Chapter Three

Kaleigh

I finished doing outside yoga by eleven forty-five. If my client wasn’t so sweaty and hairy, I might have been tempted to do the plow pose with him, but I just can’t handle back hair.

So instead I stopped by Starbucks to get myself a soy Frappuccino as I made my way to my yoga studio. Opening the glass door, the seashell wind charm zings. There’s a reception desk as soon as you walk in to the right. On the walk in block letters form the word Namaste. When you walk around the corner you enter what we call the ‘chill out room’, painted all white. White and tan cloth chairs align one wall while there’s a low canvas brown couch against the other wall. In the middle is a low white wooden table with ivory candles. To the left of the room are the men’s and women’s locker rooms. Straight ahead is the door that leads to the ‘Zen room’.

The room is darker than the chill room. The walls are painted a dark chocolate brown. A square black box hangs suspended in the middle of the room. White chiffon curtains hang and are tied together all the way around. In the center is a round dim light and crystal beads are hanging to the floor. Around the room are six love seats, all with big plush cushions you can lie on, tiny tree lights scattered all over the room. In the middle is a rug set out for stretching if needed. The music coming out of the room is gentle charms, with flutes in the background. Just the sound makes the stress leave your shoulders. I check to see if there are people in there. During the day, there are many people who pop in to just sit down and block out the everyday hustle we all live in. It’s also a no phone zone. I know it’s a shocking concept, but it’s the way I roll.

When I close the door and walk past the locker rooms, I check into the yoga studio that’s on the other side. I open the door to see Stephanie is in the middle of her hot yoga session. The room is huge, with one wall being floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden I have outside. The natural light coming in bounces off the wall that has the mirror all across it. There are about twenty people in this class. Hot yoga is a vigorous form of yoga performed in a studio that’s heated to one hundred and five degrees and has a humidity of forty percent. The formal name for hot yoga is “Bikram yoga.” It’s the biggest craze right now. People usually just dress in sports bras and shorts. Anything else would be too much. On one wall hangs a picture that says, “You are one yoga class away from a good mood.” While on the wall where the door is hangs “Yoga Every Day.”

I know she’s at the end of her class since they’re doing the stretching part. I close the door, going back to the reception desk where Kathy is now sitting.

“Hey, girl,” she greets me with a smile.

“Hi there, sunshine. Can you add Mr. Bison to the same time next week?”

She takes care of everything that needs scheduling in here and also does the Pilates class we host on the weekends.

“You have a private group session starting in twenty minutes with three moms. Then I have to cancel the Pilates class on Saturday. My parents are coming in and I can’t get out of it.”

I look at the clothing rack we’ve set up, organizing it by color. “Don’t cancel it. I can do it.” I smile over at her. “I’ll bring Rachel in. She loves walking around shouting at people to just breathe.”

“Oh, that’s even better.” She continues posting about things on our Facebook page and putting a silly picture of me on the Instagram page. I run out of the studio at two-thirty, making it home at the same time as the bus pulls up.

Rachel is the first one to bounce off the bus. “You almost forgot us.” She skips over, her big backpack over her head. Her arms barely make it around my waist. My hand cups her head while I lean down to kiss her.

“I was waiting for you in the car.” I pretend.

“Sure, Aunt Kay.” Gabe, my nephew, comes up the driveway bouncing his soccer ball. “I saw you swerve in right before the bus stopped.”

“Hush it, kid, or I’ll make you eat tofu raw.” I dare him while he makes a grimace with his face. I’m a full-fledged Vegan. The kids, however, are not, and let’s not even start with Lauren.

“Why don’t we go in and wash our hands, grab a snack, and go do some poses in the backyard?” I lean down, picking up Rachel. “Whatcha say, Rachie, want to learn downward dog?”

She throws her hands up in the air. “Yes, I want to do the dog.”

I laugh at the same time that Gabe does. “Don’t say that out loud.”

We go inside where I make them wash their hands and cut up some apples and cheese. I tried to pass them the vegan cheese, but they caught on and made me cut the normal cheddar one.

“I think I’m going to try a new recipe for dinner tonight to surprise your mom.” I turn to the fridge where I spot the three bottles of wine I bought yesterday, and it’s a good thing I got a text from her today saying that she needed it. “So what do you guys think about cauliflower?” I turn, nodding my head. “Yum, right.”

Rachel holds her nose. “Yucky.”

I pull up my phone, taking out a recipe. “Go start your homework and when I finish we’ll go outside.”

They both push away from the counter, going to the kitchen table where they take out their stuff.

I take out the cauliflower, wash it, and cut it in little pieces, mixing some spices together and drizzling them with oil. I wash my hands and set the oven. “Okay, rugrats, we have thirty-five minutes before I have to take it out. Let’s go outside and soak up the sun.”

“I want to do the dog, please.” Rachel runs to me with her yoga mat.

“Let’s go do downward dog, okay?” I walk outside, closing the door behind us.

Gabe runs out with his soccer ball, throwing it on the grass and practicing with it.

“Okay, Rachel, let’s start.” I go through about five or six exercises, then we lie on the grass together while we watch the clouds float by, trying to decide what they look like.

“I’m going to get water,” Gabe says as he opens the door. “Auntie Kay, there’s something smoking,” he says with panic.

“Shit, the cauliflower.” I get up and run inside. The smell of char hits me right away. “Oh my God, oh my God.” I grab the oven mitt, opening the oven.

“Mom’s here,” Gabe says, running to the front door.

She walks in the door just as the smoke detector goes off. “Oh, dear Christ, Kay, what the hell are you doing?” She grabs a broom out of the closet and positions herself beneath the smoke detector, using the broom to fan the smoke away. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” she chants while looking over at the kitchen in time to see me pulling a tray of charred, smoking cauliflower out of the oven.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! I’m so sorry! We went outside to do some kid yoga, and I totally forgot.” I try explaining while I walk with the pan to the sink, turning on the water and soaking the smoking remains of what was once cauliflower. The sizzling sound of water hitting a hot metal pan fills the quiet room, along with a burnt, smelly, steamy smoke that has the potential to set off the now silent smoke detector again.

“Oh, Auntie Kay, what are we going to eat now?” Rachel asks. She would have been the only one of us to attempt to eat one of my creations.

I slap my hands together. “Oh! I have some tofu we can cut up and—” Before I can even finish that sentence, Gabe and Lauren both yell a combined firm yet panicky, “No!” I glare at both of them.

“Okay, I’m going to change. Gabe, start your homework. Rachel, go start studying your spelling words. You”—Lauren points at me—“clean up this mess. I’ll find something to throw together for pasta.”

I groan. “I don’t have any gluten-free pasta here.” I walk up to the fridge while Lauren goes upstairs to change out of her ‘work clothes.’ When she comes back downstairs I am putting things in the dishwasher. “Oh, good news,” I inform her. “I found some rice, so I’ll throw whatever sauce you make on there. Yumm-O.”

She shakes her head, laughing at me as she starts prepping the veggies to go into whatever she is making. I go to the table where I study words with Rachel.

“Kay, set the table,” she calls out to me.

I walk over to see that she has done some pasta primavera and it looks delish, but I see the container of Parmesan cheese next to her. “I can’t eat that. You put cheese in it,” I complain to her.

“It’s okay,” she whispers to me. “I won’t turn you into the vegan police. We’ll pretend it never happened.” She serves up some pasta onto plates for the kids.

I open the freezer, squealing when I find a frozen meal. “Score. Look! Tofu ravioli! Saved!” I do a little dance on my way over to the microwave, raising my hands in the air and shaking my ass as I pop it in. “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah!” I continue dancing till the microwave beeps.

I pull it out, peeling off the filmy plastic cover, and wave it under Lauren’s nose. “Smells so good, right?”

She nods, but I know she is totally lying. Throughout the meal, the kids tell her about their day. Rachel tells me that today someone threw up in class because someone else farted. Apparently, this is hilarious to her, since she is in stitches about it as she retells the story.

As soon as everyone finishes eating I round up all the dirty dishes looking at my sister, seeing her tired eyes. “I’ll clean up. You go give the kid a bath and do homework.”

I rinse and put all the dishes in the dishwasher while I clean up the kitchen and it almost looks like I didn’t burn anything today. Well, almost. The smell is still lingering. When I see Lauren go upstairs I take out a couple of candles, lighting them around the room, then dim the lights and put on some light jazz music.

When Lauren comes back downstairs, a full glass of a crisp, perfectly chilled white wine is waiting for her. “Aww, if you weren’t my sister—and I were into chicks—I’d make you my woman.” She grabs her glass and curls up on the couch with her feet under her.

“So, tell me about this boss of yours?” I prompt her as I sip my own wine.

“Oh, where do I start?” She closes her eyes. It’s like she is in a trance.

“Good-looking?” I ask, curious as to what has my sister going tick-tock like a bomb.

She nods her head and finishes off her glass of wine in one long gulp. She picks up the bottle, pulling the cork out with a pop, and pours herself another glass. “Too good-looking.”

“Fit or chunky?” I ask. I usually start off with little questions till we tackle the big things like penis size, full package size, does he hang left or right? Can you see it or is it flat?

“Fit,” she answers, thinking, then taking another gulp till it’s half drained. “Very fit.” She looks around before leaning into me and whispering, “I think he has a six pack.” I try to not laugh out loud while she drains the rest of her glass.

“Hair color? Eye color?” I fill up her glass again. To most people it’s just wine, to my sister it’s like a truth serum.

“Brown and hazel-green with gold specks.” She drinks a little more.

“Facial hair? Would you get a burn from his beard or not?”

She looks up and blushes a bit. I don’t say anything. Instead, I hide my smile with my wine glass. “Depends on the time of the day. He was clean-shaven this morning, but he had a good five o’clock shadow going by three o’clock.” Her head falls back on the couch, while she closes her eyes like she is thinking of him.

Sitting up straight, I look at her and finally see something I haven’t seen since pencil dick fucked her over. “You like him?”

Her eyes snap open as she turns to me, denying it, but I know that look. “No! No, I don’t. Absolutely not. I don’t like him at all.”

She giggles as she takes another sip. “He hit my freaking car, Kay, and then the asshat asked me if I was drunk.” She tries to plead her case. “Drunk at fucking eight a.m.”

It’s that final sentence that I know she thinks of him more than she cares to admit, even to herself. “He’s gotten under your skin! There hasn’t been anyone who’s pushed you this far. Well, there was Pacey from Dawson’s Creek…” We all know how that turned out. She called the television station and tried to have the show cancelled and banned. We won’t even mention the petition she tried to start on Facebook.

“Hey!” She points at me. “Joey went sailing with him all summer! Just because Dawson is there and crying, she thinks she should be with Pacey. He was always her choice.” She now pours herself another glass, spilling it.

“Do you think he manscapes?” I ask while I put my glass down on the table.

“I have no idea, but I would guess it’s probably manscaped. I mean, who doesn’t manscape these days?” She looks over and wonders.

I am not here nor there. It’s a choice really. Just because I like to be well groomed doesn’t mean everyone feels the same. “Some like to be free and let things be natural; there is nothing wrong with that. Don’t judge. Well, unless you have to suck his dick, then by all means, you put your foot down. You don’t need to be choking on long pubic hair. In fact, if you think it isn’t, then just run. Run fast, like he’s waving a bomb in front of you.” I use my hands to mimic an explosion.

“Shoes?”

“Nice. Black ones.” She looks at me, my eyes opening wide. “And clean. Very nice.” Her pet peeve when your shoes are scuffed. She won’t even mow the fucking lawn in scuffed shoes.

“Teeth? Straight? Crooked? White? Stained? Stinky breath?”

“I don’t know.” She looks confused.

“Big hands?”

“Oh yeah, so big.” She opens her hands wide to make me see how big, but she shakes them a bit. “This big.” She motions with her hands, making big circles. So from what I got he has hands just like the toy green hulk hands that Gabe has.

“You think he has a big dick?”

She stops moving. “He would have to. You can’t be that good-looking and have a small penis. Actually, maybe that’s why he’s such an asshole! His penis is small. He has small penis syndrome.” She looks at me, waiting for my input. “I mean, why else would he be smoking hot and an asshole, unless”—she giggles—“unless it’s so big it hurts when he walks.” She puts her hand over her mouth and laughs out loud, as if she is keeping the biggest secret ever. “I can’t sleep with him. He’s my boss and besides, he doesn’t even like me.”

She rises from the couch, picking up her glass of wine and spilling whatever was left in it on the floor. “I need a dog, so if I spill something, he can lick it up.”

I watch her and silently laugh at her. Having a dog that drools and pees all over the floor would send her into the mental ward.

“You think we can get a dog and train him to bite my boss?”

“Yes, I think you just need to bring a picture and a sweater with you to training school so they can use his scent. They’ll train the dog to attack your boss as soon as he gets close.” I nod my head, agreeing with her.

Her mouth forms an O. “Oooh, we need to look into that.” The next thing I know she is walking toward the stairs, going upstairs, while I follow her. She stumbles over the last step and falls on the bed face first.

She opens her eyes, blinking at me, the tears forming at her lower lid. “You think he doesn’t like me because I’m old? Or ugly? Or is it because I’m fat?”

I lean over and stroke her cheek. “You are not old. You are the opposite of ugly, and you are definitely not fat. He acts like he doesn’t like you because he probably likes you too much. Remember Ricky in the third grade who chased you with a frog because he loved you? This is just the adult version.” I make a mental note to find this fucker and slice his tires. If he fucks with her, that is.

“No way would he go for someone like me. He did say I had a tight ass, though. That means he was looking at it, right?”

I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “He was definitely checking you out.” She closes her eyes while I continue talking, “Why wouldn’t he check you out? You’re hot, smart, and you have a tight body and a great smile. Your whole face lights up when you smile. You don’t do that enough. Now if it makes you feel better, I think tomorrow we will make beef vegan soup, minus the beef obviously, but I wonder what we can use to make it brown. I should Google that.” I don’t say another word because her snoring fills the room. I stare at her, hoping that her boss just relaxes before she goes crazy.