I was relaxing on my couch with my feet up, scrolling on my phone with a trashy reality show playing on TV, when the group chat pinged. It was Amy, informing us that she’d had sex.
I typed back quickly.
Rachel Weiss 9:19 PM:
Hallelujah!
Sumira Khan 9:20 PM:
Me too.
Eva Galvez 9:22 PM:
Me three.
Rachel Weiss 9:23 PM:
WHAT? Who are you allhaving sex with? And why am I not?
Sumira Khan 9:30 PM:
Why haven’t you slept with Stephen yet?
Rachel Weiss 9:31 PM:
We’ve only been out a few times and I’m trying to be… you know, I can’t really remember my reasoning anymore.
I switched over to Instagram and pulled up Stephen’s profile. I’d browsed through it plenty of times before, but that didn’t stop me from being struck by the glamour of it. He had tons of high-quality photos and looked fantastic in all of them. His fabulous life was full of concerts, vacations, boats… Ooh, maybe he would be my ticket to finally getting invited on a boat! Eva had sneered something about him being an influencer when I showed her his profile, but…
I got a notification that I had a new follower, and my heart skipped. But it wasn’t Stephen. Nor was it Colin Firth or Barack Obama, as one might hope.
It was Christopher Butkus.
Ew.
Why now? Why was he following me two weeks after our regrettable meeting? Had he been thinking about me? Had he typed my name into the search bar? This was so weird.
I went to his profile, which was ridiculously sparse. He truly was old and sad. He had five—yes, five—photos, including one of a work party and one of him giving a TED Talk. Hewasonly two years older than me, said a mean little voice in my head. And it wasn’t like my Instagram profile was much better. My online presence consisted mostly of blurry karaoke pictures and heavily filtered pictures of my sister’s cat.
Stephen wasn’t following me; why? I had followed him after our second date, a perfectly reasonable amount of time to wait, I’d thought. Perhaps I just wasn’t enough of a content curator for him. Perhaps it had never even crossed his mind to look me up.
I was feeling this strange, foreign weight in my chest. Like some sort of… doubt, or self-consciousness. I did not like it, and I wouldnotaccept it. I was, and always had been, a goddess. The type of goddess who took care of herself and did healthy things like… yoga.Hotyoga.
A quick search on my fitness app and two minutes later, I’d signed up for a hot yoga class the next day. It would help me feel calm and centered. Plus, I had a date with Stephen the next night, and now I would have that healthy exercise glow when I saw him.
I went to bed feeling confident once more, and rather proud of myself for silencing that self-doubt. Rachel Weiss, hot yoga goddess.
Saturday morning I strolled into the yoga room in a skintight, neon-yellow getup. Bless the creator of the bike short—absolutely the best way to show off one’s natural curves while still being clothed.
I smiled at my fellow yogis as I stretched luxuriously on my matto warm up. It was so lovely in here—white curtains, dim lighting, gentle music. And that soothing humid heat, so pleasant compared to the frigid February rain outside. The teacher, a short but alarmingly muscular girl, beamed at us from the front of the room.
“Welcome. You have found yourself here today for a reason. Each of you made the decision to show up for yourself. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and say thank you. When things get hard, when you feel tired, remember this feeling and thank yourself again.”
Wow. Just wow. It was like she reached into my soul and saw me. I beamed back at her.
“Okay. Let’s get started in child’s pose.”
I opened my eyes to find myself in my bed. My whole body felt hot and dry, like an overgrilled hot dog.Oh my God. What time is it?My hand flopped around on my nightstand until it found my phone. Two twenty-five p.m. My yoga class had started at 10:30 a.m.How?
