Page 160 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t?—”
“Stop apologizing,” Gladys admonished him. “My first husband had the same issue. We worked around it.”
“The yoga or the marriage?” Kevin asked, fully upright now.
“The yoga,” Gladys clarified. “But the marriage was not so steady.”
And then Glamma began to hum. I recognized it in the first two notes.
Goodbye Earl.
I closed my eyes for one full second. When I opened them, the room had shifted. Not chaos—worse. It was that suspended time period, that everyone was processing and trying to decide what to do next.
A few giggles erupted around the room, and Glamma grinned.
Mr. Geraldi stood near the back, one hand hovering midair, throat working through what looked like a badly timed sip of water. He coughed once, then again into his arm, blinking hard like he wasn’t sure he had enough air to keep breathing.
Ms Kline had turned around completely on her mat, no longer in the last pose, her attention fixed squarely on Glamma. Her head tilted just slightly, eyes narrowed—as if she was determining whether her comment was truth or fiction.
Kevin had gone pale. Fully, unmistakably the color of a man who had just understood something he wished he hadn’t. His gaze flicked to Gladys, a healthy dose of caution now in their depths.
She smiled.
Kevin took a small step away. Then another, slower this time, like distance might improve his odds of survival. He reached out and patted her arm with careful precision. The kind of touch that suggested he knew it was best to stay on her good side moving forward.
For the love of all that is holy.Glamma.
“They didn’t kill him, “ I muttered, though based on everything I’d heard about Gladys’s first husband—and knowing what I did about these four women—I suspected that outcome might have been preferable.
My attention shifted across the room to Delaney. Her lips were pressed tight, shoulders held a fraction too still, her entire body engaged in real effort to maintain a level of professionalism. Her eyes met mine for a half-second before quickly looking away, dangerously close to losing that battle.
“You seem like a fine young man,” Glamma announced. “Perhaps you’d like to spend time with my granddaughter, Grace, after class.”
The room went quiet in a different way this time.
Grace, still on her mat, achieved a shade of red I’d never seen on her face before.
Kevin turned toward her, clearly trying to decide if Grace would be interested.
Grace focused on her mat as though it had become the most important object in the room.
Josh’s attention snapped between them—Grace, Kevin, then Glamma—his jaw tightening with each glance. If intent alone were actionable, Glamma would require immediate medical intervention. I wasn’t entirely convinced Josh realized the direction of his actions, but Glamma did. The slight lift at the corner of her mouth and the sparkle in her eyes said so.
“I’m game if she is,” Kevin said.
That was, objectively, the wrong answer. Not wrong for Kevin, who was a reasonable person making a reasonable statement. Wrong in the sense that it activated something in the room that couldn’t be deactivated.
“She accepts.”
“Glamma,” Grace said, her voice carrying a level of resignation that suggested that this wasn’t the first time this had happened. “I can answer for myself.”
“Of course you can, sweetheart. I’m just helping with the pace.”
Grace turned toward Kevin, regrouping after Glamma put her on the spot. He seemed exactly her type. Taller, likely close to six feet, easygoing, the kind of person who recovered from public near-disasters and laughed about it. Still, there was a hesitation. “I apologize for my grandmother.”
“Don’t,” Kevin said. “I’m free Saturday if you are.”
Grace blinked.
