“Hey, Daddy.”
“It’s late,” Phillip remarked, looking at the clock and noticing the midnight hour approaching.
“I wanted to talk to you alone, before the workday starts.”
Brad still wore his clothes from the day, but he’d lost the tie, unbuttoned his shirt, and now walked around barefoot. “Sure.” Phillip gestured at the love seat where Rosaline normally sat.
Brad perched on the edge of the cushion and rested his elbows on his knees, lacing his fingers together. “I want to apologize. I realized, talking to Valerie before she left, that I’ve had a really bad attitude. And, that attitude is entirely under my control. Please accept my apology and know that I will enter the building tomorrow morning with a fresh look at the opportunities God has placed in front of me.”
Phillip felt his chest swell with emotion. He pushed his chair back and stood, walking around to sit next to Brad. “Son, I want you to know that God has you there. This is you giving in to His will, not mine.”
Brad’s lips curved in a smile. “Yes, sir. I understand. I’ve already had a talk with Him about it.”
Phillip laughed and slapped Brad on the shoulder. “Fair enough, son.” He stood and gestured toward the door. As they walked out together, he turned the light out behind them. “I look forward to tomorrow.”
Brad took the stairs twice as fast as his father, stopping halfway up them to smile down at him. “Me, too,” he said, before finishing the climb and going to his room.
Valerie’s eyes burned with fatigueas she parked in the gym parking lot. She closed them as she yawned and rested her head on her steering wheel for just a second before turning the car off and grabbing her bag off the seat.
She should have skipped yoga this morning and gotten that extra hour of sleep instead. She could have done the workouts from her living room, but she tended to want to hide away in her home. Once she started skipping workouts, she’d just never go back. Over the last four years, she’d learned to force herself to come and go from her home, go out more, stay in less, training her brain to accept that as much as she loved the comfort and security of her locked house, she could not make it her default.
Which meant that even though she went to bed at midnight, that five o’clock alarm still rang, and she still got out of bed and prepared for yoga class, packing her makeup bag and clothes for the day so she could go straight to work from there.
She entered the gym and swiped her membership card at the desk. The young girl behind the counter gave her a very bubbly welcome, and Valerie smiled back, more at the girl’s enthusiasm than anything else. She stopped off in the locker room and set her bag on the foot of the locker and hung her garment bag on the hook.
Even though she’d only attended class here a couple times, this gym felt very comfortable to her. She had attended another gym in this chain when she lived in Savannah, and so much of it had the same feel. Most of that had to do with the identical décor and the same music piping through the speakers, but it still made her feel less like a stranger in a new town and more like someone who belonged here.
She found her classroom and went inside, stopping at the back table to initial next to her name on the roster. She slipped her flip-flops off and walked to the front of the room, finding a spot to unroll her yoga mat.
“Good morning, Valerie,” Brooklyn, the instructor greeted. “How is your Tuesday treating you?”
Valerie sat cross-legged on the mat and leaned back on her hands. “Late dinner party. It’s going to be a long day.”
“We’ll set you up for your day,” Brooklyn said with a laugh. She moved to the next person who had just come into the room.
“Valerie Flynn?”
Surprised to hear her name, she looked behind her and saw Sami Jones sitting on a fuchsia-colored mat. If she hadn’t said something to Valerie, she never would have recognized her as Brad’s secretary. Normally, the dark-haired woman wore bright colors and patterns, always with bold makeup and a hat or a head scarf or some other eccentric accessory. Right now, though, she wore a pair of black yoga pants and a gray T-shirt. She’d pulled her blue streaked black hair back into a ponytail and wore no makeup.
“Sami,” Valerie said with a smile, turning around to face her. “I didn’t even recognize you.”
Sami made a sweeping gesture over her face. “Nakedness. I’ve tried dressing up for yoga, but it feels wrong to leave a makeup mark on my mat.” She laughed and jumped up, picking up her mat and moving to the spot next to Valerie. “It’s so good to see you here.”
“Thanks. You, too.”
“I remember you coming for the first time last week. I just didn’t know who you were then.”
Valerie chose this particular location because of its proximity to the office. “Do other Dixon employees come here?”
Sami shrugged. “Probably. Not in this class, though, and this is about all I do. Sometimes I can do the spin class at night. Most days, I work from seven to seven. Brad, bless him, works long, hard hours. This five-thirty class is my mental prep for the day. I’ve never been out in the gym area, and I don’t take any other classes.”
“I have exercises I use for my hip. So, I’ll do yoga three days a week and the gym area for three days.”
“Your hip?”
Surprised, Valerie’s eyes widened. “You don’t know? Haven’t heard the gossip?”
“No time for gossip. Not much patience for it either, really. Just heard a few things.”
