All Grown Up(17)

“I’m not sure. I’d love to go into something like acting. I was originally a business major, but my brother took all the brains when he was born and left me none.”

“I’m sure you’re plenty smart.”

“Business majors have to take Accounting 101 the first year of school. The professor told us before the first test that if we didn’t get at least a sixty, we might want to drop the class because it only got harder from there. I got a twenty-eight.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Out of a hundred?”

“And I studied.” She sipped her coffee. “I dropped the class the next day. I don’t even know why I picked business for a major. I think I just felt like I was supposed to have a major, know what I want to be when I grow up. Like Ford.”

“Not everyone knows what they’re supposed to do right away. I was a CAT-scan technician for fifteen years. It was a good job because it allowed me to work part time around Ryan’s school schedule, although it was never something I was passionate about. I actually went back to school to become an Italian language teacher, and I’m taking the licensing test in a few weeks. My grandparents are from Italy, and I always loved the language. I’m really excited about it now. Took me almost twenty years to figure it out, though.”

“That’s really cool. I’d do that, but I sort of suck at foreign languages. It’s part of the reason I’m thinking acting might be for me. You really don’t have to be good at English or math. Plus…” She smirked. “My parents always said I was a drama queen.”

“You’ll figure it out. Just take your time.”

Since Bella had brought them up, I figured it was okay to talk about her parents. “By the way, I’m really sorry about your parents, Bella. I didn’t hear about it until a few weeks after it happened, or I would have come to the service. I didn’t even have your home address to send a card. I always liked your parents and admired their relationship.”

“Thank you.” She smiled sadly. “It’s weird being out here without them. Every time I open the back door or look out to the beach, I feel like I should see them making out. It used to gross me out, but now I think it’s kinda cool how much they were into each other. In a weird way, it was good they died together. One wouldn’t have made it without the other.”

Wow. What a beautiful, yet sad, thought. We sipped our coffee in comfortable silence for a while after that, enjoying the sunrise. When a crowd started to form down the beach, we figured it was time to get going.

Bella and I laid our mats on the sand next to each other and spent a few minutes stretching. I was bent over, dangling my fingers into the sand as I reached past my toes, when I felt a hand on my back. Startled, my immediate reaction was to pop up quickly—so quickly that I caught the instructor off guard and smashed my head right into his jaw.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry!” I rubbed the top of my head as his hand reached for his jaw. His very sexy jaw. Oh God. Figures.

“It’s okay. That was my fault. I thought you saw me walking around. I was trying to guide you to bend straight. You’re dipping to your right.”

I definitely would have noticed him. Our instructor was tall, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, tanned skin, and dark eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome. Definitely handsome. Although that wasn’t the part that was so distracting. No, that I could deal with. But the loose, gray sweatpants and no shirt—that was exactly what I’d imagined Ford wearing in my fantasy a few weeks ago. That thought, along with the ridiculously amazing carved chest standing before me, turned me into a bumbling idiot.

“Oh. Jeez. Yeah. Sorry. To the right? Okay. Yeah. Sorry again.”

The instructor’s brows rose, and he grinned knowingly.

The heat rose on my cheeks and wouldn’t let up. “Umm. Sorry again.”

“Not a problem. Why don’t we try that again? This time without the beat down.” Hot Instructor winked, then put his warm hand on the exposed skin of my back. “Bend at the waist.”

I was thrilled to hide my face and have an excuse for the color that had already rushed to my cheeks. When my fingertips reached the sand, the instructor stepped behind me and gripped my hips with both hands, guiding me to shift to the left. “There, you’re aligned now. When you stretch into your bend, there’s less chance you’ll injure your back.”

I stayed down long enough that he moved on to someone else. When I eventually rose, Bella leaned toward me, failing at her attempted whispering.

“He’s hot and was totally checking you out.”

The sunrise morning yoga class turned out to be the best exercise class I’d ever taken. Not only was the instructor amazing at poses and helping all of the students ease into positions, but he guided us to use those moments in pose to appreciate the beauty around us. The sunrise, the light shining on the unusually calm ocean, streaks of orange and gold shimmering on the water—it was absolutely breathtaking.

As we moved through our vinyasa, coming into upward-facing dog, my eyes, which had been closed for the last few minutes, suddenly opened. I had that sensation you get when someone is watching, a prickly awareness I felt all over my skin. Looking to the left and right, I could find no one in my peripheral vision, and the instructor was busy helping a woman a few rows ahead of me. Yet that strange feeling stayed with me through the end of the class.