Page 61 of Coach
I tried really hard never to be within earshot of them, so they couldn’t call me over and talk to me.
Of course, doing so meant I was constantly close to Irina, who was always breathing down my neck and making new demands of me. Organizing closets, clearing out cabinets, moving boxes to the back alley to be disposed of.
But I would take a mean girl manager over potentially murderous bosses any day of the week.
Just being there, though, just seeing my bosses, just hearing their voices, was making my shoulders go up near my ears; it was making my stomach perpetually knotted.
I was losing it.
I wasn’t sure I realized how badly until I walked into a bathroom with a running tub full of bubbles, candles set around, the light off, and gentle music playing.
As I slid under the water, it was like a thousand pounds slipped from my shoulders.
I reached for the hard cider Saul had set out for me, sipping it as my muscles unclenched, as my mind stopped racing.
By the time I finished the cider, I was almost drifting off in the tub.
Still, it took me another ten minutes or so before I could peel myself out of the tub, dry off, and change into the oversize tee that Saul had provided.
“Mom will be back in a minute,” I heard him say as I made my way down the hall. Not to his workshop, but toward another mostly closed door. “She just needed some time alone to relax a little. Sounds like the two of you have a lot going on.”
I was getting a real reputation for eavesdropping lately, it seemed. But I couldn’t make myself announce my presence just yet. It was too charming to hear him talking to my dog the way I often spoke to her. Like she understood. Like she just might answer.
“What’s going on with her, huh? What were you guys running from?”
My heart lurched.
My hand pressed into the door before I could think it through.
“Hey,” I called, plastering a smile on my face as I moved inside the room.
Saul’s bedroom.
It smelled like him all around. Heady.Divine.
The whole space looked like him too.
The exposed brick should have felt cold. But the whole space felt warm, inviting, so much like the man himself.
He had a king-sized bed draped in a tan and white striped linen comforter and the plushest pillows I’d ever seen.
The nightstands were of similar size and stain, but one was a round shape, the other square, keeping it from seeming too matchy-matchy.
Near the large window, he had a buttery-soft leather reading chair, a small table, and a lamp.
Across the wall from the TV were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with an open space for his television.
He’d clearly built them with the expansion of his personal library in mind, so they weren’t packed. Still, it was an impressive collection that he had separated by various littleknick-knacks: carved wooden figures, art, photographs, a rainbow Buddha, and a couple of pieces of children’s drawings and porcelain figurines clearly slapdash painted by little hands.
Was it from his family?
Or the kids in his club family?
I had no idea. But I did feel like it said a lot about him as a man that he displayed those little gifts proudly.
Just inside the door, a yoga mat was rolled up beside a record cabinet.
Above it was a massive drawing that seemed to be made out of several dozen single sheets of paper. It was a massive surrealist animal art with two tiger heads facing away from each other with the whole world within them: trees, mountains, other animals.
