Paradise Lust (10 page)

All of the desperate need she’d felt a moment earlier had suddenly vanished. She realized that her tight clutch on Ajuni’s neck had transformed from a grip of desire and passion to clinging on for dear life. The physical exhaustion of the past two days, the tiredness she’d been floating above on a stream of adrenaline, suddenly hit her like a train, and it was all she could do to hold on as Ajuni thrust himself deep inside of her, pushing against the wall, filling her up with his throbbing penis. He grunted and mumbled a few unintelligible words, and she found herself surprised that he would display such a carnal, uncontrolled side of himself, even in the throes of passion.

She felt him swell inside her and knew that he was about to come. As he pulled out, she sprung off of him, landing lightly on the floor, and her gaze immediately fell on the still-open door to the studio. The grassy lawn where he’d found her sitting not fifteen minutes before remained empty, but someone stood at the edge of the lawn, partially obscured by a banyan tree. Adele thought the silhouette of curly hair looked like Val, but before she could make sure, Ajuni had stepped in front of her and obscured her view.

He pushed her toward the wall, gently this time, and set his face not three inches from hers.

“You understand what I mean now?” He said, suddenly transformed from a grunting, coming, horny man back to the statuesque guru he’d been before. “About the handstand?”

“Yes,” she said, and gave a small nod. She had no idea what he was talking about.

Chapter 14

Danny held two pieces of paper in his hands, looking down at both, seeing neither. Jumbled thoughts swirled through his brain, the emotions that accompanied each equally jumbled, and often volatile. He felt pangs of panic—
had he done the wrong thing?
—confident calmness—
yes, everything will be fine
—despair—
what’s even the point of any of this?
—and a flurry of other feelings that didn’t stick around long enough to identify.

He lifted one sheet of paper closer, and let the hand holding the other drop to his side. Focusing his eyes on the words, he read a few snatches, scrawled out in his own handwriting, “
There’s no excuse for any behavior that hurts another person, maliciously or not…I’m ashamed…please believe that I am more than the sum of my work life.”
He squeezed his eyes shut tight, took a deep breath, and opened them. Then he switched hands, bringing the other paper closer. 

“Snooping through my pockets then stalking me online? Classy. Very classy. I’m not sure you have the right to claim the moral high ground here, Adele.”
He shook his head violently, as if trying to shake out a particularly bad rush of emotion that had swept through.

Putting both pieces of paper in one hand, he folded them neatly into thirds and tucked them into his pocket. It wasn’t doing any good to read and reread the letters. He’d made his choice about which version to give her, and he needed to make peace with that. She had by now received, and presumably read, the letter, and there was no other action he could reasonably take. If she felt compelled to respond, she would. If not, he needed to let it go.

But had the letter said the right thing? Was he being the pompous jerk he’d been in his younger years, the a-hole he’d spent so much energy trying to transform, or at least suppress? At this point, try as he might, he really didn’t think he could pick the “right” thing to do out of a police lineup.

Not that that’s what mattered. Not at all, in fact. He kept returning to that idea—despite the moral dilemma circling in his mind, his gut and his heart couldn’t care less about that aspect. It bothered him to no end, conflicted entirely with the sense of self he’d carefully constructed, but he didn’t give an orangutan’s tail about the ethical justifications. He just wanted Adele.

As if to torture himself, his mind kept conjuring images of her on the other side of the grass, her hair damp with ocean spray, smiling at him and then running across the lawn toward his cabin, the way she’d done just two days earlier. He could see the gentle bounce of her breasts as she ran, picture the curving cups of her bikini perfectly in his mind’s eye. He pictured the delicate strides, her feet landing on the balls, the muscles of her tanned, bare legs. Again, he shook his head violently. This idyllic image hurt him even more than the confused anger he’d felt earlier.

“I’m surprised you’re not out there,” a low female voice said, and adrenaline surged through Danny’s veins for a millisecond, before his brain understood that it wasn’t her. Looking up, he saw a taut, bikini-clad body at the bottom of his porch steps, but it wasn’t the one he’d been imagining. This woman was more petite, and her hair was a wild mane of blonde curls, rather than Adele’s silky chestnut hair.
Val
, he thought, remembering her name. They’d met briefly on one of the first nights that the yogis had arrived.

“Pardon?” Danny said, gathering himself, trying to transition from the internal world of fantasy and regret to the external one of people and things.

“Out there,” Val repeated, a smile curing her sun-swollen lips. She gestured toward the ocean behind her with one hand. Her other arm was wrapped around a surfboard. For the first time that afternoon, Danny noticed that the surf was incredible that day. Big, slow breakers, curling evenly along the shoreline, the swell regular and voluptuous. How had he not seen that before?

“Oh, damn,” he said, and instinctively stood up from the bench. “That’s pretty gorgeous.”

“I’ll wait for you,” she said, her voice friendly, her eyes cheerful.

Yes
, he thought.
That’s just what I need. Some good surf, some distracting conversation with a cute girl. Water, sunshine.

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll be just a sec.” He jogged inside, grabbed his surfboard, slathered some sunscreen on his shoulders and nose, and emerged moments later. “Let’s go.” 

The surf was just as great as it had looked, and he was pleased to find that the constant orchestra of doubt and anxiety and worry and sadness quieted completely out there in the ocean. At least for a little bit. He was also pleased to have a surfing buddy. After surfing solo for so long, he’d forgotten how fun it could be to go out on the ocean with someone else. And Val’s skills were quite impressive. Her small frame and muscular legs gave her a low center of gravity, and she used this physiological advantage to tear up the waves in a way he’d never seen before.

After some time, the surf began to die down, and Danny clambered on top of his board to rest for a minute, waiting to see if the ocean had anything more to give him that day. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Val paddling toward him. She lay on her stomach, her breasts pressed against the board, and made long, sweeping strokes with her arms. She slowed to a stop right up beside him.

“I think we wore her out,” she said.

Danny laughed. “I think
you
did,” he said.

Val laughed in return, then rolled over onto her back, lying face up on the board. She squinted into the orange light of the sun, which had just begun to drop toward the west.

“Not a bad life, huh?” she mused.

“Can’t complain,” he said.

“You live here, right?” She asked, still gazing up at the sky.

“Yup,” he said. “Well, not at this resort, but on Bali. I’ve got an apartment in Seminyak.” 

“Lucky,” she said. “I’m toying with the idea. I do so many of these yoga retreats with Ajuni, I basically live here anyway. But I haven’t bit the bullet and given up my apartment back in New York.”

“What’s stopping you?” Danny asked, surprised at the easy dialogue. He felt a little taken aback at how quickly they’d reached this level of familiarity, but was happy for the company.

“Loneliness,” she said, and propped herself up on one elbow so she could look at him. “It seems like a pretty lonely life out here in paradise.” She paused, trailed her finger in the water, looked back up at Danny. “Is it?”

He took a moment to process that. The question struck deep, especially given his current situation, and he felt his stomach clench protectively. He breathed deeply, and released it. Couldn’t hurt to talk about things, right? 

“Oftentimes, yes,” he said. “Family is so far away, and people who come to Bali tend to be transient, they just come and go. I’m kind of fine with it, though. I find my companionship in everyday things, and my life itself is fulfilling, so I guess I’ve learned to take comfort and meaning in relationships that only last for a short time.”

He heard the phrases tumble out of his mouth, the rehearsed explanation that he’d said so many times, the explanation that, until a week or so ago, he’d truly believed. Now the words sounded completely hollow.

“Actually,” he was surprised to hear himself continue. “I recently met someone, and she sort of turned that whole notion upside-down. Against my will,” he chuckled. 

“Yeah?” Val encouraged, her eyes bright with curiosity.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “She really got to me. Made me think that maybe I wanted more lasting attachments again.”

“So what happened? You’re speaking in the past tense.”

“I don’t know,” he said. He moved his hand to his eyes, shielding them from the sun and, as well as from Val’s gaze.  

“I think you do know,” she said, her voice low, barely audible over the gentle sound of the waves. 

“Trust,” he said, putting his hand down and propping himself up to face her. “Trust was broken.”

A flash of knowing acknowledgement passed over Val’s face, maybe the trace of a smile. She looked down, and when she looked back up, the curious expression was gone.

“That’s a big deal,” she said. “Trust is huge.”

“Is it?” he said, feeling desperate suddenly. The emotions the afternoon surf had erased came rushing back. “I mean, I know trust is a big deal, but are all breaches of trust equal? Like, isn’t it possible to do a thing that might seem big at the time, but then get past it? Forgive and forget?”

Val just looked at him, and he could read the judgment in her face.
No
, her face said.
No, you won’t be forgiven
.

“I guess it’s up to each person,” she shrugged, looking back up at the horizon. “I know me, I would have a hard time forgiving. I’m no saint but I take my moral code seriously. And I don’t know you that well, but you seem like a principled guy. If I were you, I wouldn’t just brush off some chick’s betrayal and hope it’s not an omen of future things to come.”

He furrowed his brow, confused for a moment. In his mind, he’d been thinking about his breach of Adele’s trust, but it seemed that Val was imagining a hypothetical situation of the reverse. He supposed it didn’t matter either way, though. What he was hearing loud and clear was that once trust had been broken, forgiveness was unlikely. He turned that over in his head, and just as he began to get sucked back into his own jumbled internal world, Val spoke.

“Looks like the waves have given up,” she said, her voice cheerful and bright again. “Shall we paddle in? I’m starving.”

“Sounds good,” Danny said, and followed Val back to shore in a daze.

Chapter 15

On the walk to class the following morning, nerves coursed through Adele’s veins. But they weren’t the pure dread and anxiety she’d felt on the morning of their inversion workshop, nor the mixture of adrenaline and fear she’d felt after discovering Danny’s secret. Always one to value “emotional granularity”—a phrase her psychologist brother had taught her, meaning the ability to distinguish between subtle nuances of your own emotions—she dove inside herself, trying to parse out the feelings.

But by the time she reached the yoga hut, she had no clean word or fancy phrase to describe how she felt. Instead, she kept coming back to the same simple sentence:
I don’t want to see Ajuni.

When she saw Danny for the first time after they’d made love, when she’d been perched in that tiny rock cave as he emerged from the surf, her emotions had been anything but complicated. Despite all her internal hand-wringing about whether a man would throw off her journey of self-discovery, seeing his face brought her nothing but a wave of happiness. She didn’t expect she’d feel that way when she saw Ajuni in a moment. She wasn’t sure what she’d feel, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.

Unable to put it off any longer, Adele took a deep breath, rolled her shoulders down and back to grow taller (a yoga posture trick now so ingrained in her muscle memory she didn’t need to think about it), and stepped inside the studio. Immediately, she gasped out loud. Her muscles tightened; her palms and underarms broke out in perspiration.

There he was.

He was standing near the front left corner of the room, his eyes scanning the crowd as if looking for someone, or something. 
Me
, she thought, and quickly skittered away before his gaze reached her. She jogged to the far corner and grabbed her mat, her heart a galloping horse in her chest.

When she turned back to the open studio, she unhappily realized that almost all of the empty space had already been taken. She was a bit late, after all. Of course, there was a mat-sized space next to
him
, but she was not—
not
—going to take that. Strange, she vaguely mused, noting the group of girls standing just a few feet apart from him, clearly ogling him, that nobody would take that spot. She shook the thought out of her mind, strode to the back of the room, and found a tiny island of space next to a woman named Janine.

“Hey,” Adele said, ”Would you mind scooting your mat over just a tiny bit so I can fit in?”

Janine, who had been sitting in a peaceful cross-legged position waiting for class, snapped her eyes open and narrowed them at Adele. She’d always struck Adele as prickly, but she’d never had any evidence of that impression until now.

“Um,” Janine said, glancing dubiously at the two feet of floor Adele indicated. Janine paused, shook her head, and sighed. “Sure.” She didn’t try to hide the distaste in her voice, and stood painfully slowly, as if deliberately to make Adele nuts. She tugged her mat with a precision that seemed ridiculous, and the result left Adele with only a few more inches than she’d had before. Janine flashed what could only be described as a mocking smile, and sat back down.

Crazy bitch
, Adele thought to herself. She then realized that it was the first time she’d felt anything negative toward one of her fellow yogis—maybe even the first time she’d felt any “destructive emotions” in this yoga hut—and she felt a new wave of anger at that fact.

She attempted to lay her mat down, but it was impossible to do so without either overlapping Janine’s—and she wasn’t going to do that—or having it run up against the wall. As she folded and fiddled and struggled with her mat, she heard Janine’s voice again.

“You know there’s a big space right up front there,” Janine said, gesturing toward the open area next to
him
.

So filled with annoyance and impatience that she’d momentarily forgotten her righteousness, Adele snapped up her mat, gave Janine a venomous smile, and said, “Oh, great, thank you so much, Janine.”

Even as she walked toward the spot, regret began to fill her, but it was too late. She had to continue her path toward the opposite corner of the room, toward him.

As she reached the open space, he turned to look at her, his face completely guileless. She was taken aback by the open vulnerability in his expression, and the simple way he said, “Hi Adele.”

Dizzy from the emotional strobe light inside her, she responded: “Hi, Danny.”

They looked at each other, simply and intensely, him sitting, her standing, her mat draped over her arm, and she felt her body begin to calm. She opened her mouth to say something else, but then the voice of the other
he
—Ajuni
—
broke the murmuring quiet of the classroom.

“An opening,” he boomed from the center of the room, “is also a closing.”

Adele broke her gaze with Danny, unrolled her mat, and sat down. It was only as she settled into a relaxed half lotus pose that the thought occurred to her:
What the hell is Danny doing in asana practice?
Reflexively, she whipped her head around, as if to see if anyone else had noticed this oddity, and, to her complete shock, became aware of at least five new faces. She recognized Budi, the cook, sitting in the middle of the room in what looked to be an incredibly uncomfortable cross-legged position; and Putri, a gorgeous local woman who ran a bed & breakfast up the street; and J.T., a beefy Australian who, as far as Adele could tell, lived in a tent and spent all day alternately drinking Bintang and surfing; and there in the back was Yande, the lanky and cheerful driver, with voluptuous Meghan giving him some hands-on spinal adjustments. There were others, but she didn’t stop to take them all in, aware that she was gaping stupidly at the entire class.

How had she not noticed this until now?
Wow, I’m really losing it,
she thought, shaking her head.

Turning back to the front of the room, she could see Danny out of her peripheral vision, and thought she caught a playful, almost teasing grin on his lips. She felt her stomach flutter, and squashed the feeling back down.

“Today, we temporarily close the intimate and intense energy of our teacher training community,” Ajuni continued, “in order to open ourselves, and this sacred space, to a new, more inclusive and dynamic experience. In order to allow in the energies and wisdom of those outside of our community.” Ajuni slowly looked around the room, making eye contact with each of the new class members—there were seven in total, Adele now counted—and bowing slightly toward each, his hands pressed in prayer position at his chest. When Ajuni reached Danny, it seemed that he let his gaze linger for longer than with the others, and Adele could swear she saw a slight twitch on one corner of his lips, the hint of a smirk, or a sneer. But then it was gone, and they were both bowing toward each other, and class was beginning.

Of course
, Adele thought, as Ajuni instructed them to move through some cat-cow stretches following their own breath patterns.
Open Asana Day
. They’d been talking about it since day one of the training, but with all the chaos of the past few days, she’d completely forgotten. This lapse hit Adele right in the gut, as it signified to her that she’d done just what she’d wanted to avoid: letting men and sex and crushes get in the way of her personal journey. She’d been so excited about Open Asana Day—one day of class where anyone from the community could join them for an all-level yoga practice—and it was very telling, and very sad, that it had completely slipped her mind.

But how the hell had Danny known about it? And, more importantly, why on earth would he choose to come?

As the second question rose in her mind, she jerked her head involuntarily toward him, just at the moment that he happened to be stealing a glance at her, and they locked eyes again. She quickly looked away.

His mat was no more than two feet away—close enough that she could hear his breath and see his sweat, but far enough that she could take in the full visual glory of his body. And
damn it
was a glorious body. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt that showcased the full, taut curvature of his shoulder muscles as he held himself up on all fours. Because of the shirt’s looseness and Adele’s angle, she could also get a peek of his unreal abs—
Seriously, nobody has abs like that. That’s not fair
—and, realizing that she was ogling, she tried to return to her practice.
Just focus on the breath
, she repeated to herself.

As Ajuni guided the class into more active poses, Adele was able to turn at least half of her attention away from Danny and toward her physical practice. This shift caused her to feel a rush of gratitude for the glory of yoga, for its ability to bring you into touch with simplicity, with your body, with the moment, regardless of the circumstance. It relieved her that, despite everything, she was still at least somewhat connected to the reasons she’d wanted to come on this journey.

Because it was an all-levels class—some of the new additions, like J.T. and Budi, clearly had never set foot in a yoga studio before—Ajuni kept the sequences simple. They moved through some basic sun salutations and a few standing balance poses, and the atmosphere in the room felt far more casual than it did in most classes. Ajuni even seemed less intense, somehow, though Adele reasoned that this was probably just by comparison to the intensity of feeling she felt every time her gaze happened to wander to the right and she caught a glimpse of Danny.

Because, despite the centering powers of the physical practice, she was still highly aware of Danny’s presence. The movement gave her something to focus on other than him, but his movements, his breath, his energy, his looks (Was he looking at her? She thought she could feel his eyes on her but wasn’t sure.) were still very much in her sphere of awareness. Though she only watched with her peripheral vision, she could tell that he was quite good. Great form, smooth transitions, stable balances. Not that she was surprised—the realm of the physical was something he had clearly conquered. She felt a wave of heat in her low belly as this thought articulated in her mind.

She snapped to attention, suddenly realizing that Ajuni was not two feet from her, eyeing her curiously. A stupid smile spread across her face as she looked back, and she teetered in her tree pose. Ajuni shot her a look that she couldn’t quite pinpoint, though it seemed both amused and haughty. She could have sworn he winked, though it all happened in a flash, and then he was striding away and speaking to the whole class.

“With control, lower your left leg to the floor and bring your arms by your sides,” he said, and pivoted on his heel to face the room. “Now,” he continued, “I want you to turn to the person who…” he scanned the room, rubbing his chin as if in a parody of someone thinking. His eyes stopped on Adele, then hopped to Danny, then back to Adele, and then there was that sneer-smirk again, though this time it curled up into an undeniable smile after a moment. “…to the person whose mat is closest to yours.”

Adele looked to her left, where Felicia, a spacey jewelry designer from northern California, had been practicing. Her heart raced as she realized that there was no way she could pretend her mat was closer to Felicia’s than it was to Danny’s. She glanced to her right to confirm, though she knew the verdict. She kept her gaze to the right, but didn’t look up. Instead, her eyes remained fixed on the—very minimal—space between her mat and Danny’s. Now there was no question in her mind about whether or not he was looking at her.

“This person will be your partner for the rest of class,” Ajuni continued. “We will be exploring the endless possibilities allowed by what I like to call co-yoga. Your body is capable of many magical things, true. But your body plus another body,” he paused, and Adele couldn’t keep her eyes down any longer. She looked up, and immediately found herself returning Danny’s earnest and penetrating gaze. Her heart beat even faster. “…your body plus another body, that is capable of
transcendence.
”

Ajuni then instructed them to both move to the mat of the partner on the right, so Adele walked over to Danny’s mat and stood, still looking down. Staring at his feet, her heart pounding, she honestly couldn’t remember whether she hated or loved him, let alone the reasons for either emotion. All that she knew was that her entire being was fighting against the powerful impulse to throw herself into his arms, feel her breasts against his chest, feel him pull her close and stroke her hair and quiet the confusion.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to fight for long, as Ajuni’s voice resounded once again through the room. Her eyes shot toward him, welcome for an escape from the intensity of looking at Danny.

“The most basic of forms is one-dimensional—a dot—which we inhabit in child’s pose, a pose that we do not need to practice here,” Ajuni said, striding through the room. He was in the opposite corner from Adele, and though he wasn’t looking at her, she could
feel
his awareness of her, feel a sort of pious judgment directed her way from him. “The second level of complication is two points, two-dimensional: the line,” he continued. “Which asana embodies this second level of physical manifestation?”

Ajuni now stood in the center of the room, his arms by his side, surveying the class silently. The veterans of the class had long ago learned that these rhetorical techniques were meant to emphasize the power of his teachings, and they shouldn’t try to respond, but Adele could feel the guests shifting on their mats uncomfortably, wanting to fill the strangely weighted silence in the room.