Hollis took the phone back, zoomed in and then zoomed out again. “You’re right. That’s it. Thank you, MK!”
“No problem. That, um, looks like an interesting book.”
“I wish I could read all my author’s books, but I’m definitely putting this one on my TBR.”
“It must be so cool to get to know all those authors,” I said. The past few years my main reading material had been non-fiction books about various subjects, including spirituality, but maybe this summer I could add some fiction in there. I’d have to ask Julia to give me some recommendations because she knew what kind of thing I liked.
“If it’s good, I’ll let you know. I hope you like tentacle fucking,” Hollis said just as Amanda came into the room.
“Hollis Agnes Carr!” Amanda said, shock on her face. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Tentacle fucking,” Hollis said, rolling her eyes. I started at Hollis as her mom made sputtering noises.
“Must you call it that? Can we call it tentacle lovemaking?” Amanda said.
“Okay, we’ll call it tentacle banging,” Hollis relented.
“That’s…better,” Amanda said, looking at me.
“I have four brothers,” I said with a shrug. There wasn’t much I hadn’t heard by the time I’d turned seven.
Ellie arrived home at that moment and changed the subject from tentacle fucking, or whatever we were calling it. Julia arrived just behind her, and everyone had to talk about their day, and it was almost like being back with my whole family.
Amanda shoved us into the living room while she worked on dinner, but we all ended up migrating to the kitchen anyway.
Amanda let me chop tomatoes as she babysat the pasta and the chicken in the oven.
“Natalie and Em showed up at sunrise yoga this morning,” I said.
“How did it go?” Julia asked.
“Well, Natalie was into it, and Em was not.” Both Hollis and Julia laughed.
“She apologized, but I fully know that morning yoga isn’t for everyone,” I said.
“You should do like a firefly yoga practice that’s after the sun goes down.” During the summers in Maine, the sun went down sometimes as late as nine p.m., so that would be pretty late.
“I’ve done candlelight yoga before,” I said. “It’s always really atmospheric.”
“You could do sunrise and sunset yoga,” Julia said.
“That’s an idea. Sunset yoga. Maybe on Sunday nights? To give people a good mood going into Monday,” I said.
“I love that idea,” Hollis said. “It’s more accessible to non-morning people.”
I really did like that idea, so I decided to run it by the parks committee that had given me the permission to have my beach class and advertise through them.
Dinner was perfect, as usual, and I spent the rest of my night watching movies with Ellie, since she didn’t have an outing with her guy.
Amanda made us popcorn and covered the coffee table with snacks.
Somehow the topic turned to dating.
“It must be weird, going around. You’d have to be long-distance with someone,” Ellie said. “Unless you don’t want to date, which is absolutely fine.”
“No, I just… It’s not that I don’t want to date, it’s that I don’t feel like I have room for it? I’ve only got so much energy, and once I’ve taught my classes and done all the other little business tasks and done my own yoga and self-care, I don’t think I have anything left over to give,” I said with a little laugh.
“That makes sense. It’s why I love just hanging out with KJ. He just lets me come over and crash on his couch and sometimes we barely talk to each other, but it’s nice doing nothing with someone.”
I understood exactly what she meant. Being able to be still with another person was one of the best feelings in the world.
“I always tell myself that I’ll look into it when things calm down, and then things never calm down,” I said.
Ellie laughed. “Story of our lives. My job is so exhausting that I don’t see it calming down ever. But I love it.”
I didn’t know how she and Julia could handle all those kids every day, but someone had to. Just spending a few hours with my ten niblings was enough to make me need a nap.
“If you wanted to start seeing anyone, let me and Hollis and Julia vet them first,” Ellie said.
“Oh, I would. Maybe one of the reasons I don’t date is that I don’t want my family scaring anyone away.” We both started laughing.
“I totally get that. I can’t imagine having that many brothers.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was a lot, and since I was the youngest, they really took protecting me to another level. No one could do anything to me without them threatening a beat-down.” They had their hearts in the right place, but I’d sometimes wanted them to let me fight my own battles. I’d also gotten really tired of people calling me by any Carr name other than my own. And by the time I was coming up in school there was nothing I could do that my siblings hadn’t done first. My parents had wondered why I hadn’t been drawn to do sports, and I’d never told them.
“River is always telling me to get myself out there,” I said.
“When is she coming to visit? I’m dying to meet her. Her social media is so amazing,” Ellie said.
“I’m not sure. She’s got to figure out how to take off her classes, and we need to coordinate our schedules. But it’s happening. She really, really wants to try lobster.”
“She’s in luck, because that’s what we’re known for.”
Ellie handed me the popcorn bowl and I shoved a handful in my face.
“Do you girls need anything?” Amanda asked, poking her head in. She’d been working on a scrapbook project in the dining room.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“I’m good,” Ellie echoed.
She snuck back out.
“You’re an honorary Carr now,” Ellie said. “I hope you know that. You’re stuck with us.”
I laughed. “It’s not a bad place to be stuck.”
Chapter Four
On Thursday I woke with a start, my whole body sweating. It took me a second to realize why I’d woken up stressed. It was my second class with Piper, and I was freaking out again.
I lay in bed and did some alternate nostril breathing to calm my heart and center myself again. I pushed back the covers and stretched out before doing a few poses on the floor. I just sort of kept a yoga mat out at all times so it was available. I let myself breathe in Child’s Pose for a long time. Sometimes yoga couldn’t completely calm me, and this was one of those times.
I grabbed some of my lavender lotion and breathed deeply for a few moments, but my thoughts kept intruding. Giving up, I got dressed and went down for breakfast.
Before I headed over to Piper’s house, I went over my class plan for the millionth time and made sure there weren’t any stains on my clothes, or that my nipple wasn’t falling out or something. I wanted her to see me as a serious professional, not some mess who didn’t know what she was doing.