followed him through a series of stretches that felt kind of okay.
Her burly spiritual guide was taking his fake personal training duties seriously.
A group of moms pushing children of varying ages in strollers slowed to eyeball Gabe’s butt as he flowed back and forth from down dog to plank pose.
One of the women fanned herself with a burp cloth. “I’d take out a second mortgage if that meant I could have him as a personal trainer.”
But he was too busy stretching his gigantic muscles and beaming at Riley to notice his fan club.
She studied Gabe as she followed him in the stretches. He was preternaturally attractive. There wasn’t a single imperfection about his physical appearance. Plus, he had the personality of Santa Claus. Yet he had zero effect on her hormone levels.
And then there was Nick Santiago, who had winked at her over hash browns and coffee that morning, causing a rainforest in her underwear.
Gabe finished stretching and settled into a meditative posture with a spine so straight it would have brought tears of joy to Wander’s eyes.
“Wait. Are we starting?” Riley asked.
“I am ready to begin,” he answered.
“Here?”
“Is there something wrong with here?”
“Well, for one thing, we’re in public.” A group of runners in short shorts and not much else paraded past, illustrating her point.
“Humans always find something wrong with the here and now,” Gabe said mysteriously.
“When you say stuff like that, it makes me think you’re not a human,” she told him.
His laugh drew more eyes. Every woman—and several of the men—in a 100-yard radius stopped what they were doing and looked in their direction.
He didn’t seem to notice.
“Can you read my mind?” she asked him.
“Only if you allow me,” he said mysteriously.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that you have much more control over your gifts than you believe. It is not an always on or always off experience. There are ways of refining and filtering what you open yourself to.”
“You’re saying I could get to a point where I don’t get messages just walking down the street? Where I don’t get any messages ever?”
Gabe nodded his perfectly shaped head. “If that is what you wish. Yes.”
“Great. Teach me that.” She flopped into a cross-legged sit in front of him. She could handle these strangers thinking she was a weirdo if it meant never having to pre-witness another murder.
“In order to learn to close yourself off, you must first learn to open yourself up,” her spiritual guide said in a magnanimous, Disney-quality baritone.
“Fortune cookie me later, Mufasa.”
“You really must explain what this fortune cookie is.”
“I’ll take you for Chinese,” she promised. “Hurry up and teach me stuff.”
“Your enthusiasm both pleases me and makes me suspicious.”
“As it should.”
After another long, suspicion-filled look, he closed his eyes. She followed suit.
“Breathe in the fresh air. Fill your lungs with it,” Gabe said, his voice low and soothing.
The guy could make a living recording guided meditations, Riley thought.
“Relax into the present moment. Accepting it as it is. Feel the sun on your skin.”
She felt an ant strolling up her thigh and brushed it away.
“Smell the river. The scents of this world.”
She smelled fish and… dog crap? She opened one eye and spotted a Cocker Spaniel doing her dirty business a few feet away under a tree.
“Now, listen to the sounds that surround you,” Gabe continued, clearly immune to feces fumes.
There were sounds. Her breath. The buzz of a lawn mower on the soccer field above them. A kid shrieking from the playground. There was the hum from a fishing boat out on the river. People. Voices. Laughter.
Thoughts.
She felt it in her stomach. The swoop from normal senses upward to a different place. At least this time it wasn’t as vertigo-inducing. More of a stomach-tickling lift like a hill on a roller coaster… or kissing Nick. Once again, she found herself surrounded by those puffy pastel clouds.
“If I don’t get this job, I’m going to lose the house.”
“Candy. Candy. Candy. CANDY!”
“Am I raising a future diabetic? This kid is only happy when he’s inhaling sugar.”
“Eggs. Chocolate chips. Flour. Don’t forget the flour.”
“Am I a bad parent?”
“That guy over there has thighs bigger than tree trunks. I want to bite them.”
“She seemed really stressed last night. Should I be a good husband and do the laundry today? What if I don’t do it the right way? Then she’ll end up redoing it.”
“Why do my ankles itch when I sweat? Is that some symptom of a rare, fatal disease? Should I tell someone