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Cameron

“ M ove now to the Warrior One pose,” the yoga instructor intoned, her voice melodic and irritatingly calm.

I mimicked the others around the room, stepping into a deep lunge and raising my hands above my head, stretching toward the ceiling as if asking God to save me from this torture.

Beside me, my best friend Lesley sighed out a contented breath.

When I glanced over, she had a happily placid smile on her lips.

Her lithe, athletic body seemed to flow into each pose.

Her blond hair was pulled back into a bun, and her milky-white skin didn’t look like it had a single bead of perspiration on it anywhere.

She wasn’t dripping sweat like I was. In fact, she was acting like this was actually soothing in some way.

“Now we will step forward into Warrior Three,” the instructor said.

All around me, the dozen other men and women in the class leaned forward, lifting their back legs toward the rear wall and reaching out toward the front of the studio, balancing themselves on one foot.

Holy shit. Is this chick serious? My hamstrings were going to snap if I did much more.

Lesley slid gracefully into the pose. I did my best to match her skill, but failed.

Thankfully, I managed not to fall flat on my face, but the wobbling and overbalancing made me look more like a newborn deer than a master yogi.

My sweat-soaked hair hung near my cheeks, obscuring the miserable expression on my olive-skinned face. My flexibility was terrible, as always.

Thankfully, the class ended ten minutes later, with the one pose I could pull off with no problem: corpse pose. Lying flat on my back and ohm -ing along with the rest of the class had been the only relaxing part of the entire hour.

Lesley and I had been friends since college.

She’d majored in chemistry and now worked for a big biotech company in Toronto.

I, on the other hand, had studied journalism and English.

I’d never really seen us as that different, but after suffering through yoga with her and seeing how much she enjoyed the torture, I had to admit our differences went far beyond our chosen career paths.

“Don’t you feel all loose and relaxed?” Lesley asked me as everyone began to roll up their yoga mats.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I said, trying to stretch out a cramp in my calf. “If anything, I’m more tense now than I have been in days.”

“Ugh.” Lesley rolled her eyes. “Cameron, you need practice. It’s super soothing once you get the hang of it, and it can help you focus.”

I pushed back a lock of my curly black hair and wiped the sweat from my cheek. “I’d like to focus on an ice-cold beer or something. That sounds way more enjoyable than whatever that was,” I said, waving a hand at the room. “I’m not flexible like you.”

“You’re not flexible about anything,” Lesley said with a knowing smile. “We all know that. One day, you’ll need to learn to let go and go with the flow.”

“I go with the flow,” I protested, indignant. “Who says I don’t?”

Lesley lifted an eyebrow. “Are you being serious right now, or are you really that lacking in self-awareness?”

She was right, I supposed. Sometimes, things were easier if you stayed in a nice rigid box. It was safe, predictable, and easy to understand. Plus, you’d never end up standing on your head in some high-priced yoga studio like a moron.

“Okay, I might be a bit…” I pursed my lips, looking for the right word, “… stringent with things, but that doesn’t make me weird. Lots of people are. Speaking of, next time? We’re doing the self-defense class instead of Body Pretzel Hour, or whatever the hell that was.”

Lesley rolled her eyes. “You only like doing things you’re good at.

” She tucked her yoga mat under her arm and shook her water bottle at me.

“Like at that MMA gym you go to. I still can’t figure out how a cute little thing like you can be such a badass.

Tossing grown men around in those martial arts classes and stuff. ”

“I’m good at what I like,” I said, grabbing my own items. “What can I say?”

I glanced at Lesley again. She was almost a whole head taller than me, with long, slim legs and a ballerina-esque frame. My body tended toward curvy and fit like my mother versus Lesley’s ballerina-esque frame. Maybe I wasn’t built for yoga.

Lesley sighed. “That’s all well and good, but sometimes you need to let loose and get out of your comfort zone.”

“And be a yoga expert?” I asked, sarcasm thick in my voice.

“It doesn’t have to be yoga,” she said, rolling her eyes. “It’s just nice to be vulnerable. You’re amazing, Cameron. Everyone who meets you sees it, but you can get a lot more from life if you aren’t as rigid.”

She gave me a beseeching look, as though hoping to see something click behind my eyes.

“I highly doubt people think I’m amazing,” I said.

Her brow furrowed as though I just said something incomprehensible to her.

“You’re smart, gorgeous, funny, and don’t take shit from anyone.

When I first met you, I was intimidated as hell.

Now that I know you, I see you’re a big softy inside, but I still admire you.

That’s why I’d love it if you experienced more of life.

You bust your ass at that damn newspaper, and I’m worried life will pass you by.

I don’t want you to turn around in thirty years and realize you missed out by being totally insular.

Right?” She gave me a searching look. “You’d tell me the same thing, wouldn’t you? ”

Maybe , I thought, but my work was part of my life. I enjoyed it and didn’t hate my job like many people I knew.

Plus, it paid the bills, and that was always important.

As the other class members filed out, I glanced around at the gym.

It was one of those swanky boutique fitness places.

Way, way outside my price range. I was here as Lesley’s guest. She had the highest-ranking membership you could buy, and it allowed her a bring-a-friend pass once per day.

Even now that my family was better off than a few years ago, there was no way I could afford a membership here.

It was part of why I worked so hard and kept my nose to the grindstone.

Money made the whole world go around, and if I didn’t have any, why shouldn’t the world keep spinning around without me? I loved Lesley, but she didn’t realize the level of privilege her deeper pockets afforded her.

Changing the subject, I said, “It’s the yoga, that’s all. I hate it, and it puts me in a bad mood.”

“You’d like it if you practiced it more,” Lesley said. “Why don’t you join? Knowing you, you’d be twice as good as me in a few months.”

“I could never afford this place.” I wasn’t ashamed of my financial situation, but I also didn’t talk about it much, either. I glanced around the place. “This isn’t really my vibe, anyway.”

Lesley sighed and shook her head as we walked out of the studio portion of the fitness center. “Your vibe is that nasty hole-in-the-wall gym you like? The martial arts place? Ugh.”

“Hey.” I swatted her with my yoga mat. “It’s not nasty. It has character . ”

“I don’t think I’d call 1970s wood paneling and the pervasive scent of male armpits character .”

“Whatever,” I said, waving her off. “It’s gritty and earthy like it’s been lived in, you know? This place—present company excluded, of course—looks more like it caters to snobs. Prissy chicks who want to film their workouts for social media clout rather than actually getting stronger and fitter.”

“You just hate rich people,” Lesley said. “I can see it in your eyes whenever we pass someone in a fur coat or a guy pulls up in a Porsche or something.”

The words irked me, but I didn’t argue. It would be too hard to explain.

It wasn’t hatred, exactly. Bitterness perhaps.

My family and I had struggled and scraped by for so long that when I saw people cruising around with millions of dollars, it made it a bit hard not to look at them a certain way.

Part of why I liked Lesley was that she’d worked her ass off for everything she had, even though she’d been born to a fairly wealthy family.

I needed to get over that, seeing as I would be joining that elite level if things between me and my boyfriend Rick moved further along.

As though plucking the thought from my head, Lesley nudged me with her bag. “Why don’t you ask Rick to get you a membership here? We could come together, and then he would reap the benefits of your newfound flexibility .” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

She was right about that. Rick probably would pay for it.

As a boyfriend, Rick was almost too generous with his gifts.

Every day, I turned around, and it seemed he’d bought me something new or offered another expensive dinner.

My family was poor, but I didn’t want handouts.

I’d subtly tried to get him to see that, but so far it hadn’t worked.

Regardless, I was too self-sufficient to ever ask him to buy something as silly as a gym membership for me. I wasn’t some gold digger.

“I’m plenty flexible,” I said with a laugh. “No need for him to shill out money for yoga.”

“What good is a rich boyfriend if you aren’t going to make the most of it?” Lesley said. “I’m not saying you need to be a gold digger, but let the guy do stuff for you. It could make your life a lot easier, and you’ll get a little taste of what life might be if that dummy ever proposes.”