Bonnie was no Yogi Marah and beach yoga wasn’t a Bikram level workout, but Kenny was challenged by flowing through sequences and holding balancing postures on the sand and towel that shifted and sank with each movement. She aligned herself with the tennis moms and golf club ladies who were taking the class seriously while she tried to tune out the bachelorette and birthday girls and the women of the book club. Kenny thought those parties had mentally moved on to the next activity on their itinerary.
“Warrior one. Open. Warrior two. Reverse your warrior. Warrior two. Flip your palms. Tuck your chin to the left. Windmill your arms. Side angle. Hold,” Bonnie instructed.
Beads of sweat trickled down Kenny’s forehead as she stood with her body facing the ocean. Her right knee was bent while her left leg was straight. Her left arm stretched to the sky while her right arm reached for the sand. Her gaze was fixed toward the sun. She regretted lathering the sunscreen on her face, her eyes were on fire. The mixture of sweat, sand, and lotion that dripped into them felt like a mad hornet sting. She blinked her lashes open and shut and hoped tears would wash away some of the burn.
Mental note: Buy eyedrops.
Kenny felt like she had been in right side angle pose for an eternity. As Bonnie slowly guided the group out of the hold, a commotion erupted among the class. Before Kenny was vertical or could make sense of what was going on, she felt something brush between her legs. The force knocked at the back of her knees, threw off her balance and brought her face down in the sand swept towel that was crumbled beneath her.
Oh my God. What just happened?
Kenny heard the giggles. The “oohs” and “aahs” all around her.
“I’ve heard of goat yoga but never dog yoga!” someone hooted.
Kenny struggled onto all fours and when she picked up her head, she was face to face, staring into big blue eyes of a gray and white shaggy-haired, medium-sized dog. Tail wagging, tongue hanging out, panting likehehad just been in right side angle for the last five minutes.
“Cliff! Come here, buddy. I’m sorry ladies. Please forgive my wingman,” a deep, sexy voice bellowed.
Arrogant. Arrogant jackass. Who lets their dog plow through a yoga group? It’s not even a cute dog,Kenny thought.
Still on her knees and wrists and shaking the sand out of her hair, Kenny imagined she resembled something akin to an agitated cat pose. Annoyed at being knocked over and now covered in sand, she cringed when she saw the shadow of a body hanging over her.
“Here, let me help you up,” the deep, sexy voice offered.
She took a deep breath and stared at her towel, contemplating the best abrupt, stinging remark she could conjure to express she was not amused by the dog or its inept owner, whose help she did not need. But before she spewed out any nasty words, her breath was taken away again. She glanced up and it was him. Bike Boy was standing over her. With a dog securely cradled under one arm and the other extended like an olive branch.
“I’m sorry. Are you okay? Cliff, apologize to this lovely lady,” Bike Boy said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him. He usually runs away from people. Never to them. Or through them for that matter!” he joked, and the group broke out into a fit of laughter.
“Oh yea, I’m fine,” Kenny nonchalantly replied, ignoring his hand, and rising to her feet as she brushed the sand off her shoulders, careful to keep her face down because she knew she was turning a bright shade of red.
“Well, I’ll let you girls get back to it. Cliff and I are late for a beach etiquette class. Namaste.”
While the rest of the group giggled, waved, and shouted goodbyes to Cliff and his ridiculously attractive handler, the pair strutted away from the no longer serene semicircle. Kenny could only think about laying in corpse pose. Dead. For the second time in as many run-ins with Bike Boy, she thought being dead would have been a better state than the ones he found her in.
“Okay, ladies, we’re nearing the hour mark. Let’s get back to our Pranayama. And, Kennedy, maybe you’ll find some inspiration from that meet-cute?” Bonnie said with a wink as she encouraged the group to inhale and exhale in unison.
The class picked up from the point of Kenny’s unfortunate tumble and Bonnie guided the students through the same sequence on the left side.
“This is your last Chaturanga, make it a strong one. Plank pose. Lower halfway. Upward facing. Downward facing,” Bonnie guided.
Kenny was still flushed from embarrassment and now that her body was taking the shape of an inverted pyramid, with all the blood rushing to her head, she knew she’d be a deep shade of purple. Peering through her legs, ass in the air, she found herself staring directly at Bike Boy and his dog. Again. This was not a good look for her. She wished she was one of those mole crabs that could burrow in the sand and disappear.
In contrast, Bike Boy and Cliff looked like the photo that came in a man’s best friend picture frame. Bike Boy sat in the sand dunes with his long muscular legs stretched out in front of him. The royal blue shirt he wore showed off his strong arms and paired well with the navy shorts that were just the right length. He gazed out to the Atlantic Ocean from behind his polarized Ray-Ban aviators and Cliff sat human like next to him. Sea oats waved back and forth behind them.
What are they doing?Kenny thought.
She had kicked off her flip-flops and left them with the pile of other footwear at the end of the beach walk when she arrived for yoga. Which meant that she’d be forced to walk right past Bike Boy and Cliff if she ever wanted to leave the beach.
“Lower to your knees, extend your legs and arms out in front of you and slowly recline to Savasana,” Bonnie directed.
After two minutes in final resting pose, the yoga leader invited the group to share their affirmation cards and present their chakra crystals. Kenny’s face was blazing; she desperately needed to wash it. She would have killed for one of Marah’s chilled lavender washcloths. The build-up of lotion, chlorine, and sweat was on the verge of intolerable before the face-plant into her sandy beach towel, and now it was unbearable. Her eyes were agitated and the whites of them had to be fire-engine red.
Embarrassing.
Kenny tried to stay Zen for the last few moments, but her focus waned. Everything around her was distracting, and she needed class to be over. She sensed the golfers, partiers, tennis players, and readers had lost interest, too. They professed their affirmations at rapid speed and most of them even had the same white crystal, although Kenny missed the meaning of the snowy colored rock because she was too busy fumbling for her own. She couldn’t find the chakra stone anywhere and discreetly reached under her towel and shoveled her hands through the sand in search of it.
Bonnie explained with a smile that Bailey’s pink quartz crystal signified love and happiness. Then she carried her enthusiastic gaze to Kenny.
