Page 24 of Road Trip with a Vampire
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “It’s evening work, which should be good for your schedule. Also, we can’t pay you much. But like you said before, you don’t need the money.”
He paused, considering. “I’ll think about it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Take your ti—”
“I accept,” Peter said. “I’ll start tomorrow.”
Peter showed up for FitFlow every night the rest of the week.
Each time, it was harder for me to ignore just how well his athletic shorts showed off his sculpted ass and muscular thighs. Especially when I had to get on the mat next to him and guide him into the correct positions, which happened often. I refused to creep on one of my students, but his body was a damn work of art—and while I was determined to remain a consummate professional, I wasn’t made of stone.
For the most part, though, Peter’s attention in these classes wasn’t on me but on getting the poses exactly right. If sheer force of will were enough to master yoga, he’d have had it down in no time. Only time and patience with oneself could accomplish yoga mastery, of course, but Peter needed to arrive at that conclusion in his own time.
Meanwhile, our studio had never been cleaner. I hadn’t evennoticed that certain things had been dirty until after he’d finished cleaning them. I never saw Peter do the work, but it was obvious he was spending hours every night cleaning, attacking dust motes like a Christmas elf on a meth bender.
Maybe he’d been in the military when he was human. I couldn’t think of another explanation for his extreme attention to detail.
I was contemplating that when I walked into the small room at the back of Yoga Magic for my weekly meeting with Becky and Lindsay. They were already there, waiting for me.
“Good, you’re here,” Becky said when I sat down. The circular white table we crowded around took up most of the space in our unofficial conference room. “Linds and I were just about to go over the plans for the Goat Yoga Extravaganza.”
Oh gods. “We’re seriously going forward with that?”
Becky looked at me. “We’ve been over this.”
We had. “I still don’t like it,” I said. Goat yoga was one of many current trends that made no sense to me—like paying attention to the British royal family or getting into internet fights over K-pop bands. But then, people rarely consulted me when deciding on the newest craze.
“You havegreatideas,” Becky said carefully. “But Lindsay and I are better at staying on top of what’s popular than you are.”
She wasn’t wrong. I networked with other Northern California yogis and took their classes to keep my skills sharp, but social media and its role in launching new trends bewildered me. Probably a side effect of having been born hundreds of years before the advent of the desktop computer, though I’d never polled other four-hundred-year-olds to get their opinions on TikTok.
“It’s too late for us to back out,” Lindsay pointed out. “Twodays ago, a Bay Area YogaTok influencer with over a million followers posted that she was coming. The rest of our tickets sold out in fifteen minutes.”
I stared at her. The space we were renting accommodated a hundred people. “Fifteenminutes?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Becky repeated.
“Also, back up a second,” I said. “There are yoga influencers?”
“Yes!” Lindsay said brightly. “Our million-follower person’s handle is GoatYogaIsTheGOAT. She devotes her account to visiting and promoting goat yoga events.”
“Her profile picture is adorable,” Becky added.
I sighed, feeling every minute of my age. While others might see goats as cute, novel friends, I’d forever associate them with Massachusetts in the winter of 1793, when I’d run out of heating fuel and slept with farm animals to keep from freezing.
The smell would stay with me until my dying day.
But if I wanted Yoga Magic to remain competitive in this crowded industry, I had to stay on top of what my students wanted. Even if what they wanted, according to my partners, was barnyard animals.
“It’s okay,” Lindsay said. She took my hand, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. “This stuff is hard to keep up with.”
If she only knew. “Right,” I said. “Well, I guess I should spend some time between now and the event researching what exactly…uh, goat yoga is.”
“Goat yoga is exactly that,” Becky said, unhelpfully. “I’ll send you YouTube links so you can see examples.”
“If a goat shits on you, it’s good luck,” Lindsay explained.
“Naturally,” I said dryly. “Is there anything else we need to discuss, or can I get ready for my next class?”
