“Seriously cool,” she said, after I’d shown it to her.
“It really was.”
“You okay?” Hollis asked, leaning back in her chair. She was giving me a searching look and I hoped she wasn’t seeing too much.
“Yeah, why?” I asked, pretending innocence.
“No reason. You’ve just seemed preoccupied lately. Like your mind is somewhere else.”
I shrugged.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk. I just wanted you to know that if you need to talk to someone about anything, I’m here. I know I’m not your sister, but I’m here.”
I sat down on the couch, figuring I might as well hang out for a moment and have a cup of tea.
“Thanks, that means a lot. I’m good for now, but I’ll let you know if that changes,” I said.
Without asking, Hollis brewed some tea.
“It’s nice having you here, and not just because you’re Julia’s sister. It’s nice to have someone around during the day.”
I felt my cheeks getting red. I always had a problem accepting praise like that. I never knew what to do.
“Thanks,” I said, ducking my head. She brought over two steaming cups of green tea. Even though it was summer, I could never say no to hot tea.
“Can I get your opinion on something?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. I joined her at her computer, and she pulled up a new cover, this one a cute illustration of a woman and a man back-to-back.
“I can’t decide on the font color,” she said. “This, or this?”
She flashed between two colors, one white and one a bright pink.
“Pink, definitely,” I said.
“That’s what I thought too, but I needed someone else to tell me to go with it. Okay. I’m going to send that to the author and if they hate it, then I’ll change it.”
Hollis sent the image to her author and then pulled something else up.
“So… I may have worked on some other stuff for you,” she said.
There was my logo, but better, and several other images with me in them with text and logos. She’d even worked on the colors in my pictures, helping them match the logo better. The palette was soft, but earthy, and just a little bit dreamy. I loved it.
“Wow, that’s incredible,” I said. “Thank you so much. You really didn’t have to do all that.”
“I, um, also worked on your new program too.” She pulled up more images, with text announcing the challenge and so forth. She’d done a lot in such a short time.
“You’re a machine,” I said.
“Not really. I just have a lot of time and I enjoy changing things up from doing covers all the time. I’ll send all of this over to you. Let me know if you want any changes.” I couldn’t see any that I wanted to make, but I’d still sleep on it and check tomorrow to make sure. There was still plenty of time to plan for the challenge.
“When did you want to do your meditation?” I asked.
“Well, how about right now? Unless you have other things to do,” she said.
“No, now works. You can go ahead and get comfortable. Some people think you can only meditate in certain positions, but I think you should be as relaxed as you can.”
Hollis sat on the comfy chair and looked at me. “I’ve tried to do this before, and it didn’t really work out.”
“Don’t worry, there’s no wrong way to meditate and I’m going to talk you through it.”
“Okay,” she said, exhaling slowly. Her hands gripped her knees and I could tell she was nervous.
“You can lightly rest your hands on your legs,” I said, and her clenching fingers eased up a little.
“Take a deep breath in through your nose, out through your mouth.” She did so. “Great, now do that again. You can close your eyes whenever you’re ready.”
Hollis closed her eyes and I could tell that further relaxed her.
I had her breathe a few more times and then led her in a visualization. Something told me Hollis would need more guidance to keep her focused, so I made sure I did more talking to keep her on track.
I had a few scripts for these meditations, but I always went where my ideas took me most times.
“Now you can open your eyes when you’re ready,” I said, using a gentle voice. Not everyone had the right timbre for guided meditation, but I’d worked really hard to make my voice as soothing as possible.
Hollis’s eyes fluttered open and she looked a little dazed. That was common.
“How long was that?” she asked.
“Twenty minutes,” I said, holding up my phone and showing her.
“Holy shit. It felt like it was just seconds. That’s like magic.” She shook her head in wonder.
“It can feel a little bit like detaching from time, can’t it?” I said.
“Absolutely. You’re really good at that.”
Our tea was cold, so I went to warm it back up.
“Thanks,” I said. A side effect of doing the meditation for someone else is that it relaxed me too. I felt better now that I’d come over to hang out with Hollis.
It would have been so easy to open my mouth and tell Hollis about Piper. About the kiss. About the fact that I couldn’t forget it. Couldn’t stop thinking about her.
But then the kitten started running around and Amanda came over to ask something and the peaceful moment was broken. That was probably for the best. I could deal with this on my own. I was an adult, and this was an adult problem that I could handle.
Chapter Fourteen
Natalie didn’t have any errands on Thursday, so she was working away in the office right near the gym when I arrived.
“Good morning,” I said to Piper. She was looking in the mirror, fixing her hair.
Piper’s eyes and mine met, and she turned around.
“Good morning,” she said, and she almost said it with relief.
I cleared my throat and set my bag down.
“How did you want to start today?” I asked, my voice sounding robotic. I couldn’t help it. There were so many things I wanted to say to her, but I couldn’t say any of them, so I was left with a cold script.
She shrugged, but her body was stiff.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
Piper nodded. “Yes, everything’s fine.”
She sat down on the mat and I took my place at the front.
Piper sat on the mat with her eyes closed. Something was definitely off.
“We don’t have to do yoga today. This is your time,” I reminded her.
“No, it’s fine. Surprise me.”
“Okay,” I said, but I was going to keep my eye on her. I mean, more so than usual.
Today I had her start on her back with a short meditation, and some light hip stretches. I knew she liked to work on her hips and hamstrings from sitting at a desk all day.
While she was on her back, she kept her eyes closed, and it was almost as if she was really trying not to look at me.
“Good. Now come up to all fours,” I said, and her eyes opened. She inhaled as our eyes met and then looked immediately down at her mat as she got into a tabletop position. We did some spinal flexions before moving to the Sun A sequence.