Shopping for a Billionaire 3(21)
Author: Julia Kent

“My father has a nickname?” he mutters, then mumbles quietly to me, “A sexy nickname? Gross.”

“Your father is a gorgeous hunk,” someone calls out.

“Dad doesn’t date anyone over thirty,” he says under his breath.

“Oh, goody. My timer doesn’t pop for six more years,” I hiss.

He flinches, and I can’t tell if it’s from the radioactive sarcasm in my voice or from the idea of my dating his father. Hopefully, it’s both.

This is not restorative.

“Ladies! We’re running out of time!” Mom calls out, now back in place at her mat. She gives me a fake helpless look and mouths What can I do?

More therapy, I mouth.

She gives me a hearty thumbs-up, then leads the class through a series of warmup poses that leave me sweatier than Mom during the height of menopause. Declan hasn’t broken a sweat. Six women are trying to share one yoga mat behind him, though.

Soon we’re all on our backs, stretched out on the floor, listening to Pink Floyd. If they handed out little LSD stamps before class, this part would be even better. Instead, I hear light snoring, the high-pitched whine of someone’s uncalibrated hearing aid, and the sound of Every. Single. Woman getting up at least once during full-body relaxation mode to pee.

The bladder does not acknowledge Restorative Yoga. It’s an anarchist when it comes to Savasana pose. No snooze for you!

In the dark, “Comfortably Numb” comes on, and I feel something brush against my hip. Declan’s hand finds mine and he interlaces our fingers. I relax immediately at his touch, layers of tight muscle giving way, and as his warm palm reminds me that he’s there—really there—I wonder if it is true love when you finally find someone else who thinks cilantro tastes like detergent.

His hand, fingers woven into mine like a web, goes slack, too. We’re shedding layers through touch, and maybe there’s something to this whole Restorative Yoga thing, I think, as a warm cloud of deep bliss surrounds me. Declan shifts his arm so slightly, his palm sliding against mine, and I can feel him smiling.

Sinking deeper, the world fades out and all I am is my hand, touching him, and it’s so much more than enough that I dissolve into a state of harmony that slips into a peaceful darkness.

Chapter Ten

“I hope you two die just like that.”

Mom’s words make my eyes snap open. She’s standing over me, the yoga studio’s lights on full blaze, and there are about ten other sets of eyes boring down on me.

Us. Me and Declan. I turn my head, confused and fuzzy now as I come out of my slumber, and see he’s out cold, still. A big patch of drool covers one side of my mouth and even my hair is a bit soaked at the jaw line.

“You hope we—what?” Instinct tells me to sit up, to run away, to escape from being the focus of the yoga version of Ray Bradbury’s The Crowd.

“I hope you die just like you are, right now. So cute.” All eleven women staring at us like we’re part of some modern art exhibit sigh in unison.

Declan’s right eyebrow shoots up and he says nothing.

“You want me to die?” I ask, incredulous. “In your yoga class?” He squeezes my hand and I try not to laugh.

“No, I mean, you know, in sixty or seventy years. That you two die after a long, happy marriage and plenty of kids and you’re peaceful old people who die just like that.” Mom’s elaboration doesn’t help.

“I wanted that, too,” Agnes says. “But my husband, Jerry, had other plans.”

“How did he die?” Mom asks. But she asks as if she knows the answer already.

Agnes looks at me. “He got his hand stuck in a toilet and couldn’t get out. I was on a tour of Niagara Falls with my church group for three days and he starved to death.”

Declan groans, his body curling in a bit. He’s trying not to laugh, and he shakes, abs rippling against his tight Lycra shirt, his ass tightening.

“Ooooh, keep it up. Nice glutes,” someone says. That just makes him laugh harder. Now I sit up and let go of his hand. For some reason, I’m jealous—jealous!—and don’t like all these people eyeing my man candy.

He’s mine.

“Your husband didn’t really die like that, did he?” I’m cynical enough to think there’s no way that story is true, but just gullible enough to worry that if I assume it’s a joke, and it isn’t, that I’ll destroy an old woman’s feelings.

“No. He died porking a retail clerk at the mall. They were on the elevator. He was a security guard. Heart attack. The man didn’t touch me for seven years and then he goes and sticks it to the pretzel stand girl.”

That makes me bark with laughter as Mom waves her hands behind Agnes and mouths It’s true.

Oh, hell. I can’t win.

“I hope I die in the arms of someone I love,” Mom announces. Declan’s laughter comes to an abrupt halt, the change so distinct it makes the hair on my arms prickle. Something in Mom’s declaration hit a nerve with him, and it makes me see how little I really know about him.

He stands, fluid and graceful, then yawns. This is no normal yawn, though. It’s a lion’s roar, with arms stretched nice and high, his belly button exposed as he reaches for the sky, stretching and extending his muscles and joints. The body on display for us all is, decidedly, the nicest eye candy ever. Fine, Swiss eye candy. Candy made from slave-free, ninety-percent cacao farmed by happy rural cooperative workers working to save the whales.

“Can I just touch him, once?” someone asks. “It’s like all those Nike ads with the sweaty, hot men come to life, within reach. I thought they were all done with trick photography. This—this is like learning Bigfoot is real.”

A green wave of mist covers my vision. What is wrong with me? I’m jealous of women who haven’t needed to use birth control since the moon landing.

But yes—I am.

“Bigfoot is real, Irene,” Agnes says to the owner of the disembodied voice. “I saw it on the Discovery Channel last week.”

“You’re so naïve, Agnes. That show is just trick photography and some guy with too much hair on his body. My Dave was that way. The man could go around the house without a shirt on and you swore he was wearing a mohair sweater. That’s all Bigfoot is.”

The two descend into bickering as Mom shoos the crowd out, thanking them for coming and talking about seeing them next week.

Declan snuggles up to me. “You like what you see?”