She’s careless with her beauty. She often gives herself (terrible) haircuts. Wears a couple of pairs of jeans she’s had from when they were called flared, through a long period when they were so out of style they weren’t called anything, to the current moment, in which they are called modern boot-cut. She broke her nose twice playing volleyball in college, and never bothered to get it reset. Now it just (beautifully, of course) detours a little at the bridge. She carried herself with assurance even when the two of them were teenagers. Neale never went through an awkward phase. She’s always been physically arrogant. Riding her bike through storms, dodging falling tree branches, exploring construction sites. Cate, her hand already damaged, was hesitant about making wrong moves.

Cate is not a natural yogi. She goes to classes because it’s a way to hang out with Neale.

“If you find your attention drifting,” Neale is saying now in her tranquil yoga voice, “return your focus to your breath.”

Cate tries to follow this suggestion, but it’s not easy. Although she is glad she has breath, keeping track of it is never interesting enough, and so, almost immediately, her focus loosens and she drifts off into a thicket of random thoughts. Paint she has to buy for the desk. A nearly due credit card statement on which she at least has to pay the box. Otherwise they will tack on their 270 percent or whatever interest fee.

“Bring your right foot onto your left leg.” First Cate wonders how this will be possible, since she is in a lunge. Then she sees that Neale and the class, in her absence, have moved on to tree pose, standing balanced on one foot. She repositions herself awkwardly and is able to pull her attention way over to her breath for maybe a second, before it once again gets yanked off, this time into replaying something really stupid she said to Hugh Prendergast, the director of At Ease. From there, Mick Jagger and Jack White jump in front of a microphone, their mouths as close as lovers’, singing Gimme little drink. From your loving cup.

When the class is over, Neale asks if Cate can come home with her to fix a blocked drain.

“This is why I hang out with you. For the social life.”

Then she loiters in the lobby while Neale hugs prodigal students newly returned to the fold, offers workarounds to young women with shin splints or ankle sprains. A lot of the reason people come to yoga, Neale says, is to get a pastel sort of attention from the instructor, encouragement and understanding that’s not about the rest of their complicated lives.

When the two of them are finally in the car, Cate says, “Do you think Joe is trolling social media, asking girls at school to send him nude selfies?”

“Oh God, no!”

“I read this article—”