“I’m improvising. Left foot, red. Let’s go.”
I don’t know why I comply. Maybe it’s the determination in Jackson’s voice, or the fact that he’s gone to all this trouble to distract me from my own misery. Or I’m just tired of sitting with the weight of the Ice Queen’s words pressing down on my chest.
I step onto the mat and place my left foot on a red circle.
“See? Easy peasy.” Jackson positions himself on the opposite end, his foot dwarfing the circle. “Now, right hand, yellow.”
“You’re supposed to spin.”
“The spinner is broken. Has been since my brother once tried to use it as a Frisbee.” He demonstrates by flicking the arrow, which spins weakly before falling off entirely. “We’re going freestyle.”
“This is blasphemy.”
“This isfun. Right hand, yellow.”
I bend down and place my palm on the yellow circle, feeling ridiculous. Jackson mirrors me, and suddenly, we’re both hunched over the mat like two very confused flamingos.
“Left hand, green,” he announces.
We contort ourselves accordingly. My shoulder protests the angle, but I manage.
“So,” Jackson says, wobbling slightly, “You want to talk about why reading about Oliver’s hookup made you forcefully slam your laptop?”
“No.”
Jackson’s voice drops to that annoyingly perceptive tone he gets. “You run the other way when you see him coming, but reading about his hookup has you Hulking out. Seems like there might be a connection there, don’t you think?”
“You’re overthinking it, Jackson. There’s nothing to connect. I don’t care who Oliver sleeps with.”
“Riiiiight. Left foot, yellow.”
I move my foot, and now we’re face-to-face and bent at angles that’ll require a week at the chiropractor to work out the kinks. Jackson’s brown eyes are warm, searching.
“You know,” he says quietly, “it’s okay to miss someone. Even if you’ve convinced yourself you shouldn’t.”
My throat constricts. “I don’t miss him.”
“For a guy you claim not to care about, you’ve spent an awful lot of energy dodging him.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it for me.” Jackson’s hand slides on the mat. He curls his fingers, bracing himself and scrunching the colored circle in the process. “Right hand, red.”
“Oliver and I were best friends when we were kids, before my family moved away.”
“I know that part.”
“What you don’t know is that I—” I stop, the confessionlodging in my chest and metastasizing. “I had feelings for him back then. Stupid, childish feelings that I never told him about.”
Jackson doesn’t appear surprised. “And now?”
“Now nothing. We’re different people. He’s the captain of the hockey team, and I’m…” I gesture vaguely at myself, nearly losing my balance. “This.”
“What’s wrong with ‘this?’”
“Jackson, look at me. I dress as if I time-traveled from the 1950s. I spend my weekends watching documentaries about celestial bodies. I have a skincare routine that takes forty-five minutes.”
“So you’re stylish, intellectually curious, and have great skin. The horror.”
