Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Clark

IT’S ALMOST A RELIEF to be back at work.

The gray of the cubicles. The hum of the computers. The sickly glow of the fluorescent lights. The chatter in the break room. By Monday morning, I’m craving these symbols of drudgery. They feel solid; they feel real. The yoga class on Sunday was filled with the ethereal: energy and auras and flow. All of it is bullshit, but being surrounded by people who believed it left me unmoored. I spent the rest of the day doing nothing but trying to shake the image of the shirtless yoga teacher out of my head.

In the end, it didn’t work. I didn’t even throw out his stupid yoga retreat flyer.

I still have it with me here at work, folded and tucked into my laptop bag like it’s not trash. I keep meaning to throw it away, but something always comes up. I had to deal with the Monday standup meeting when I got in. Then there were all the emails that came in over the weekend. Normally I’d clear them out on Sunday night so I could start my Monday strong, but I was too mixed up last night to do anything but watch crappy TV on the couch.

I take the flyer out of my bag while I’m thinking about it, but end up smoothing it out on my desk. I gaze at the lake in the image. Wherever this retreat takes place, I’m sure it doesn’t actually look like that. That’s probably a cheap stock photo they bought. It’s too perfect with its clear water surrounded by tall Pacific Northwest trees lazily dropping leaves and pine needles to the forest floor.

I can’t helping thinking of how well River would fit into this picture. It was a little awkward seeing him shirtless in a café during class, not that he displayed a drop of self-consciousness, but in a place like this forest on the poster, he’d almost be more out of place with clothes on.

I shove the flyer aside, determined not to follow that thought. I don’t need to sit here imagining River without even those tight, clinging yoga pants. He really didn’t leave much to my imagination, but work is not the place for me to fill in the gaps.

Megan has no idea what she did by bringing me to that stupid class.

Never again, I vow then and there. Never again am I getting dragged into any of her plots. She might be my only friend at work, but maybe I don’t need friends as badly as I thought.

(My sister’s scowling face flashes through my mind at that, but at least it distracts me from the lingering thought of River’s naked body.)

I return to my work. Taxonomy is as unglamorous as it sounds, but importantly, at least today, it’s distracting. It takes enough of my attention to review the company’s upcoming catalog changes that I almost feel like myself again by the time my stomach grumbles at me for lunch.

I sigh and stretch. That spot between my shoulder blades pops, and I can’t help remembering River’s hands on me, pressing gently until all the tension released at once. I shake my head. I’m going to need to release a very different sort of tension if I can’t stop thinking about the young yoga teacher. At least I’ll never see him again, otherwise this might get really embarrassing really fast.

I mentally run through the list of nearby restaurants. There’s the sandwich place, which is fine as long as the meat isn’t old and getting suspicious. There’s the Indian place, but I don’t want to spend that kind of time on lunch. There’s that coffee shop with the good soup…

“Hey, Clark, have you gotten lunch yet?”

Before I can decide, Megan is at my cubicle, her purse on her shoulder.

“Was just heading that direction,” I say.

“A few of us were gonna go to the Mexican place where you can build your own burrito.”

“That works for me.”

I’m about to grab my light jacket when Megan’s eyes flicker to the flyer lying smoothed out on my desk.

“Hey, what’s that?”

She snatches up the paper before I can stop her. I hid the flyer from her after the yoga class. I want to kick myself for leaving it out in such an obvious spot and forgetting about it. The moment Megan scans it, her eyes widen and excitement lights her cheeks.

“Is this a yoga retreat?” Megan says. “Oh my God. I heard this was super exclusive. Wait.” Her eyes dart up to meet mine. “Where did you get this? How did you get this?”

So much for lunch. I scramble for an excuse, but it takes too long, and Megan leaps to the obvious conclusion before I can derail her.

“Did River give you this?” When I don’t respond, her eyes go even wider. “ Clark , did River give you this?”

If a spoken sentence could somehow contain extra question marks, hers would. She crowds into the cubicle, leaving me nowhere to run. She’s a small woman, barely topping five feet, yet I put up my hands in a placating gesture and hunch against her assault.

Before I can respond, a couple more co-workers clutter the lane beyond my cubicle. They take in the scene swiftly.

“You coming to lunch, Meg?” one asks. I think he might be Evan from HR, but I don’t make it a habit to get super friendly with most of my co-workers, unlike Megan.

“Is everything alright?” the other asks. She’s definitely from HR. I remember her from my initial interview.

“No,” Megan says, spinning on her heel. “Clark’s been keeping something from us.”

The HR reps only look more confused when Megan shoves the flyer at them. They scan it, but it evidently leaves them with even more questions than they started with.

“I know you’re into yoga, but…” the guy says.

“It’s not about the yoga,” Megan says. “It’s about the deception.”

“Okay, calm down,” I cut in before this can go even farther off the rails. “It’s just a flyer. I haven’t deceived you. Don’t be dramatic. I’ve been meaning to throw it out.”

Megan hugs the flyer to her chest, gaping at me like I suggested kicking a puppy. “You can’t throw it out. Are you insane?”

I roll my eyes, but that only makes matters worse.

“Do you know how long I’ve tried to get into one of these retreats?” Megan says. “They’re not easy. They fill up the second they open.”

I wave a hand. She must be wrong about this one. “River said they had spots. It’s some corporate thing.”

All of a sudden, Megan’s horror shifts to glee. “Corporate. That’s perfect. Oh my God, you’re a genius.”

She takes off, leaving me stunned in my cubicle. After shouldering her way through our HR co-workers, she takes off down the lane between the cubicles with alarming speed for someone with such short legs.

Finally, the pieces click into place.

I take off after her the moment I realize what she’s doing, but I’m too late. She has too big a head start on me, and our office in downtown Seattle isn’t that big. We only take up one floor of the skyscraper, and our boss’s office sits along the back wall, easily accessible to any of us at any time. Hannah says she prefers to be a proactive and approachable boss, hence her office placement, but right now I kind of hate her for it. I am never going to catch Megan in time. She all but sprints toward Hannah’s office, that damn flyer clutched in her hand, that flyer for a yoga retreat — a corporate yoga retreat.

I’m so screwed.

Megan knocks on Hannah’s office door, which stands open, as it often does. Again, normally this is a positive when it comes to my boss, but today it spells doom. Megan smiles as Hannah invites her in, and I’m still several steps away. I know what Megan is saying even before I reach the office. She’s talking about all the benefits of the retreat, spinning up tales of how beneficial it will be, singing River’s praises.

When I reach the door, I unfortunately learn that I’m right.

“And the teacher, River, he’s great,” Megan is saying. “He’s really incredible. Even Clark liked him, didn’t you, Clark?”

She’s trapped me before I’ve had time to say a single word. Just like that, she corrals me into giving the answer she wants. What can I do? Say the guy is awful and horrible and evil? I’m a pretty crappy liar and the truth is … he is good. I mean, for a given value of good. As a yoga teacher, he’s extraordinary. I can’t deny it, so instead I stand there stammering while Hannah tilts her head to the side, the confusion plain on her face.

“I don’t see what this has to do with our jobs,” I manage eventually.

“It has everything to do with our jobs,” Megan says. “Hannah, haven’t you been saying we have some extra budget this quarter? Why use it on chairs when we could use it on something that would actually benefit everyone? You know we’ve been busting our asses. Rick went on sabbatical recently. We’re all pushing, and the first one who snaps is going to bring the rest of us down with them.”

I want to push back, but Megan is right. We finished a huge website overhaul last month, and we’re still feeling the consequences. Rick’s sabbatical isn’t helping, either, but he got the time approved ages ago, so we’re all stuck working our asses off for the foreseeable future.

Clearly, I’m not the only one coming to this obvious conclusion. Hannah sits back in her chair, that tilt to her head turning more thoughtful than confused.

Dread sinks cold and heavy into my gut, like a chunk of ice descending through my body. Hannah’s decision is obvious even before she speaks.

“I’ll have to take this up the chain,” she says slowly, “but it’s not a bad idea for that surplus budget. We were going to buy office chairs…”

“Office chairs are so boring,” Megan says. “Sure, everyone will appreciate them at first, but this is an experience . It’s team building. It’ll mean so much more.”

Hannah starts nodding before Megan finishes, and my hopes of escape melt away. I’m not getting out of this. Even if I tried to claim I was sick, Megan would come searching for me. There’s nowhere to escape, nowhere to run. I’m going to end up on this damn yoga retreat in the forest by the lake.

With River.

The thought of seeing the young yoga teacher again produces a swell of hot and cold. I stuff both down and turn away from Hannah’s office, retreating to the safety of my cubicle. I’ll order food and eat something at my desk. I don’t care anymore. I need to be away from the conversation in Hannah’s office, the conversation dooming me before I got a chance to retort.

But I don’t escape here either. In mere steps, Megan is beside me, keeping pace with my far longer strides. She leans toward me, a mischievous smile on her face.

“This is going to be really good for you,” she says.

My gut clenches. She doesn’t know. No. She can’t know. I don’t talk about anything personal at work, least of all my sexuality. That’s not any of these people’s business. She simply thinks I’m a stressed out co-worker who needs to balance his energies or whatever.

Little does she know I’m stressed out about way more than work. I could set it aside before, but now that I know I’m going to be stuck at some retreat with River for a week, now that I know he’s most likely going to touch me again, it stirs something inside me that I’ve managed to ignore for a long, long time.

I’m way too old to feel this way, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to stop me.