flabbergasted myself. Except that out here, under the endless gaping sky, every secret, every problem, every embarrassment, seems somehow smaller, flimsier. It feels safe to blab on the beach, I realize. It’s as if all your words get swept away by the wind, out to sea, gone.
“It’s really disconcerting.” I flop back down on my yoga mat, so I can talk without seeing his face. “It’s as if my body’s checked out. That’s why I wrote … what I wrote on that piece of paper. It wasn’t really lyrics. It was a manifestation. You’re supposed to make stuff happen in your life by writing it down. And that’s what I wanted to happen. I want to … to come alive.”
There’s a long silence. I gaze directly upward into the pale, cloudy sky, feeling the breeze on my cheeks. I can’t believe I’ve just revealed so much about myself to a relative stranger. But I don’t feel embarrassed. I feel calm.
“Maybe you will come alive,” says Finn, after a long pause. “If you don’t worry about it.”
“Maybe.” I nod, thinking about this. “I mean, I used to be normal. I used to have a love life. But now …”
“Not so much?”
“A few days ago, a guy in Pret chatted me up and I told him I couldn’t see the point of sex, because it’s just genitals rubbing together.”
The memory is so horrifying that tears are springing to my eyes as I talk. Or maybe they’re tears of mirth. Or relief that I’m confiding in someone. I have no idea.
“Genitals rubbing together,” echoes Finn, sounding dumbfounded.
“I know.” My voice starts shaking, but again I’m not sure if I’m laughing or crying. “And I said it loudly, in front of all the customers.” I clap a hand over my face. “ ‘Genitals rubbing together.’ ” Now I’m laughing properly, almost hysterically. Tears are pouring down my face, and suddenly I break into a coughing fit.
“Are you OK?” asks Finn in alarm.
“Well, clearly not,” I manage. I sit back up and cough a few times more, emptying my lungs, before I get control of myself. “Clearly I’m a bit of a mess. Sorry for dumping on you. You didn’t want to hear that. Now you’re thinking, ‘How do I get away from this weirdo?’ If you like, we can blank each other for the rest of the trip.”
“I don’t want to blank you!” He laughs. “Seriously. Who am I to judge? I’m a mess myself.”
“You’re a mess?” I turn to survey him skeptically. “How are you a mess? I mean, I know you’re here, and I know what happened at your office … but you look pretty put-together to me. No quirks. No strange behavior.”
There’s a pause, and Finn’s jaw tightens a little. I’m starting to recognize his facial moves, and this one is a defense mechanism. It’s the way he looks whenever I venture onto tricky territory. I resign myself to another five-minute silence, followed by an abrupt change of subject. But then, to my surprise, he says in a low voice, “I wake up at three every night. I’m stressed out at—” He breaks off, and his eyes flicker as though with some painful thought or memory. “I’m stressed out at some stuff that happened. And I’m angry at myself.” He shakes his head, looking despairing. “It’s corrosive, that kind of feeling.”
“Do you ever manage to get back to sleep?” I ask cautiously.
“Haven’t slept a full night for a long time.” He flashes me a rueful glance and I notice again the shadows under his eyes. They’ve been so permanent, I’d thought of them as just part of his face—but now I see them as fatigue. Deep, ingrained fatigue.
“Have you tried any … remedies?” I say, aware that this sounds totally feeble.
“A few.” He nods.
“Have you tried seeing anyone?”
Finn doesn’t reply, just makes an indeterminate noise. After a while, I sense he’s not going to divulge any more than that. To be fair, by his standards he’s been forthcoming.
“The pair of us!” I try to sound lighthearted and almost succeed.
“I know, right?”
“But, luckily, we have yoga.” I flop down on my mat again and stare at the sky. “Yoga solves everything.”
“Amen to that.” Finn lies back on his own mat, and we’re both quiet. After a while I glance over at him and see that he’s closed his eyes and is breathing evenly. I hope he’s fallen asleep. He must be exhausted if he’s up at three every night.