Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

Auggie said nothing.

“So that’s what that meant when I said, ‘back then,’” I mumbled my conclusion.

“You don’t dig your job?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I dig who I do it with and for. I don’t dig the actual job.”

“You’re good at it.”

He’d seen me dance.

He’d also seen me strip.

Before we were together, that bothered me a lot.

But now, for obvious reasons, I was over it.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Would you rather be doing hair?” he asked.

I bit the side of my lip and thought about it.

Hair didn’t come with Ryn, Hattie and Lottie.

“I liked doing hair. But I want to open a meditation and yoga studio.”

He did a slow blink.

“I know, sounds stupid,” I muttered.

“Would it be like this room?”

That was an interesting question.

I thought about it and answered, “Yeah. Not exactly, but defo the vibe.”

“Defo the vibe,” he murmured, his lips quirking.

I quirked mine back and shared, “Meditation is what got me out of the Corbin spiral. I think I was eating sugar-cookie dough, sobbing and lamenting my fate after I had to hand Juno over for a visitation, and some talk show was playing in the background. Someone said something about it that caught my attention. Right then and there, I downloaded an app on my phone, went to my bed, climbed into the middle of it and gave it a go.”

I paused and saw Auggie, his head resting on the pillow opposite mine, watching me intently.

I also saw he was interested—in me, in what I was saying.

I had his full attention and it had nothing to do with my naked body pressed up to his, our legs entwined, the designs he was drawing on my ass, the way I was playing with the ends of his hair.

There was something beautiful about that moment—pensive and profound—that I marked because I wasn’t certain I’d ever had anything like that.

And I loved it.

“I did a how-to session,” I kept talking, now softly, because what I was feeling from him was still stealing into my soul.

“Yeah?” he said softly in return, encouraging me to go on.

“I was shit at it.”

He grinned.

“Monkey mind,” I told him. “Pinging everywhere. But before I quit, I thought, ‘I’ll do this for three days and see.’ Day three, I had a moment that was…” There was no describing it, so I said, “Really spectacular. Powerful. And that was me, hooked. And eventually, giving myself still space every day, centering on breath, from my practice learning to be able in any given moment to pull myself back just by remembering how I gently tug myself out of monkey mind, I was in.”

“And you want to teach others to do that.”

I nodded. “I’m no master. No one can be a master. That’s why it’s called practice. And I’m not gonna be all dramatic and say it saved my life. But it changed it. And it did that in big ways that were positive. I can’t claim I’m always together all the time. That I don’t have moods. That I’m drifting through life oming and clinking finger cymbals.”

He chuckled.

“But I give myself time to sort through things,” I continued. “I do it every day. Sometimes I do it for ten, fifteen minutes. Sometimes I do it for much longer. Sometimes I’ll also do it at night. But always in the morning. It’s a ritual, with journaling. It isn’t a ‘when I need it’ thing. It’s daily practice. It’s non-negotiable. A lot of people don’t do that. A workout is non-negotiable for them. No sugar in their diet is non-negotiable for them. But taking fifteen minutes every day to be with themselves and sit in stillness, take a mental breath from life and all its pressures, allow yourself to feel that freedom, rebalance things mentally, they think it’s new-age hooey.”

“I’m ready to sign up for a class now.”

I laughed and offered, “I’ll teach you how if you want.”

“No, I’m serious.”

My humor left me.

“I’m convinced,” he told me. “With what you said. But also, just this room, Pepper. I feel better in this room. There’s something about it that makes me…” He shook his head on the pillow. “The world is outside this room. In here it’s something else.”

“What a nice thing to say,” I whispered.

“I’m not blowing sunshine, baby. I felt it the first time I walked in here.”

He did.

He’d even said it.

“I’d go to your place. I’d take a meditation class,” he reiterated. “I could use a mental breath.”

Of course, this prompted me to say, “You’re damned awesome, Auggie.”

“I’m not feeding you a line of shit,” he restated.

“I know, and you’re damned awesome.”

He shut his mouth.

I kissed his mouth.

He let me roll him to his back and kiss other parts of him.

He stayed on his back and dragged me up his body so I was sitting on his face and he kissed other parts of me.