The rest of the class was a haze of limbs and affirmations. Within five minutes Janey forgot she wasn’t wearing a top, even when Elizabeth Madden came over to adjust her into a more perfect version of warrior two, squatting behind her and wrapping her own arms under Janey’s armpits. Janey could feel the yogini’s pert breasts pushing into her own shoulder blades as she pulled her shoulders in line with her hips. Janey could hear her mother’s gravelly voice in her head instructing her to cover up. Nice southern girls were more modest than this. But here Lorna’s daughter was, stretching her arms high above her head, bosom bare to the world and primetime news anchor, feeling an intense sensation of freedom.
There was just one occasion during warrior three where she had to reach over to prop CJ up. Ninety minutes went by in a blur. Before she knew it Janey was prone on her back in savasana with Elizabeth Madden massaging her temples in a counterclockwise motion with an oil that smelled like eucalyptus. Doing this to each and every person in the class made the practice of lying in corpse pose last an additional fifteen minutes. But it was nice. Janey could feel the tension wound tight around her spine melt down into the floorboards. Her body temperature began to dip, and she shivered. Without having to say anything Elizabeth came by to drape her in a hemp blanket.
Janey felt so relaxed in her warm cocoon, she drifted off to sleep, only coming to with a startled gasp when the rest of the class began chanting their final oms. She was almost disappointed it was over.
“How are you feeling?” CJ asked her cautiously as Janey searched the coatrack self-consciously for her sweater. This was clearly the awkward bit of the class. It was like the morning after a drunken hookup. Now they avoided eye contact and hunched slightly as they rummaged for their clothing. It was one thing to be naked during group exercise, another thing entirely to be braless while you searched for your cell phone in your purse.
“I feel pretty damn good.”
In response, Janey’s FitWand, which had remained wonderfully silent since the start of the class, retorted, “You are not working up to your potential.”
Trying to adjust the wretched device with one hand and cover her chest with the other, Janey turned directly into a man sidestepping his own way to the jackets.
“Oh hey. Fancy meeting you here, Green.”
“Excuse me?” Janey looked up, startled.
“Green juice. That’s what you got at my shop last week, right? I never forget a color.” His dimples bounced up and down when he smiled. “You never texted me.”
It was the handsome man from Wandering Juice.
“Of course,” Janey motioned with her elbow for CJ to wait up for a second. “Hi. How are you? What are you doing here?”
“Yoga?” he said, raising both eyebrows.
Janey laughed. She liked the way he was looking at her and the fact that he managed to maintain eye contact. “Yeah, me too.” She didn’t know what to say next. “I was just thinking maybe my friend and I should stop in for a juice after this class.”
He glanced behind him, looking to see if someone was waiting for him, Janey assumed. “Sadly, I won’t be there. I have to go straight home. I like to see my daughter before she goes to bed.”
Janey didn’t know why she was surprised that he was a dad. Probably because he looked so young, definitely under thirty.
“I do have to run,” he continued. “But I would love to take you out for a drink sometime. It can be any color you want. It doesn’t even have to have kale in it.”
Was he asking her out on a date? She remembered his number scrawled on the side of her juice cup. She’d been flattered but had ignored it because it felt peculiar to call a complete stranger. When was the last time she’d been asked out on a proper date? She knew she’d never been asked out on a date when she was standing topless in a room of strangers.
Would she have said yes to the juice guy a month ago? Probably not. She would have said she was too busy with work. But right now she could think of few things better than staring at his dimples for a couple more hours. She reached into her bag and fished out her card, letting both her arms drop to her sides and subsequently freeing her nipples. She handed it to him with a smile.
“My email’s on here.”
CHAPTER SIX