Page 22 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“You were going to say something about Marc,” Cheryl said.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you absolutely were. Your face did a thing.” Cheryl used her pointer finger to circle near my face. As if that motion proved her point.
“My face doesn’t dothings,”I protested, purposely wiping any expression from my face.
“It does this …” Adele scrunched up her nose and twisted her mouth, “whenever you mention him.”
“I do not look like that!”
“You kind of do,” Cheryl confirmed.
Why were they my best friends in this town?
I threw my hands up. “Okay, fine! Marc will probably write a very detailed report about how I failed, with charts and data points and probably a fucking bibliography, and he’ll be right, and I’ll have to live with the knowledge that Marc Kingsley was right and I was wrong, and he’ll never let me forget it, not because he’s purposefully mean, but because he’sMarcand he just … remembers everything.”
Silence.
Then Cheryl bit her lip, her shoulders shaking. “Um, I have to ask. How are they going to run you out of town? Last time I checked, we stopped using pitchforks on people.”
“Maybe they’ll form a committee. You know how Ruby River loves committees,” Adele suggested, clearly trying not to laugh. “The Committee for the Removal of Failed Yoga Instructors.”
“CRFYI,” Cheryl said, testing it out. “Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.”
“You two are the worst.” But I was smiling despite myself, even as my eyes stung with tears, but at least my panic was receding.
“I think the wordbestis what you were looking for,” Adele corrected me, pulling me into a hug.
“Also,” Cheryl added, “the fact that you’re so worried about Marc’s?—”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying?—”
“Shut up,” I groaned.
“—that you’ve spent a lot of mental energy on this hypothetical report?—”
“I will push you into traffic.”
“There’s hardly any traffic. We’re in Ruby River.”
“I’ll find some.” The tightness in my muscles slowly released as I bantered with my friends.
“Seriously, though. Even if animal yoga is a total flop. The gossip mill will pass and theRuby River Gazettewill post something about someone else the next week,” Adele said, her arms tightening around me.
“But what if it doesn’t pass? What if no one can let it go?” On some level, I knew my fear was irrational, but I couldn’t stop my stomach from clenching and my mind from going to a dark place.
If this class failed… ifIfailed, then I’d have to move back to my parents’ home in Seattle. And after being here for the last three months, I didn’t think I could go back to that cold, sterile life. Here, I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. There, I was the mostly obedient daughter. I didn’t want those shackles of expectation to fasten around me any longer. I needed to have the freedom to be the me I was meant to be.
And while all of that was bad enough, my heart, which was already shattered from losing my person, my Aunt Jem, I’d feel like she misplaced her trust in me. Her legacy was Sacred Serenity. But it was more than just the building. It was more than the services we provided. It was the comfort, the joy, the community we created in our space for the residents of Ruby River. And if I lost that—I would lose a piece of myself and my aunt forever. I’d lose the purpose I’d finally found.
So much for being relaxed.
“Then, as your besties, we’ll create a distraction.” Adele sounded so confident.
“Totally. It’ll be something so epic people will be like, animal yoga what?” Cheryl laughed.
