To Be Loved by You, page 23
He shook his head, a half smile revealing a hint of white teeth.
“Yoga, huh?” the nurse practitioner said, pulling a rolling stool chair up to the other side of Ava’s bed and drawing the cart alongside him. “My little sister’s always trying to get me to go to classes with her. I keep telling her I’m not meant to bend like that.”
“You should consider giving it a try. Odds are you did all sorts of yoga poses naturally when you were a toddler. The good news is your body will remember.” She flashed Jeremy a pointed but playful glance. “Assuming you’re willing to step out of the box and give it a try. Men typically need to break through a bit of resistance and inflexibility that they’ve built up over the years. Teenage boys tell themselves a pretty convincing story about what they’re supposed to be and ‘flexible’ is rarely a part of that dialogue.”
“Or vulnerable, right?” the nurse practitioner asked with a laugh.
Jeremy shook his head. “I’d swear you could hear us through that door.”
He held up his hands. “Not a word. But, bro, if a woman like this wants you to be her yoga assistant, take my advice and start adding namaste pillowcases and stretchy pants to your online cart tonight.”
Dragging a hand through his hair, Jeremy looked between them. “When you put it like that… Though I’m gonna take a pass on the pants.”
As she held out her arm for the nurse practitioner to remove the temporary splint, Ava gave Jeremy’s calf a gentle nudge with her bare toe. “Deal. You pick the pants. I’ll pick the poses.”
Jeremy’s answering gaze seemed to hold a promise even before his words reiterated one. “Then it seems it’s a date.”
Chapter 24
Ava was sprawled across her sister’s couch late Monday afternoon, a few pillows mounded underneath her throbbing arm and her kitty camped out on her lap, when Jeremy texted to see how she was feeling. A bubble of happiness swelled up to spy his name on her phone screen, though she made herself wait a full three minutes before responding, not to look too acquiescing. It’s not like he has no clue you’re interested or anything.
Pretty good here. It’s hurting a bit more, but I took the day off, and my sister’s here now. We’re bingeing on movies and popcorn like when we were kids.
Unlike her, he didn’t wait any length of time to respond.
It’s good you’re taking it easy. Rolo is quite sorry. He wrote you an apology the length of a dissertation. Then he ate it. Instead, he sends this.
Smiling, Ava stared at her phone screen in anticipation. A few seconds later, a photo popped up, a close-up of Rolo’s face that was utterly frameable. He was in a muted patch of sunlight, his warm-brown eyes looked like chocolate syrup, and his head was cocked just enough to appear as if he were begging.
Please tell him he’s 100% forgiven for me tripping on my flip-flop. How ru? Doing any practice poses today to get ready for co-teaching with me Friday night?
Yeah…about that. Will u be too sore? Not that I’m trying to get out of this or anything.
Nope. We’ve got this.
Okay, but I choose to remain a skeptic. Willing to let you prove me wrong.
Ava was debating how to answer when a second text popped up.
So, Edith and Eleanor heard about your arm, and Edith made a pot of her signature chicken poop. Okay if I bring some over?
Ava snorted. “I’m hoping he meant ‘soup.’” She looked at Olivia, who was grading a math test her eighth graders had taken while the two of them watched Ten Things I Hate About You for the first time together since before Ava left home at eighteen. Morgan was sprawled at Olivia’s feet, dozing. Every so often his feet would pulse as if he was dreaming of loping across a field. “Jeremy wants to bring over some chicken soup.”
Olivia glanced up from her papers. “Want me to leave? I’m headed to Gabe’s for a late dinner in a few hours anyway.”
“No, stay please. With the whole ‘let’s start from friends and move slow’ thing we settled on last night, it’s too weird to be alone with him right now. Considering the snogfest I initiated Saturday night.”
Ava had caught her sister up to speed last night, which included telling her about the talk they’d had after her cast was on and he was driving her here, a talk that ended in Jeremy committing to doing his best to keep the weight of his past in check and requesting they ease into whatever was developing between them as friends first and then take it from there.
Ava had wanted to ask if this meant they’d be keeping their attraction for each other one hundred percent in check and for how long, but she’d been too nauseous from the pain medicine and hadn’t been ready to tackle the weighty topic just yet.
“Sure, Sis. Whatever helps.”
Jeremy texted again.
Soup, not poop. Sorry. Voice to text.
Ava sighed. “Have I told you how cute he is?”
“Ahhh, two maybe three times since last night.”
After a roll of her eyes, Ava texted him back.
I’d love some chicken soup if you don’t have anything going on.
I’ll be wrapping up here soon. I was thinking maybe I’d bring Louie along.
YES PLEASE. And UR welcome to binge-watch rom-coms with us. Next is 13 Going on 30.
Hmm. At the risk of sounding inflexible, I’ll pass.
Ava bit her lip.
Pass granted. We won’t begin to tackle flexibility, or the lack of it, until Friday’s class.
When he texted a smiley face and that he’d be there in forty-five minutes, Ava sent a thumbs-up, then slid her phone onto the coffee table. “It’s entirely possible no one has had me this giddy before.”
When her sister’s eyebrows raised, but she kept silent, Ava added, “No smug I-told-you-so’s. But I will admit I had no idea I had a Cupid for a sister.” Last night, Olivia had followed up Ava’s confession with one of her own. She and Gabe had been talking one day, and Gabe had mentioned that he thought Jeremy would be a great match with Ava, thus the dog-wash invitations to both of them.
“You two ended up doing all the work. All Gabe and I did was get you in the same place.”
“Well, whatever happens, thanks for that.”
“Look, I can tell he’s a good guy, Ava, but I’m sure Gabe had no real idea the kind of stuff Jeremy’s dealing with. Aside from their connection through Dr. Washington and the shelter, they don’t know each other that well. So, what I’m saying is, Jeremy was smart to want to take it slow. In the meantime…” Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know that I’m qualified to preach, but just be discerning.”
“I will, but I’ve seen him with the kids and with his landlords. He’s a good man. A really good man.”
“And you’re a really good woman. Don’t forget that either.”
Ava closed her eyes for a moment. “Sometimes I think I’m still trying to prove that. Leaving home like I did and following that boy here to St. Louis, you know how the whole town talked.”
Olivia moved her stack of papers from her lap to the coffee table and twisted to face her after pausing the movie on a particularly stoic look by Heath Ledger. “They talked. I won’t pretend they didn’t. But I see it now from a different lens than I did back then. You were eighteen and doing what was right for you. It wasn’t any of their business.” She raised her eyebrows. “If it helps, that was the year of the drought and that big heat wave that dried up everything. It didn’t take long before they stopped talking about anything aside from that for months on end.”
“What timing,” Ava said with a laugh. “You know, I think I worked twice as hard as I might’ve those first several years mostly to prove I could do it.”
“And you did.”
With a grin, Ava motioned around the living room. “As can be seen by me living in your one-room apartment, sleeping on a couch or sharing a bed with you for the last few months.”
“I’ve helped you with your tax returns the last couple years. I’ll never believe that.”
“Ha, though you have a point. The thing is, the more aware I become of how much some of that drive was to prove myself to others, the less motivated I am to keep going at that pace.”
Olivia squeezed her knee. “That’s because you’re figuring out who you are, not who you want people to see.”
Her sister’s words rang true. Ava wouldn’t deny that. It wasn’t until this afternoon, halfway through a lazier day than she could remember in eons, one that hadn’t started out with a double-digit to-do list but had consisted of lying around with her cat on her lap and her sister—and best friend—nearby this afternoon, Ava felt confident that maybe, just maybe, she was finally ready to be the person who seemed to have been here all along, patiently waiting for her to reach the point that she was ready to embrace her.
Chapter 25
This wasn’t the time for Ava to think about Jeremy’s body parts—any of them—or how there was hardly a single inch of his body she didn’t want to explore. From the smooth skin of his neck to the dip in his sternum to his strong, lean thighs and the toned patch of skin above his groin visible when his T-shirt shifted, these spots and a dozen others competed for her attention just the same.
Nope, not cool. When Jeremy was stretched across the mat next to her at the side of the garden, helping teach an audience of nine impressionable teens and two older women, Ava would need to keep her mind on yoga. She’d chosen ten poses to introduce tonight and was attempting to do so in a way that would be easy for the kids to grasp.
With her arm in a cast and throbbing a little anytime it dropped lower than heart level, it would’ve been considerably easier to have an assistant on the mat next to her who was familiar with today’s poses. As the sun sank in the sky, lighting the yard and garden in a warm glow, Jeremy did his best to move through the poses as she instructed, but she still needed to guide him into Warrior I pose with nearly the same instruction as she would the kids.
Of course, had she thought about it more, she should have expected nothing different. Yoga wasn’t a one-and-done exercise; yoga skills were built over months and years rather than days or weeks. On the bright side, it would be good for Jeremy’s kids to see the vulnerability that came with exploring new poses. Her goal with today’s class was to get Jeremy to move through and hold poses in demonstration as she circled the group, offering ways for the kids to experience yoga postures that would help relax their minds, release some tension from their bodies, and help them understand that not every body, or even every day with their bodies, was the same.
Because putting her hands on Jeremy to guide him into position threw off Ava’s concentration enough that she lost track of the sequence of some of the longer poses, she switched tactics halfway through class. At this point, she began demonstrating with her own form and posture to guide him through the poses.
“Like this,” she said when he dropped into the lunge of Warrior I without his hips aligned correctly. She planted herself at the top of his mat and swiveled her hips from the forty-five-degree angle he was holding to a front-facing one.
“Got it.” He shifted his hips and torso, owning the pose in a way that was both masculine and vulnerable at the same time and made Ava’s hormones rev into overdrive. Really, there was no debating it; he was close to perfect.
“Nice.” Suspecting she’d been gawking at the tightness in his front thigh, she stepped away to circle the mats and help the kids move into the pose.
After Warrior I, they made their way down to their seats, and Ava worked with Jeremy to lead them through a few final poses, ending in savasana again. The ladybugs she’d brought for Edith and Eleanor were active the whole class, landing on Ava, Jeremy, and several of the kids, some of whom seemed to consider it a stroke of luck while others squirmed and shooed them away.
The growing kittens made a few appearances during the class as well, distracting the kids a couple times by dashing in and out of the open doorway of the carriage house with their tails fluffed, getting braver as the sun sank lower. Once he spotted them, Rolo, the only dog allowed out on the mats during tonight’s session, split his time between the yogis and the kittens, where he stretched out in the grass next to the carriage house door, proving he was as gentle with these kittens as he was with Louie.
Before class, it had become clear that tonight’s group of kids seemed split on what they were more interested in adopting: the kittens or the foster dogs. From what Ava gathered earlier from their boasting, two or three of them had claimed their parents were giving their adoption hopes serious consideration. Ava couldn’t think of anything better than knowing all the dogs and kittens could possibly end up finding their forever homes with the kids in Jeremy’s program. She might not know them well yet, but she had no doubt as to their being a great group of kids who’d be loving pet owners.
When savasana ended, and Ava guided the group back into easy pose amid a chorus of yawns and stretches, Jeremy winked at her. Ava didn’t have to wonder what the wink meant; the kids had been attentive and vulnerable the entire class, which was as much as they could ask for. For certain, they’d both be checking it off as a success.
“You guys did great. Each one of you.”
“You did,” Jeremy agreed.
Ava picked up the book she’d brought, and even though she didn’t need it for tonight’s quote, she flipped to the page she’d bookmarked. “I’ll leave you something every practice. Tonight, it’s this quote from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.’ It’s my sincere hope that you caught a glimpse of yourself tonight that you’ve either not seen in a while, or you’ve not been wanting to acknowledge. As always, it was my honor to share this practice with you tonight.”
Nolan grinned. “I saw myself when we were doing the downward dog.”
“Are you always sarcastic?” Hailey shot back.
Ava didn’t mind their grouchy banter. The kids had taken off their armor in class, but now parents were lining up at the side of the yard, and it was time to put it back on.
“Let’s remember to roll up our mats and take them inside,” Jeremy said. “And whoever wants to and can stay, you’re welcome to stick around to get the dogs out for a short run.”
“I’ll stand guard in case the kittens decide they want to come back outside,” Ava offered as she rolled up her mat and began to bag her teaching materials. Even when the carriage house door was closed, the kittens were beginning to clamber in and out of the open window.
“That’d be great. I won’t be long.”
“And while I’m standing there, I’ll count Dash’s laps around the yard. Maybe he’ll break his own record tonight.”
The energetic labradoodle wasn’t showing many signs of calming down after more than a week of extended freedom. Luna and the puppies typically ran after him now when they were first let free, but they quickly dropped off and explored the yard at a more leisurely pace.
The foster dogs had settled in well in the span of a week, and Luna and Dash were no longer being shut in their crates during the day. Instead, the sunroom was closed off from the rest of the house with a stair gate, allowing them to roam the room and still access their cozy beds inside their crates for naps. Jeremy and the program kids must have been getting them outside enough throughout the day because even the puppies hadn’t had a single accident in two days.
Leaving her things beside the garden, Ava headed for the carriage house, where Rolo was still camped out next to the door. She sank onto her heels and stroked his soft fur, keeping her casted arm up and to the side to minimize the throbbing that had increased over the course of the day. Rolo licked his jowls and thumped his tail as he soaked up the affection, the picture of contentment.
“I missed you yesterday,” she said. She’d not seen him since Wednesday when Jeremy had dropped off another dinner for her and Olivia. He’d hung around for an hour making small talk with Olivia while she fed Louie and Rolo outcompeted Morgan for space on the couch, which wasn’t hard to do since Morgan hadn’t yet gotten comfortable on furniture, something likely accredited to his pre-adoption years spent alone locked in a dog pen.
Rolo thumped his tail harder as he sniffed Ava’s cast.
“I don’t know if you’ll appreciate this as much as I do, but I looked up your name. It’s a variant of a name that means ‘famous wolf,’ which is pretty darn cool, especially since you’re going to be featured in the shelter’s alumni column in their next newsletter about how you rescued Louie. Your dad texted me the picture they’re going to use. That face of yours is going to melt more hearts than mine.”
Soaking up the affection, Rolo flipped onto his back, his legs flailing in the air. Ava gave his belly a hearty pat before standing up and heading inside the carriage house. She paused in the doorway. “In or out?”
Rolo hopped to his feet with a grunt and followed her in. Ava shut the door behind them, knowing that any minute, the dogs would be tearing about the yard. Still barefoot, she walked across the part-concrete, part-dirt floor to the shelves. Two of the kittens were camped out on one of the high shelves, one boy and one girl, both a blend of white and marble, staring down at Ava and Rolo with big eyes. The other two, both girls, were dozing inside their nesting box.
The fading sun was shining through the dusty old windows, spreading a warm glow across the exposed brick walls. Ava smiled as she looked around the building. She couldn’t think of a single abandoned structure she’d ever been in—and she’d been in more than most people—that was more inviting.
Hearing a hiss, Ava spied the mama cat across the open room, watching from the top step of the open stairs leading to the small loft above. “Hello, Mama. We won’t bother you. Or your kittens.”
Spying her as well, Rolo trotted over and stretched across the four lowest steps to sniff the air. Considering how thin and steep the steps were, Ava wasn’t sure if she should stop him if he attempted to climb them and was relieved when he did nothing more than wag his tail and whine. After watching him for a minute, the mama blinked at Rolo in the trusting way that cats did.
