I mouth back, “No.”
We nearly collapse from silently laughing.
“Keep going,” Penelope says calmly, eyes closed, in perfect tree pose. “You’re doing great.”
By minute forty, we are on the floor.
Mila is flat on her back on her mat, arms flung wide, talking to the ceiling like she’s giving a deathbed confession. I am face down on mine, my forehead pressed against the cool foam, breathing in the slightly chemical smell of it like it might cure me. Penelope sips her lemon water, watching us with a delighted smile of a woman who has just successfully gotten her two hungover roommates to do forty minutes of Pilates.
“That was good,” she says, primly.
Mila wheezes from the floor. “You. Are a different species. You drank last night, I thought.”
“I did.”
“How?” Mila’s voice cracks into a laugh. “How are you like this? How do I rein it in like you?”
Penelope just smiles, looking from her to me, and that is the thing that breaks us. The smile. The serene, almost holy smile of a woman who has not been broken by any of the ordinary forces of this world. I look at Mila. Mila looks at me. The three of us go off into one of those laughing fits where the laughing keeps starting itself again, and just when we think we’ve calmed down, one of us makes a small noise, and the other two are off again, gasping, clutching our stomachs, faces hot.
I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling.
I feel — God, of all things — happy.
I’m lying down on the floor of my own living room, my body wrecked, my head still pulsing softly with last night’s mistakes, and I am the happiest I have been in years.
Eventually, we migrate to the kitchen on noodle legs.
Penelope pulls a glass container out of the fridge, and inside is a kaleidoscope of pre-cut fruit. Strawberries. Pineapple. Cubesof mango that look like little jewels. Blueberries. She slides it onto the counter and tells us to help ourselves.
I cannot remember the last time I ate fruit.
I’ve lived on protein bars and gas station coffee and whatever Chase brought home from the deli on the corner near his parents’ house for so long that the first cube of mango is almost an out-of-body experience. It tastes like candy. It tastes like sunshine. I make a small, embarrassing noise.
“Oh my God.”
“Right?” Penelope says, pleased.
“This is so good. Thank you. I’m — I haven’t — thank you.”
Mila picks at the fruit politely, less converted than I am, but she thanks Penelope with a smile.
I pull out the eggs. This I can do. Cooking is the way I tell people I love them. My mother cooked for me, and then I learned to cook for myself, and somewhere along the way, it became the thing I offer instead of sayingI’m glad you’re here.I want to feed these girls. I want to feed them every morning if they’ll let me.
“How do you want your eggs?” I ask.
We all agree on over easy.
Mila is on toast duty. Penelope is whisking something the color of saffron in a small bowl — olive oil, lemon, garlic, a pinch of something red and warm — and the kitchen fills with the smell of butter melting in the pan and bread browning and the kind of music Penelope has cued up softly from the TV in the next room.
“This is your first weekend here, isn’t it, Melly?” Mila asks suddenly.
I look up. The egg I’m cracking goes a little crooked. “Yes, it is.”
“That’s crazy.”
I grin. “I know.”
“A week ago, you were suffering at your old place.”
