And there it is. “It was pretty good.”
“Just pretty good?” she asks, her voice still mild as she measures a piece of ribbon between her two hands and then snips it off.
I don’t know how to answer that so I just shrug. And try not to notice how dry my throat suddenly feels.
“Hunter says you hurt your back cliff diving.” She holds out another piece of ribbon. Snip.
“I twisted it the wrong way on one of my last dives. It’s no big deal.”
“But it’s still bothering you?” Snip.
“A little…Hey, where is this going, anyway?” I ask, suddenly fed up with trying to dodge and weave between her questions.
After my mom died and I was pretty much alone in the world except for my grandmother, I would have done anything to have a group of friends who cared enough to poke around in my business. Now that I have those friends, though, it’s not nearly as much fun as I used to think it would be. At least not at times like these.
“Oh, sorry.” She flushes a little. “I didn’t mean to poke a sore spot, no pun intended. It’s just, I have this friend…”
Warning bells go from soft to five-alarm fire in the space of one sentence. “Uh, I’m not actually looking for anything right now, so…”
Emerson looks confused for a second, and then she throws back her head and laughs so hard that her red curls bounce all over the place. “Oh, no, you’re so not Sage’s type.”
My whole body goes rigid. “Sage?” I ask carefully.
“I don’t think you’ve met her yet. She’s my best friend from college. We got thrown together freshman year and have been BFFs ever since.”
“That’s cool.” I want to ask Emerson what her friend looks like or if this friend makes a habit of fucking strange men in bars, but I’m pretty sure either question would cross the line. Still I’m on high alert, my whole body tense as I try to figure out if her Sage is also my Sage.
It’s an unusual name, but not so strange that no other woman would have it.
“Anyway, Sage runs the best yoga studio in San Diego, and I was thinking, maybe doing some yoga would help your back. Some of her instructors are really good, and I think they could get you back into shape before the season starts.”
I’m irrationally disappointed at the mention of yoga. The woman I met at the bar the other night might be a lot of things, but a yoga instructor is definitely not one of them. She was totally bendable in all the best ways, but she was also much too unrelaxed for that. Now I do start easing toward the door. “I’m not really much of a yoga guy, you know?”
“Hunter said you would say that. But I really think Soul Studio can help you. Sage is really good at therapeutic yoga for injuries. It’s kind of her thing, actually. And if you’re afraid she’s going to be all weird and meditative, don’t be. She’s the most down-to-earth yoga teacher on the planet. She’s actually an accountant in real life. The studio is her mom’s thing, and she teaches a few classes there, does the books, that kind of thing.”
The word “accountant” sets off all the bells and whistles, because I can totally see my Sage as an accountant. That high-necked blouse. The way she nearly ran out of the bar after we were together. The way she sat in the middle of that ridiculous bachelorette party without so much as a dick straw to her name.
It’s enough to make me curious…and to make me fish a little. “An accountant, huh? So she doesn’t dress all weird and hippie-ish? No colored dread wraps or patchouli for her?”
“Dread wraps? God, no. Sage has super short brown hair and swears she’ll puke if she ever has to smell patchouli again.”
Ding ding ding. Now I’m more than curious. I’m intrigued, enough so that I wouldn’t mind taking an hour out to meet yoga accountant Sage and see if she’s also sexy bar Sage. And if she is, she can’t hold a chance encounter set up by her best friend against me, can she? Plus, if she’s at work, it’s not like she can run out of the building before we have a chance to talk, either. Sounds like a win-win to me.
“Okay.”
Emerson pauses, scissors halfway through a length of ribbon. “Okay?”
Shit. Maybe I gave in too fast. “Umm, my doctor mentioned yoga might be good for my back.” Which isn’t even a lie. “I’ve been
thinking about it, but didn’t really have an incentive to check one of the local studios out. But if you know someone…”
“I do. Sage is great, I promise!”
“All right, then. Do you want to give me her number or…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll set it all up. Is tomorrow good? I think you should get started on this as soon as possible since training camp is coming up in a couple weeks.”
I can barely hide my grin as I say, “I can make tomorrow work. I mean, if you think Sage can.”