Page 38 of Gym Bros
“Bend it,” he says immediately like he’s reading my mind. “Keep the weight distributed through your arms and your left leg.”
He’s standing again, his hand pressed to my lower back, easing me into a deeper left hamstring stretch while I bend my knee to let my right leg off the hook.
“Okay, but I want you to let your right leg do something. Not just hang there. Press your heel back just until you feel it, then ease off.”
I do it four or five times, terrified to feel that horrible pop again. I’m overly cautious about it. “Wherever it’s mildly uncomfortable, hold there for a few breaths,” Calyx tells me.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says, and doesn’t even hesitate.
Swallowing my nerves, I push my heel back again to find the stretch, and even though my heart is still thrumming with anxiety, I do as he says and breathe. He keeps his hand on my back, the heel of it applying pressure to my tight tailbone. It’s a spicy stretch for sure, and I don’t look half as good as he did in the mirror, but I can feel where balance comes into play, especially when he explains how to use my arms in the pose to distribute my weight.
“Okay, now just step through into forward fold and stand back up.”
I rise and look down at him.
“That’s it,” he says. Hands in prayer position, he gives me a nod. “Namaste.”
I grimace. “You made it look easy, but it’s actually not.”
“I bet you make a lot of things look easy that are decently impossible,” he says.
I give him a wary look. “No need to overdo it. I’m okay with you not rolling your eyes at me.
He presses his lips together. “It wasn’t you,” he says. “Please don’t take anything from before personally. I’ve been in kind of a mood, but I can leave it outside. I’m glad you called me on it. Someone needed to.”
“I get it,” I tell him, gesturing at my leg. “I haven’t been in the best place either since this happened.”
He nods. “Let’s do it a few more times, and then I want to show you a back bend that should be easier than forward fold.”
He doesn’t salute the sun with me on the next few rounds. Instead, he circles me, hands on me in all kinds of places. Shoulders, wrists, the nape of my neck, my lower back—my hips at one point in downward dog. I wish it didn’t feel so fucking good. I wish my body didn’t respond to each new touch like a dried up flower getting a full drink of water, but in my fourth cobra, I groan on purpose—just so he’ll put firmer counter pressure on my tailbone. Am I proud of it? No.
But let’s face it. I’ve had the least human contact of my life over the last five weeks. I let Beauty sleep in bed with me just so I have something warm and alive to wrap my arms around. I think I underestimated how much fighting satisfied my need for touch. Grappling isn’t sexy, but it releases endorphins I’m obviously starved for.
“You probably don’t wrestle, huh?” I ask Calyx.
“Um…not in the traditional sense.”
I huff. “I take that to mean you’re in a relationship where you get to do the unconventional kind of wrestling?”
“Ha. No. No relationship. But yeah, that was the unconventional kind I meant. Totally appropriate to talk about right now when you’re asking about sports. Kidding. Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine.” I change the subject though, not needing to think aboutthat. “Did you ever play any sports?”
“I didn’t go to normal school,” he tells me. “We traveled too much for work.”
“Your work?”
“Mmhm.”
“So, you didn’t have to deal with high school? Lucky.”
“You think?” he asks. “I feel like I was robbed.”
“Yeah?”
He shrugs. “A little.”
