Page 8 of Oh, Puck!
Josie
I'm trying to do yoga, but apparently, my vagina has other ideas.
"Okay, Josie. Take some deep breaths and center yourself…" I close my eyes and fill my lungs with beautiful ocean air. "Find your inner peace."
I keep the motivational talk going, even if myinner peaceresides somewhere deep within my screaming thighs.
Below me, on a stretch of golden sand that looks airbrushed, a yoga class flows through a sun salutation. The instructor is dressed in white linen, calling out poses in a voice so serene I want to bottle it. Keep it in my pocket for emergencies, like when I’m trying to explain to my new boss why I’ve been walking funny for three days.
“Downward-facing dog, my ass,” I mutter, peering through my the open French doors in my hotel suite at the group on the beach below.
The class moves in unison, a serene wave of toned limbs and expensive leggings backed by the soundtrack of crashing waves on the shore.
Me? I’m in my hotel bathrobe, one leg half-extended, wobbling like a newborn giraffe on the plush carpet of my oceanview suite.
I try to mirror the instructors next pose, lowering my chest toward the floor. A sharp, delicious ache radiates from my core, a direct line to the memory ofthree nights ago.
His hands, huge and rough and warm, spanning my hips as he lifted me against the hotel room wall the second we burst inside. The moonlight guided us to the bed, and for one night, and one night only, I let myselffeel alive.
I had a plan. Abeautifulplan.
Arrive in Beachside, soak up the sun, find the good coffee and figure out which way the ocean was so I’d stop walking the wrong direction every morning.
Then I would get the fuck to work and become the most undeniable woman a sporting franchise in this country has ever seen.
Instead, I went to a bar, met a stranger, and haven’t left this room since.
Well, except for the occasional desperate sprint to the lobby for more of those tiny berry tarts. They're delicious.
I copy the last of the sunrise yoga session, free of charge from where I'm standing, because I'm nothing if not resourceful.
When the session ends, I straighten up with the grace of a ninety-year-old, one hand pressed to my lower back. I thought yoga might help stretch out the soreness.
I’m not injured-sore. I’mthoroughly-fucked-sore.
I stalk into the bathroom and lean close to the mirror, fingertips prodding the pale, fading bruise just below my collarbone.
The hickey.
I’ve been coating it in concealer for three days, praying to every skincare god I know for it to vanish. It’s stubborn. Like a little purple souvenir from the best, most ill-advised, night of my life.
My reflection stares back, green eyes wide. "Whowashe?"
I don’t know his name. If he’s married. If he thinks I do this all the time.
I don't even know if I even care about any of that.
I tug my collar up and sigh and stare at my reflection.
"Whoareyou?"
Because the Josie Whitfield I knew did not pick up handsome strangers in bars. The Josie I knew got told her whole life that she was too much, too sporty, too weird,too not-like-her-sisters.
And she absorbed it like a sponge. She did not do reckless things.
But this Josie? The one staring back at me?
This Josie did things she didn't know her body could do.Shedid things she didn't knowshecould do.
