Bea recovers first. “Hi, Mrs. Camille. Beautiful day for goat yoga, isn’t it?”
Lucinda’s face suggests she’s just eaten something sour, but she quickly turns a smile to me. “Come, Simon, I saved a spot beside me. I would love your thoughts on managing an unruly cast. And you’ll get more goat time when you’re with me. They love me best.”
“There’s no talking during yoga, Mrs. Camille,” a chipper young woman I haven’t met yet says.
“That’s Molly Taylor,” Bea whispers to me. “She’s the instructor.”
“Ah, Hudson’s crush?” I whisper back.
She smiles at me, dimples dimpling even deeper with the mischief in her eyes. “You remembered. I’m impressed.”
I smile in return, then call out a reply to Lucinda. “I must stay at the back of the class. Easier to escape should my man deem anything a security risk.”
“Dammit, Simon,” Hudson mutters.
“What? Merely stating the truth.”
“And now she’s coming to the back,” Bea says.
We all watch as Lucinda whips her mat off the ground and hustles to the back row.
She’s in bright pink spandex pants and a white sleeveless top not dissimilar to Bea’s shirt.
Thirteenbaaahs ominously.
“Are you fucking serious?” Bea mutters.
“Hell, no,” Hudson echoes.
“I shall, erm, put her on my opposite side,” I say to Bea. “And assist with distracting Thirteen.”
But then I realize her issue isn’t with Lucinda, or with any particular goat.
Her issue is that Lucinda’s son, Jake—Bea’s ex-boyfriend—has appeared in yoga attire as well.
And he is also headed in our direction, weaving amongst the attendees and goats alike, pushing aside any that dare linger in his path too long.
Goats and people, though the one person was merely a tap.
But the point remains.
He could have stepped around her instead of insisting that she move herself.
“Oh, dear,” I murmur.
Internally, I’m fighting the urge to introduce his nose to my fist.
How could a man have treated Bea as abysmally as he has?
Although any man who insists everyone else clear a path for him is a particular sort of man who likely doesn’t care how anyone else feels.
Jake scowls at me, then smiles, then scowls, then smiles, and he’s so distracted by apparently deciding if he should still like me or not that he doesn’t see another goat in his way.
He steps on it, and itbaahs at him angrily and butts him in the kneecap.
“Does he often come to goat yoga?” I ask Bea as Lucinda begins arranging her mat beside Butch, who has arranged both my and his yoga mats on the grass while I’ve been watching Jake.
Byboth my and his yoga mats, clearly I actually meanboth Pinky’s and his, as I don’t believe I have a yoga mat of my own.
