“Thanks for your concern.”
I didn’t tell Zee about the turtles for some reason. It wasn’t like it was some shameful secret, but Tuesday had been so cute about it. I didn’t think someone who looked like her could be considered cute, but it was true.
Tuesday was cute and sexy and surly and seductive and so many things, but she was still a total mystery. One that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be the one to solve.
Five
I didn’t have any interaction with Tuesday for the rest of the week. Things were quiet at work, except I kept finding packages meant for downstairs in front of the door to my studio. I sighed and walked them downstairs and put them in front of the gym door. I’d thought it was a fluke on the first day, but then it kept happening. What was wrong with the delivery guys? Some of the packages were so heavy, I just kicked them down the stairs because there was no way I was breaking my back for her crap.
The weekend came and I decided I needed to do something social outside the yoga studio. Over the past few years I’d gotten into a rut of spending too much time at the studio and then coming home and not doing anything that didn’t involve work or sleep. Zee forced me to do social things at least twice a month, which was good for both of us.
I’d arranged drinks and dinner with Zee, Ellen, John, and Celia. Dan and Mischa were away together, so they couldn’t come, but we looped them in on our group chat, so it was like they were there anyway. Ellen’s girlfriends Tatiana and Carmen were home because Tati was sick and Carmen was playing nurse. So sweet, but I still missed them.
Zee and I were the first ones to show up, so we ordered drinks and started looking at the menu, not that we needed to. We’d been to this place so many times they knew our drink orders without us having to ask. I’d decided to try something new and got their special mojito. Zee was fancy and got a dirty martini, as usual.
John and Celia were next, coming in together, their hands entwined. Celia had on her heels, and even without them was at least four inches taller than John.
The two of them had been friends forever and had only started dating in the past few months. It was still a jolt to see them behaving in romantic ways, but I was thrilled. They were perfect for each other. I greeted them with hugs and then Ellen walked in with her cane and completed the group.
“Love the hair,” John said, pointing to Ellen’s head. She’d done it up tonight in a bunch of braids and looked like she belonged at a Renaissance Faire.
“Thanks, it was time for a change. I hadn’t tried orange yet.”
“It suits you,” Celia said, leaning on John’s shoulder. My heart fluttered a little and I wasn’t going to say it was jealousy, but it was a distant relative of jealousy.
The rest of the group ordered drinks and we all caught up. A warm feeling flowed through my body, and it wasn’t just the result of the alcohol.
“Any updates on the landlord?” Celia asked. They all knew about Tuesday via our group chat. I hadn’t told them everything, but they’d figured out enough. Except for the fact that I’d been having dreams about licking every single muscle on Tuesday’s body to figure out if they tasted different. That one I was keeping to myself.
“Nope, haven’t seen her in a few days. No idea what she’s doing. The music hasn’t been an issue, but they keep delivering heavy packages for her upstairs and it’s seriously annoying. I wish I could go back in time and save the building from being sold.”
“Hmmm,” Ellen said, sipping her gin and tonic.
“What?” I asked, even though I was afraid to ask.
“I have a theory, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I’m going to see how things play out.” She smirked at me and I glared back.
“Ohhhh, can you tell me the theory?” Celia said, leaning over to Ellen.
“Nope, I’m going to keep this one to myself.”
“This is really annoying, you know,” I said, but Ellen just laughed.
“We’ll see. I could be totally wrong.” Ellen wasn’t wrong a lot, in my experience.
Eager to change the subject, I asked John about his job. All of our phones sounded off with notifications from Dan and Mischa asking for updates.
“We should just video-chat them in. I don’t know why we don’t just do that,” I said, typing out a quick response.
Our food arrived and the drinks flowed and I was relieved to not be thinking about Tuesday for once. Okay, that was a lie. I was still thinking about her. Every time I saw a person with long dark hair, my body jolted, as if the person was going to turn around and be Tuesday. The chances of her being in this place were beyond slim, but that didn’t stop me from jumping every time.
Celia messed with Ellen’s hair, asking if she should dye hers orange. John said no in the most polite way. Orange wouldn’t be a good color on Celia.
“It wouldn’t enhance your beauty,” John said, and we all let out a chorus of “aww” at that. He really was a charmer. He was cute as hell with glasses and a crooked smile. If I liked guys at all, John would be the kind of guy I’d have a crush on, no doubt.
“Nice, John,” Celia said, kissing him on the cheek. “I know you’re just partial to my current hair color.” Celia’s hair was naturally dark brown with incredible red highlights in the sun and hung almost to her waist. Hell, I was jealous of it. My hair was an uninteresting dark blonde verging on brown naturally and I enhanced it with highlights so it wasn’t so blah.
“I’m partial to everything about you,” John said, and we all made noises again.
“Stop it, you’re being gross,” Celia said, but she smiled so hard I thought her face was going to break.
“You’re just making me want to go home to my girls,” Ellen said, picking up her phone to send a message to said girls.
“How’s Tati?” I asked. She had an autoimmune disease and a lot of food allergies, so getting sick for her wasn’t just a run-of-the-mill cold.
“She’s pissed she couldn’t come, so you all better send her messages and funny pictures,” Ellen said, glaring at everyone.
“On it,” I said, sending her three pictures of the kittens. She sent me back kissy face emojis. Zee made a face next to me and took a picture to send to Tati saying that we missed her and we’d see her soon.
“Should we drop by maybe on Sunday?” I asked Ellen.
“Let me see how she’s doing and I’ll let you know.”
I made a note to pick up some of her favorite cookies so even if we couldn’t hang out, I could at least drop something off.
We ended the night with sharing desserts and laughing way too loudly and getting looks from the other people in the restaurant. We didn’t care, and kept going even though we’d all talked about leaving for at least an hour.
Zee and I ordered a car to go home and gave everyone tons of hugs and promises that we needed to do this more often than we did, and reminding each other of our upcoming plans for John’s birthday. Originally it was going to be a surprise party, but surprises made John anxious, so we’d scrapped that idea and had let him pick the time and place for his party.
When we got home, I snuggled into bed with the kittens and let my tipsy mind drift. Of course, my brain drifted right to thinking about Tuesday. It was doing that more and more, especially since I hadn’t seen her. What was she doing? Was she away? Had something happened? I didn’t want to go into a panic scenario because what if she was just busy with something else?
I was being ridiculous. Fueled by the alcohol, I pulled up her social media pages on my phone, looking for clues. Nothing. I would have had to add her as a friend to view most of them, and I wasn’t going to do that. Instead I just scrolled through all the other photos of her I could find online. Again. Every time I saw her face with those eyes my stomach flipped over and over, like it was in the circus.
I needed to stop this, but I couldn’t.
“Help me,” I said to the sleeping kittens. They just kept sleeping. A lot of help they were.
“I have a p
roblem,” I said to myself. A Tuesday problem, every day of the week.
Then I did something reckless and ridiculous: I requested to be her friend or follower on every single one of her social pages. My eyes closed and I fell asleep before I could see if she’d accepted me.
The first sound I made the next morning was a moan. I hadn’t had that much to drink in a while, and I was feeling it today. Why had I done that? I remembered everything that happened last night, but it was a little hazy. I’d woken up with my face smashed into my phone, which hadn’t been charging so it was dead.
I didn’t want to move, but I also needed something fried and some caffeine right the fuck now, and I could hear sounds in the kitchen. Zee was awake and cooking. What would I do without them?
“Hey,” I croaked at them with a little wave as I shuffled into the kitchen.
“You look rough, here,” they said, pressing a cup of coffee into my hands. “Bacon and cheese sandwiches are on the way. You’re lucky I had some croissants left over to put them on.” That sounded amazing right now. I sipped the purely black coffee and groaned again. My stomach was not impressed with me. I would have to be careful not to give it too much too fast. This was a delicate balance.
“That was fun last night,” I said, my voice still rough. I’d also talked a lot and loudly, because my friends tended to be high volume.
“Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t cancel like last time.” They glared at me before carefully flipping the bacon over so it crisped on both sides.
“Hey, I had a workshop and I had to be there.” Sure, I could have had my other teacher, Priya, stay, but I’d wanted to be there and be the face of the studio. I couldn’t let go of that, and I didn’t know if I ever would. The studio had grown enough that I could probably step back a little from all the teaching and managing and maybe hire an extra teacher or a studio manager, but I just couldn’t let go. I’d worked so fucking hard and I didn’t want to lose what I’d built, or for it to get screwed up by someone else doing something wrong.
“You really need to hire another teacher. Or two, at least. You’ve had so many people ask.” It was true, I’d had lots of yoga teachers wanting to come and work at Breathe, but I hadn’t done anything about it yet.
“I know, I know,” I mumbled, as I waited for the sandwiches to be ready. I didn’t start to feel better until the coffee kicked in and I was halfway through my first croissant sandwich.
“I should have made some home fries, but I figured they would take too long and you needed food in your system quicker than that.” They were right, if I’d waited much longer for food, I probably would have thrown up.
My phone made a bunch of noises in my bedroom and I got up to see what was happening.
“Oh no. Oh nononono,” I said when I saw my notifications.
“What? What happened?” Zee was instantly at my side.
“I did something bad. I followed and friended Tuesday in a fit of ridiculousness fueled by alcohol last night. I knew I’d done something before I fell asleep, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Oh, crap.” Great, now I was going to have to deal with this.
“Looks like she accepted all your requests, though,” Zee said, pointing to the notifications that said Tuesday had accepted me.
And she’d sent me a message on each of them.
“I feel like I’m dying,” I said, putting my hand on my chest and then sinking back onto the couch. The kitties meowed and seemed concerned.
“It’s okay, my loves. Your momma just did something silly.” Zee picked them both up and cradled them in their arms.
“She sent me a bunch of messages. I don’t know if I’m up for reading them. I might need another drink.” I needed to get to work soon, but there was a chance that I’d see Tuesday there, so should I just deal with this right now?
“I’m sure it’s fine. Just do it. You’ve got this.” I took a huge breath before I opened the first message.
How’s it going, stalker?
I rolled my eyes. Whatever. I moved to the second.
Wow, you’re really going for it. You wanna be my friend, Sutton?
I swear, I read the message in her voice.
I flipped through the other messages and they were all variations on the same theme. Except for the last:
What’s a girl like you doing on a site like this in the middle of the night? Are you in bed, thinking about me?
“Well?” Zee said. They’d been waiting to hear what the messages were. I’d expected them to stand and read over my shoulder, but they didn’t.
“It’s nothing,” I said, locking my phone. I wasn’t going to respond to those messages. At least not until I had the sharpest, wittiest comeback that would slice Tuesday to ribbons and make sure that she never messaged me again.
“Is it?” they said, a sly smile on their face.
“Yes, it’s nothing,” I said with emphasis. I grabbed Mocha from them and rubbed my face in her belly. “What are your plans today?” Most days I was jealous of their nine-to-five job, but then I remembered that I was my own boss, so it was a tradeoff.
“Gym, library, hanging out with all my other friends,” they said. I pretended to glare.
“How dare you have friends that I don’t know about.” Zee gave me a kiss on the cheek and cackled.
“It’s okay, of all my friends, you’re my bestest.” I wiped an imaginary tear from my eye.
“Same, Zee, same. I’ll never have a friend like you. Never, ever.” We put the kittens down and hugged it out, laughing.
“No, really, I’m having lunch with a friend from work. That’s it. She’s going through a rough time.” I waved them off.
“You don’t have to explain. I’m just mad I have to work on the weekends.” Zee rolled their eyes. “But I am going to stop and see Tati, or at least drop off some cookies for her before I go in.”
“You know, you could fix that. Just hire teachers for those classes and then you can have a weekend just like me.” They had a point. I’d always refused to consider doing that before, but I was tired. I was getting burned out. I wanted to do things other than just live at the studio and think about budgets and inventory and membership reports all the time.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Listen, you’ve got this. You can let go of some of the control. Just hire someone you trust. You’ve done that twice before and you can do it again. They’ll do what you want because you’ll train them and be on their ass all the time.” They were making a lot of sense.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I only promise to think about it. And maybe run some calculations.” The other thing I wanted to do was open up my own teacher-training program. That would be a huge commitment and I’d definitely need tons of help for that, so I definitely wasn’t ready. Someday. I’d get there.
“Good.” I got ready for work and then drove to the store to grab the cookies. I left them with Carmen, who said that Tati was still not doing well, but I asked her to give Tatiana a kiss for me. I didn’t see what I thought was Tuesday’s car when I got to the studio and breathed a sigh of relief. Where had she been this week? I was almost tempted to ask her. Instead, I pulled up one of her pages and looked through her pictures.
There were the turtles, featured prominently. On Halloween she even put little hats on them. Her most recent picture was from yesterday and it was a picture of her lifting a barbell over her head. She must have had someone else take it. From her surroundings it looked like another gym, not the one she was building. The walls were gray instead of white.
I went through a few other videos. Well. Tuesday could certainly lift a lot of weight and do a lot of handstand walks. My mouth started watering and I closed the page on my phone. I realized that I’d been standing in the parking lot for nearly twenty minutes and I needed to get my ass upstairs and heat up the room because I was teaching soon.
Tuesday was a distraction that I didn’t need, now or ever. I had other shit in my life. She was just a complicati
on. A sexy and irritating as hell complication.
Six
The packages were piled in front of the door on Monday morning and the music was on. I hadn’t seen anything more from Tuesday all weekend, and I’d somehow stayed away from her social pages, but only through tremendous willpower.
Since the music was on, I figured she was there, so I turned around and headed back down the stairs. I pushed the door open and found her arranging some t-shirts on racks.
“Seriously?” I asked, gesturing at the speakers.
“Good morning to you too,” she said, not pausing what she was doing.
“And you need to figure out why your shit keeps ending up in front of my door. It’s heavy and I don’t feel like lugging it back down here. I have a class coming in a few minutes.” She finally stopped and turned around.
“So, yoga doesn’t make you that strong if you can’t handle a few boxes.” All of the goodwill she’d earned was gone.
“You,” I said, pointing my finger at her. I couldn’t think of what to call her, I was so steamed.
“Me,” she said, a smirk ghosting on her lips. Oh, she enjoyed this far too much. The victory of her being crushed by yoga was merely a memory now. I wanted her to take a flexibility workshop and have her ass completely kicked again.
“You are just . . .” I still couldn’t come up with something. Tuesday stepped so close to me I gasped.
“I’m what, Sutton?” Hearing my name from her lips did something strange to me. I’d never reacted this way to my own name before. I’d heard it probably millions of times, but hearing Tuesday saying it was like hearing it for the first time. Having her so close sucked all the air out of my lungs.
“What am I?” she said, her voice soft for the first time. I didn’t know what she was. I didn’t know what I was. I didn’t know what anything was at the moment. Except that I didn’t know how to make my lungs work anymore.
I stumbled backward right into the new desk that hadn’t been there before. Before I could fall into the furniture and completely wipe out, Tuesday reached for my arm and kept me upright.
Anyone but You Page 6
