Eight

Eight

SORA

Only you can make yourself happy. No one else can do that. Stop trying to delegate the duty to someone else.

—SOLO FEBRUARY CHALLENGE

Saturday morning, I still feel a nagging worry that blowing off Jack might have been a mistake. I’m consumed by all the what ifs. Could he have been The One? Or am I just using him as an excuse not to work on myself? I’ll admit, I’m more than a little haunted by the look of disappointment on his face. I hate that I’m responsible for that. I am working through my guilt by eating my feelings. Stella would tell me this is decidedly unhealthy, but bacon just makes everything better, okay?

My short-tempered dad was impatient with everyone and everything, except when he made breakfast Saturday mornings when I was a kid. His specialties were pancakes and bacon. He’d always fry up a full package at a time, and because Nami and Mom weren’t huge fans of the crunchy breakfast meat, Dad and I had more to ourselves. It’s one of the few really, truly good memories I have of Dad.

Larry whines, winking at me with his forever-shut eye, pink tongue out. I put a couple of pieces in his bowl, and he gobbles them up.

My phone pings. Solo February is becoming a thing, seriously, Arial texts me. Check your inbox.

I glance at my phone and realize I’ve got hundreds of new emails. The last article I posted has four hundred thousand likes! What the…!

I’ve been feeling like you do for a long time, one woman wrote. Thank you for writing what we’ve all been thinking. I’ve been looking for happiness through a man for too long. Thank you for giving me the courage to be on my own.

Wow. I browse through dozens of other messages, and the theme is the same. What I’m writing is resonating with people. Really hitting home. Stella was right!

My phone buzzes with another text. This one from Nami.

You coming to FlyFit today, right? It’s in a half hour.

I glance down at my bacon-grease-laden fingers. The very last thing on earth I want to do is go work out. The whole point of eating my feelings is to not burn off the calories that are coating my interior fat, which is like a hug on the inside. But I also know that Mom and Nami will keep on bugging me until I show up, and then I’ll have the avalanche of texts afterward if I don’t, the guilt trip in stereo.

Do I have to come?

I type. Maybe, this one time in our lives, Nami will show me a little pity.

Mom says you have to talk to me about the wedding. What’s up?

I don’t actually think Nami will care about me going solo, one way or another, but part of me is worried she will care. She’s become obsessed with little details since she started planning her nuptials and she’s wound tighter than a violin these days. She broke out in tears in the pots and pans section of Crate & Barrel last week because she couldn’t find the nonstick saucepan she wanted for her registry. So, probably best if I break the news in person.

Will tell you when I get there. I’m on my way.

I grab the newly nuked bacon off the table and wrap it in a napkin. No sense in wasting good farm-to-table thick-sliced goodness. I can eat it in the car.

I walk into the sleek FlyFit studio and everything has the FlyFit logo on it, a loopy double “F” that, if you squint, kind of looks like a double infinity sign. This is terrifying because if there’s one thing I don’t need an infinite amount of, it’s exercise. People wait for the studio door to open, about six so far, and every person is clad in expensive, coordinated athleisure wear. I glance down at my (washed!) k-r-ot sweatshirt and faded, ultra-stretchy yoga pants, so worn the brand name has long since worn off the lower back. I’m pretty sure the fabric might even be sheer in places, but who cares? I’m at the gym. I don’t need to impress anyone. Not that there are any men here to impress. It’s all women of various ages, all fully matching, from their colored hair ties to the logos on their designer cross-trainers.

Then she looks at my outfit and frowns. “Uh, what are you wearing?” she asks, uncertain, as if she’s never seen my once-white, now grungy yellow sneakers, with the rubber on the toe half peeling off. She glances uneasily around at the well-coifed crowd. Two more ladies push through the revolving door, wearing matching mauve spandex.

She frowns, disappointed. Okay, so I’m sorry I can’t afford stylish workout gear. I’m not a corporate attorney at a start-up tech firm that I helped to get off the ground, which will probably, one day, net her millions. Plus, I remind myself, Solo February gives me the license to dress how I want, not how I think other people want me to dress. I can just, for once, be comfortable.

I wish I’d saved some bacon in my pocket. I could use it now. Then, when they ask why I have bacon in class, I can just tell them it’s my comfort animal.

Nami blinks fast. This is not what she’s expecting. “Oh.” She shrugs. “Well, you’ll get one. You still have plenty of time.” She waves a dismissive, perfectly manicured hand.

Nami now looks a little more concerned. That wrinkle in the middle of her forehead appears, the one when she’s backed into a corner, like pretty much any time we played Connect Four. She hates to lose. She also hates, more than anything, to have one of her meticulous plans derailed. I love Nami to death. She’s smart and fiercely loyal, but wedding planning has brought out her worst qualities. I should’ve seen this coming. More women pour in from outside, and the three of us move closer to the studio door with the giant gold infinity sign.

Nami presses her lips in a thin line. This isn’t what she wants to hear. “I’ve already made the seating arrangements.”

Ouch. Poor Uncle Bob. He’s an adorable old man who likes to wear plaid ties and talks in a faint Scottish lilt.

Nami lets out an exasperated sigh. “You don’t get it.” Nami glares at the ceiling of FlyFit. “Why do you always do this to me, Sora? Seriously?” There’s a lifetime of closely kept grudges in that one word. Just like Dad, Nami neither forgets nor forgives.

The studio door slips open then. And the instructor, I presume, steps out.

Everyone gives a loud shout of approval, so loud that I jump. Are we in the marines?

The instructor, bouncing with exaggerated enthusiasm, swings open the birch door to the studio and we all file in. That’s when I notice the harnesses hanging from the higher-than-normal ceiling and the long, colored drapes knotted at the bottom and dragging on the wooden floor. Worse, a few of the ladies jump right into the swinging drapes and begin warm-up stretches, hanging in them like pros from Cirque du Soleil.

Nami follows Mom as they both head to the front of the class, closest to the mirrors, and I suddenly forget any wedding tension as Mom climbs into a turquoise knotted drape and Nami hangs on to a pink one, grabbing it with both hands and bending forward in a stretch. Why are they so close to the front and the mirrors where everyone can see? It’s at that moment I realize Mom and Nami have been doing this every Saturday for likely months now. I’ve been politely (and not so politely) refusing to come for ages. I try to inch back to a red drape at the very back, but Mom spots me. She gestures wildly for me to come to them. She’s holding a kelly green drape just for me. Great. I’ll look like the Jolly Green Giant stuck on Jack’s beanstalk.

Reluctantly, I move forward and stand beside the silky fabric, all the while trying not to stare at the other, far more fit women, sitting in their knotted cradles, contorting themselves into pointed-toe warm-ups. Why is there no padding on this floor? Even for yoga we get mats, and the worst I can do is fall six inches when doing Downward Dog. I’m not suspended five feet in the air.

Really? Did she really need to tell us her name was Amethyst? Or that she spells Amee with two e’s? I feel like it’s an unnecessary flex.

Dreams? My dream right now is to escape to my car and see if I can find any bacon crumbs in the crevice of a floor mat. I’m sure I dropped some on the way. I frown, and Mom makes eye contact with me in the mirror. Her eyes say, you’d better really be trying.

Wings? I glance around and then notice that everyone is grabbing the drapes next to them. They’re wings?

I feel like a fool, but at least I can kind of keep up.

I can’t get enough leverage to hoist myself up by my armpits, and instead, my arm just gets tangled in the fabric and I start twisting around in a circle. I am holding on for dear life, though the entire silky drape has become lubed with bacon fat. Meanwhile, Mom and Nami are flipping and twisting around like some kind of mother–daughter circus act. I, however, am just a circus. This continues on for half an hour, and for every move I’m three steps behind and look like a fool.

Then Amee does a twist and a roll, and we’re all hanging backward, heads dipping low, feet supposed to be working as anchors, except that I’m too tangled to quite make the maneuver, and so I end up flopping backward off the knot, missing the hard wooden floor by mere inches, as I’m now tangled at the knees, arms dragging the floor. The blood rushes to my head. I reach up to try to save myself, but my hands are too slick, or the drape is too slippery—whatever the case, I can’t get a handhold and I’m stuck. It’s just a matter of time before I flop out of this headfirst on the floor below. All I can think is: I’m going to die right here. Sora Reid loved bacon and tequila. Pork distributors across the nation mourn her loss. Her estate is suing aerial aerobics for being the most ridiculous exercise trend since pole-dancing.

Amee sees me and frowns, hopping down off her drape to come and save me. It takes a lot of grunting and groaning before she’s able to get me back into a sitting position in the knotted drapes, and so now I’m sitting there like a kid on a swing.

Silk bosom? I look over and see every woman in the class spreading one half of the drape and easing into it, wrapping it around their entire body and disappearing inside as if it’s a kind of upright hammock. This might not be so bad. I might be able to take a nap. I spread open the drape and lean in, wondering if the thin, silky fabric can actually hold me and disappear into it, but kind of side-flop into it, so my face is pressed against the hammock. Not my best angle. I scramble up and manage to get into the fetal position, but the fabric is squeezing me into a ball.

I realize my actual mother is swinging in a slow circle in her drape cocoon next to me. This is just weird. That’s all I’m saying.

I’m squished in like a fetus two weeks after its due date, and my arm and leg are falling asleep. I just want to get out of here and go home.

Hallelujah. I make a move to exit, but with my right side essentially numb, I struggle and fail to extricate myself from the Curtains from Hell. Through the little slit in my cocoon, I can see the other ladies have had no trouble freeing themselves. I’m just a big green blob slowly circling.

I flounder some more. “I can’t!”