Claimed

by Pratt, Lulu

  She smiled, but the motion didn’t go to her eyes. It was clear that she was assessing me, trying to figure out just what I wanted.

  “Welcome to Dandelion,” she said through frozen cheeks. “Can I, um, help you?”

  “Yeah. I’d like to take Cybil’s class.”

  Her eyebrows rose skeptically, and her tone dropped a few octaves as she dropped the cheery welcome vibe. “The one in a few minutes?”

  “Yup.”

  “But you won’t have time to change.”

  I leaned in closer, and said, “Yeah, I get that. I’m wearing this.”

  She pointed to a wall behind me, and I turned over my shoulder to look. There were a few racks of high-end work-out clothing, all with the Dandelion logo.

  “You could always purchase some of our merchandise,” she said suggestively. “You might be more… comfortable in that.”

  I waved away the offer. “Nah, I’m good.”

  She sighed with barely contained frustration and replied, “All right then. The class will be thirty-five dollars.”

  Thirty-five dollars?! For a yoga class? I didn’t have that money, but I wasn’t about to let this girl know as much. She’d already condescended enough. She didn’t need this new ammunition.

  With some pain, I pulled my wallet out from my back pocket and dug out my last two twenties, which I slid over the desk, trying to keep the tremble out of my hands.

  “Thanks very much,” she said with an obvious note of disappointment. Clearly, she too had thought the price would keep me out. If only, I thought. “Would you like a towel and water for an extra five dollars?”

  I almost laughed and mentally replied with “Five dollars for a fucking towel and a little water? Uh, pass!” but I kept it to myself, instead saying only, “No thanks.”

  She slid my change back across the desk and pointed me around the corner, to the main studio. There appeared to be only one room in the massive building, which beggared belief.

  “You’ll find it just through there,” she said. “Please leave your shoes in the corner.”

  “Thanks again,” I replied, mustering up a generosity of spirit that didn’t mesh well with my current attitude. Sometimes you just have to be the bigger man.

  I padded into the classroom. It was low-lit, with ambient music playing from hidden speakers. A neat group of quietly expensive sneakers stood in the corner. I slipped my black motorcycle boots off and tucked them into the fray. The boots, like myself, were obviously out of place. Like me, they were too much a reminder of the tough outside world beyond Dandelion’s quiet doors.

  Though there were only a few minutes left before class, there weren’t many people in attendance, probably because it was the middle of the day. Who schedules exercise classes for the middle of the day? Who has that kind of time?

  I suppose the answer is the following — an elderly woman, pushing seventy, in a leotard and tights. A harried looking lady, closer to her mid-forties, who appeared to have forgotten the Bluetooth in her ear. And a young man, probably near to my own age, who sat on a mat in the back. He struck me as someone in AA who had made yoga part of his recovery. Believe me, if you spend enough time in the military, you start to know the look of an addict in remission — most of the guys I’d gone to war with had come back with any number of problems, more often than not a thing for the bottle.

  Cybil hadn’t arrived yet, so I took the opportunity to grab a mat from a nearby shelf and lay it out right at the front of the classroom. If I was going to do this, then I might as well go the distance. The other students in the class, themselves a group of misfits, eyed me suspiciously, but within a minute, all three had decided that I posed no threat. I briefly considered stretching, but retired the idea. This class was going to be an exercise in humiliation.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m in great shape — working out was one of the only things that had kept me balanced after coming home — but I don’t do yoga. Obviously. I wasn’t flexible, never really had been, and my ability was more like dumb brute force, not grace and skill. This class was, in all likelihood, gonna kick my ass.

  The other three were warming up, and doing a rather impressive job. Even the old woman clearly had been at this a while. For one long moment, I reconsidered this entire harebrained scheme. Would my pride be able to handle just how mortifying this was gonna be?

  Just as I was wallowing in self-pity, and examining the exits, Cybil walked in.

  She was transformed. Last I’d seen her, she’d been in a sexy black dress and a full face of make-up. Now, she wore billowing harem pants and a sports bra the color of the sky, with gold jewelry hanging from her ears and neck. She looked like the kind of woman you’d find in the middle of Peru, blissfully hiking the trail and befriending locals at every stop.

  It occurred to me that I had been attracted to the Cybil from OnePart, but this Cybil was more breathtaking in her simplicity. While the other Cybil smelled of hard liquor, I suspected this one would smell like the grass before one perfect sunset. She was at ease, in command of this kingdom.

  And as we locked eyes, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she didn’t remember me. The blankness in her stare said mountains — I was a complete unknown to her. My heart raced as I realized I’d woefully miscalculated her intoxication the other night. Nobody short of Meryl Streep could fake this level of distance.

  Cybil didn’t recall the first thing about me. Where should I go with that? I could tell her outright who I was, but I didn’t want her to feel pressured to maintain feelings from what had clearly been a blackout binge drinking experience.

  Yes, the only way to be with her, whatever that might mean, was to let her fall in love with me all over again, on her own terms, sans alcohol. Which meant I’d have to woo her as a stranger.

  I assumed she’d already seen the tat on her own ass, so I couldn’t tell her my name. It’d be a dead giveaway as to my identity.

  My heart raced, and I let slip an involuntary grin. This promised to be quite interesting.

  Chapter 6

  Cybil

  AS A RULE, my noon class is boring. Lucy, Kim and Doug are almost always there, and we tend to go over the exact same routine, never quite advancing our practice. I tried to show them all new moves — they certainly had the skill for it — but it was as though each were happy, in their own way, to keep doing the exact same thing as usual. Very boring.

  But when I walked in that day, ready to give my standard “Namaste” to the room, I was stopped at “Nam—” by the sight of a gorgeous man sitting front row and center.

  Everybody in L.A. is hot, right? We’ve covered this. But his hotness had a gravity those models usually lacked. He looked to be carved out of marble and dropped into the wrong time. A guy like this belonged on the field at Woodstock, or maybe in the ‘70s. This guy didn’t look like he was big on ‘the rules.’

  His curly black hair hung down past his chin, framing its angular point. His eyes were dark pools that flickered with alternating warmth and chill. They were set deep beneath his brow, which jutted overhead like that of a proud statesman. His lips contained the promise of a smirk, and the mere anticipation of it sent shivers down my spine. And up until that moment, it had never occurred to me that chins could be legitimately sexy.

  If his appearance didn’t mark him as out of place, then his outfit certainly did. He wore a long sleeve, heather gray T-shirt and black jeans. Definitely not standard yoga fare. I resisted to look around the room and check for hidden cameras. In this town, you never knew when someone might be recording, always on the lookout for good content. Was he some up-and-coming YouTuber? I could see the clickbait title already: “I WENT TO YOGA CLASS IN JEANS! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!”

  But in the same breath, I knew that was totally wrong. This guy didn’t look like he owned a computer, let alone made a living off social media. There was nothing flashy about him except a dramatic intensity of being.

  Wow, did that sound stupid? It f
elt stupid, thinking it. Oh well. I’m trying to tell you the truth, and the truth is that he fucking floored me.

  And that he seemed oddly familiar. Was he an actor?

  “Hey,” I said with a big, dumb grin. His eyes were already on mine, but now they seemed to burrow in. The smirk was floating closer and closer to the surface.

  There was a long moment of silence. The other students were preoccupied with stretching, thankfully, and missed me go absolutely mute while I waited for his reply.

  Say something else! I yelled to myself. Anything at all! It really doesn’t matter. Just start talking!

  The only words that came out were, “It’s noon.”

  Oh God. Okay, when my brain had instructed my mouth to say something, that it ‘really didn’t matter’ what exactly, my brain had generously overestimated my mouth’s ability to produce normal speech. Of course it’s noon! He knew it was noon, he’d signed up for the damn class! I wanted to run to the corner, curl into a ball and maybe suck on my thumb for good measure.

  “I know it’s noon,” he replied at last, his lips transforming into a full-fledged grin.

  “Of course you know. Right?” I half-laughed, half-squeaked.

  At this point, the rest of the class had turned to watch our interaction, and by interaction, I mean the train I was driving off the tracks, down the hill and crashing into a pile of rocks.

  He gestured to his clothes. “If you can’t tell, I don’t do a lot of yoga.”

  “Yeah, I figured.” The words slipped out before I could stop them, and I was mentally reprimanding myself when I saw his eyes twinkle with delight.

  “What gave me away?” he asked, drawing me into a banter.

  I tried again, “I’m Cybil. I will be leading the class.”

  “A pleasure to meet you.”

  Well, screw it. I’d already blown this, so I decided to throw nerves out the window. There was nothing left to lose. I walked to the instructor’s mat at the front of the classroom — the one only a few feet away from his — and sat down, crossing my legs.

  “Hmm,” I replied, with faux consideration. “Come to think of it, might be your total lack of anything resembling athletic gear.”

  “Huh, you don’t say!” He shook his head, playing along and pretending to be dumbfounded. “You’ve got a sharp eye.”

  I flipped my hair for dramatic effect. “That’s me, a regular ol’ Sherlock Holmes.” I paused, and added, “So, Mr. I’ve-Never-Done-Yoga-Before. You decided to sit front row, center? That’s, uh, pretty bold.”

  “Thanks!”

  Giggling, I replied, “Not sure it was a compliment.”

  “Right, but I’m definitely gonna take it as one.” His bravado was enticing.

  I wanted to fire back, but I happened to catch a glimpse of the clock on the opposite wall, and realized it was one minute past noon. My regulars would be pissed if the class started anytime later. They all structure their days, within a minute, around this class. We ran with the regularity of the London Underground. Sure enough, they’d already started to get fidgety about this minute-long delay. Lucy was harrumphing quietly in the corner.

  So I averted my eyes from Hot Boy — though in the process also noticing that he never took his stare off me. Under the hot collar of his gaze, I looked to the rest of the classroom, which contained my sporadically scattered regulars, and said, “All right, everyone, let’s warm up! We’ll start off with our sun salutations.”

  Sun salutations, for the uninitiated, are ten-step routines, or rituals depending on your language, that are commonly seen in yoga. They include lots of inhaling and exhaling, some downward dogs, a couple of cobras, and a chaturanga or two. Standard fare, seen in virtually any yoga class. I usually didn’t talk during this portion, as I knew that none of my regulars would need correction on posture or breathing. But as I assumed first position — inhalation with arms upstretched, arching the back — I saw that, sure enough, Hot Boy — what a simple but insightful name — had really never taken a yoga class. He reached his arms up in the air all right, but didn’t arch his back or extend his arms. The pose created the impression that he’d been caught on the lam by the popo, and was now surrendering himself to law enforcement.

  I snorted, and quietly padded off my mat, moving to his. I stopped alongside his mat, and under my breath, asked, “Could I adjust your position?”

  “Hell, yes,” he replied at full volume, and after a chorus of ‘shhs’ from the other students, he added, “Sorry!” then, quietly and to me, “Go for it.”

  He had no idea just how far I wanted to go, but I kept that to myself. I moved my hand to his lower back and pressed, forcing him to create an arch.

  He grunted.

  “You’re stiff.”

  “I know, that’s why I’m at yoga.” He grimaced and arched further back. An audible crack rang through the room.

  My eyebrows shot up. “You okay?”

  Through gritted teeth, he replied, “Yeah, I’m good.” Somebody’s a tough guy, I thought with amusement.

  While the other students moved through the routine, I guided him to the next position.

  “All right,” I whispered. “Now you’re gonna exhale and fold forward.”

  I saw his cheek jump before he asked, “Can I get a little help? It was useful when you touched my back.”

  Oh, so it was gonna be like that? Well, two could tango when it came to flirtation.

  “Sure,” I said, and pressed my hand once more onto his lower back, gently moving it up the ridges of his spine, forcing him to bend over like a papier-mâché doll sliced in half. The sharp vertebrae moved fluidly under my hand, and I wondered if he wasn’t perhaps exaggerating some of his stiffness. Not that I would blame him — I was enjoying this as much, if not more, than he was.

  “Mmm, that feels good.” His voice floated up from the floor. Kim poked her head up to see what was going on, but I smiled brightly and pointed to Hot Boy, indicating that he was a bit slow, I was just giving him a hand. She frowned, but lowered her head.

  “Okay,” I began, taking my hand off his back. “Now from this position, bend your knees, plant your hands on the floor, and shoot one leg straight back into a lunge.”

  From the curtain of his hair, he turned to the side and looked up at me. “What?”

  “Your leg. Put it behind you.”

  “Can you show me?”

  I sighed, and obliged, folding over, then pushing back into a lunge. I realized, with a sudden awareness, that we were almost flush alongside one another, in equally exposed positions.

  “You’re great at this,” he said with enthusiasm.

  I replied drily, “Thanks, it’s my job.”

  He snorted and swiftly mimicked my motions, moving into a lunge. For a second time, I wondered just how inexperienced he really was.

  We were at least five steps, if not an entire rotation, behind the others in the salutation, but I didn’t give a fuck. They didn’t need my help. They could’ve done this by themselves in the privacy of their own homes. I was busy flirting with a handsome stranger, and I wasn’t about to be distracted by anything as petty as my employment.

  “Now move the other leg back to meet it,” I instructed him.

  “Which one?”

  “The bent one.”

  “Huh?”

  I rolled my eyes, sensing what he wanted me to do and feeling equally delighted by the prospect. I plopped out of my lunge, and reached beneath his hips to tap the top of his left thigh, in a place dangerously close to his crotch. His body shivered under my touch. I felt the space between my own thighs grow warm and damp in reply.

  “Thanks,” he murmured, and I wasn’t certain what he was thanking me for. His left leg came back to meet his right, and he was in a plank position.

  While he’d looked lost, if capable, in the other positions, I could see that this pose was familiar to him. He had perfect posture, straight arms and seemed so firmly rooted that you could fire a cannon and he wouldn
’t drop the plank.

  “You’ve done this one before, haven’t you?” I remarked, thinking that maybe it was part of his regular training. The guy clearly hit the gym with frequency.

  He replied, “Yeah, the military is big on planks. Kind of their trademark.”

  Oh man. I’d stepped in it again.

  Blustering, I cast about for a response and came up with, “Thanks for your service.”

  This time, he laughed loudly and openly. Amid the resounding hushes from the other students, he dropped his voice and whispered, “No problem.”

  I held back a snicker. Then a thought tickled my brain — his face was so familiar, and then that stuff about the military… my memories were trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t sniff out exactly what that something was. Was it déjà vu, but like, scientific déjà vu? Where you think you’ve seen something happen in dreams, but it’s only the synapses in your brain misfiring? Or was it a memory from long, long ago? In any case, I was stumped.

  Coming up from my distraction, I realized he’d been holding the plank for quite some time, and hadn’t made even a peep of complaint. Nice. The guy clearly had stamina. That could be useful, my vagina — err, my brain — thought. Very useful.

  “So do I just stay like this for the rest of class?” he joked, clearly aware that I’d spaced out.

  “Could you?” I asked, curious despite myself.

  He made an approximation of a shrug, or at least as much of one as his fixed shoulders would allow. “I dunno, I held it once in basic training for forty-five minutes. Of course, I’m no longer that young whippersnapper… so maybe only thirty-five minutes. Is that a deal breaker?”

  I pretended to think for a moment, then replied, “Yeah, probably.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Guess I’ll just have to hold it for forty-five minutes then,” he said, and promptly shifted into a plank that, somehow, displayed even better form than the one he’d been in moments ago. “See you on the other side.”