you use your magical psychology brain to weed out the crazies. I mean, you did a pretty good job the first time around.” He grins.
“Did I though?” I eye him.
He just chuckles, and I wave over my shoulder as I head out the door.
When lunchtime rolls around, I grab my gym bag from the back seat of my truck I put there this morning and head inside. I see my Audi in the parking lot, which means Astrid beat me here. When I walk through the door, Johnna and a new employee greet me, and as she teaches her how to scan my card, I look around, not seeing my girl.
“If you’re looking for your lady, she’s already upstairs, Doc. She’s been here for about an hour already,” Johnna tells me.
“Oh really?” I flip my phone to my messages, not seeing anything from her since the one of her replying Okay :) to the one I sent telling her I’d be taking the 12:00 lunch hour instead of 11:00 because of an appointment that ran over.
“Yeah, I think she said she was going to try a yoga class today to stretch before y’all work out,” she replies.
“Nice. Thanks.” I walk around the reception desk and climb the steps, my eyes scanning the second floor. I’ve never taken a yoga class before, but I know the studios are somewhere to the left past all the cardio machines.
Spotting the double fogged-glass doors etched with Yoga Studio, I head that way, and when I reach them, I open one just a crack to peek in, not wanting to disturb the class. But what I find is this super Zen waiting area, and I step inside. At the back of the dim room is a curtained wall with a big glass lantern set on the floor that’s full of tall off-white battery-powered candles. On either side of the twelve-foot wide space are cubbies for people’s bags and shoes. There are cushioned benches with pillows that match the black-out curtains over the windows, and there are more fake candles and a diffuser on top of a shelving unit full of towels. There are two more frosted doors, one on either side of the room, each etched with Yoga Studio 1 and Yoga Studio 2, and there’s another cabinet next to the second door that says Cold Lavender Towels for Hot Yoga on a placard, which means it must be a refrigerator or freezer.
Yoga Studio 1 seems to be empty, with no movement behind the frosted glass, and I hear an instructor counting off “Hold one, two, three, four. Good, release,” from inside the second. That’s where Astrid must be.
I pull open the door slowly, quietly, so I don’t interrupt everyone who is currently trying to do a headstand on their yoga mat. A few are using the wall to keep their balance, while others attempt to do it in the middle of the big open room that is sweltering as I step inside, the door closing behind me. The instructor sees me and lifts a hand in greeting, and I wave and point to the wall, indicating I’m just going to watch.
She nods and says through her headset, “I’ll give you a few more seconds to try to hit your pose. For those of you who aren’t necessarily feeling a headstand for your practice, you have the option to just rest in child’s pose, and then we’ll meet you there.”
Through all the bodies, some giggling, some serious as they attempt the seemingly difficult position, I spot Astrid on a black yoga mat near the center of the room. She’s trying to stick the headstand, but every time she gets her legs up, she loses her balance. But she doesn’t fall to the floor with a crash like a lot of the participants are, which is the only reason my heart isn’t palpitating watching her stand on her head. No, just like in the barre class, and in everything she does, she does it gracefully, her falls purposeful as her pointed toes come down slowly to the mat before she propels her legs back up.
On her last attempt, she gets both feet in the air for a moment, and as she starts to wobble and is about to come back down, the instructor grabs her ankles, keeping her steady. “There you go. Pull in your abs and squeeze those thighs together, good. Now I’m going to let gooo…” She takes a step back from her, and