Had it only been two days ago that she’d sat crying in the couch at Lou’s home? Such a cathartic moment if ever there was one. Hard and confrontational as it had been at the time, afterwards, she’d felt relieved. Because one less secret stood between her and Lou now. And it wasn’t resolution or even a sense of having unburdened herself, just the feeling that something significant had happened on the path to truly forgiving herself. Mia might have said that she would never forgive herself, but before seeing Lou again she had believed that she had already done so. The truth most likely lay somewhere in between. In order to truly move on, she would need to forgive herself, but she would need Lou’s forgiveness first to make that happen. Which made them unlikely co-travelers on this path. And which was why Mia had come to this yoga class—a class she had been banned from earlier.

At the same time, Lou was different and also very much like the person Mia had got to know when she stood in front of the room. There was a poise and elegance about her that Mia hadn’t really seen in her before, but there was also the warmth in her tone of voice, the gentle insistence she put in it to guide, not push, her students to a higher level of understanding of this practice she spoke so passionately about.

Even though Lou had treated her cold-heartedly, there had always been a sense that that kind of coldness was alien to her, that she had to put on a mask to be so harsh, retreat into a former version of herself—a version she only was in front of Mia.

This yoga studio was where Lou was at her best, where she shone and guided newbies like Mia into, at the very least, getting a sense of what yoga could be.

“One last sun salutation,” Lou said.

Mia had to glance at Micky next to her to get the order of the movements right.

“Don’t look at what anyone else is doing,” Lou said.

Did she have her eye on Mia? Did she see her cast her glance aside?

“Look at me.” Lou went to her mat in the front of the room and effortlessly stepped into a lunge.

Mia did as she was told and fixed her gaze on Lou, with her high pony tail and the beige tank top she wore contrasting so deliciously with the darker color of her skin. She caught herself in the middle of the thought and refocused her attention on getting the pose right. Stepping back into a plank she could do; it was the jumping forward bit with two feet that came after downward dog that had been troubling her throughout.

They finished their last sun salutation of the class and were then instructed to lie down on their backs.