Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(31)

“Cool.” Bree grabbed his hand and yanked him up off the bench. “Now come on! We’re going to be late.”

“Okay,” Dan agreed cheerfully. “I hate missing the previews.”

“Previews?” Bree asked. “We’re not going to the movies. Remember? We’re going to Bikram.”

“Uh, yeah,” Dan replied nervously. Bikram, Bikram, Bikram. Not a movie. Maybe a restaurant? “Right. Um, good, I’m, uh, starving.”

Bree laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty hungry for some exercise myself. Let’s hurry so we don’t miss this class—the evening sessions are even more intense than the ones I usually take. And maybe afterwards I’ll buy you a Jamba Juice.”

Class? Jamba Juice? She might as well have been speaking Swahili. Dan had no idea where they were going but he followed Bree down the street, making idle chitchat about books he hadn’t actually read and getting more and more worried. It didn’t seem likely that they were going to a restaurant. Then Dan looked up and saw it, looming in the distance: a hand-painted sign with a funny, Indian-style font that was supposed to look like Sanskrit that proudly proclaimed BIKRAM. It wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t a restaurant. Bikram was a kind of yoga. Bree was taking him to a yoga class.

Namaste!

Bree trotted up the stairs eagerly, like a kid on Christmas morning. She turned and glanced over her shoulder at Dan, who was lagging behind, trying to think of an excuse not to participate. He decided to feign an injury and was trying to choose a part of his body he could claim to have hurt. He had a cracked rib maybe, from lifting too many dictionaries. He’d been hit by a car on his way to work this morning and was pretty sure he was concussed. He had a rare neural disorder that caused him to black out in small crowded rooms full of sweaty people lying on colorful rubber mats.

“PS, Dan,” Bree called down to him. “I’m glad you didn’t bother with a change of clothes. For the evening sessions,Yogi keeps the heat even higher than usual, so we usually just go naked.”

Now things were getting complicated. First, there was no way he was going to do yoga, and second, he’d be damned if he was going to do yoga naked. On the other hand, Bree would be there too; he’d get to see her completely naked the very first time they hung out.

“Um, great!” he enthused, already out of breath from climbing the stairs. Dan had never exercised in his life, but the sight of Bree’s round, yoga-firm butt a few steps above him was all the motivation he needed. Forget that he’d never done yoga, never mind that he was sure to be humiliated, and f*ck the seemingly endless flight of stairs: he was going to get into all sorts of pretzel-like positions with Bree, naked. What was there not to love?

That’s the spirit!

“Come on!” Bree urged giddily.

Dan reached the top of the stairs and followed her into the Tranquility Yoga Studio, a wide-open space with gleaming wide-plank pine floors. The room was almost all windows and was flooded with the late afternoon sun—and the rays only intensified the heat. The temperature in the room must have been near a hundred and twenty degrees, and with the sunlight and all the naked bodies, it was also humid and very . . . fragrant.

On a platform in the front of the room was an emaciated-looking Indian man with gleaming, well-oiled skin, dressed only in a loosely cinched white cotton robe, seated with his spindly legs crossed in front of him. Below his thinly tweezed eyebrows his eyes were closed, and he was smiling beatifically. In front of him was a fortyish Katie Couric–looking woman doing her warm-up stretches, her paunchy tummy hanging loosely over her bare, veiny thighs.

A couple of guys warmed up by the windows—one with long, sinewy muscles who arched his back in a way that just didn’t look natural, and a silver-haired grandfather type touching his toes effortlessly. He really put Dan to shame . . . in every department.

“Better get undressed.” Bree winked at Dan. “Master doesn’t like to start class even a minute late. Anyone who’s not undressed and ready to go is asked to leave.”

Dan had been on the verge of explaining to Bree that he was epileptic and had forgotten to take his medication, but then she started to yank her turquoise sports bra over her head. Wow. What could he do?

Strip!

He pulled his dirty T-shirt over his head and let it fall to the ground. Then he unbuckled his belt, kicked off his shoes, and pulled down his jeans. He was the only guy in the room wearing boxer shorts, but he stubbornly kept them on.

Like his vampire tan and skinny arms didn’t make him stand out enough.

He balled his socks up and stuffed them into his shoes, then took a deep breath and followed Bree out onto the floor, where she started to stretch. Her flawless skin was tan all over, which he knew for sure, since he could see everything. Her long blond hair fell over one of her handful-sized breasts and Dan had to remind himself he couldn’t just go and grab them right now. She bent over and touched her palms to the floor. He tried to mimic her, but he could barely touch his knees. It was agonizing.

“Don’t bend,” Bree whispered. “Stretch, stretch.”

It was impossible to see Bree’s perfect naked body stretching and contorting without the fly of his boxers expanding to embarrassing proportions. Dan stared as she took her foot in her hand and extended it straight over her head. He closed his eyes and tried to think of unsexy things, like the way food always got stuck in his aunt Sophia’s dentures or how the side-walk in front of his building always smelled like dog piss. The sweat was already pouring down his face and they hadn’t even done anything yet. He used his forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow.