My Apple Watch vibrates on my professionally tanned wrist, no doubt reacting to my lowering heart rate, asking if I’m finished and want to see my results. We’re not supposed to bring technology into the yoga studios—there are offensively low-budget signs Scotch-taped to each heavy door, advising us to “gift” ourselves “screenless meditation”—but no one obliges. What’s the point of burning 359 calories if you don’t get an itemized receipt in return—if a tree falls in the forest and all that. There’s a vulnerability that comes from existing without awareness of what’s happening beyond these four purportedly calming off-white walls that for me is more distracting than a slick glance at a vibrating wrist during Downward Dog and choosing to actively ignore it. I’m the one throwing down three hundred and fifty dollars a month to be here. I can do what I want.

During the warm-up—why yoga needs a warm-up, I’ll never understand—I received two calls from an unknown number, which has been running circles in my mind ever since. Generally, I don’t answer unknown numbers; if it’s anything other than a spam call about insurance for my nonexistent car, they’ll leave a voice mail and I’ll have ample time to prepare before returning. No one likes a surprise. But it always provokes curiosity. Especially when I’ve been expecting a call, and I’m stuck in this dull room thinking about it.

There was also a text from Graham asking what I wanted to order for dinner. Sundays are his cheat days, and it will take everything in me to respond whatever you want, babe, instead of demanding a hulking, bloody Angus burger on greasy ciabatta bread with sweet potato fries and onion rings and a pickle so thick and juicy it will take more than two bites to shove down my throat. But I don’t get cheat days—and honestly, the weekend before your wedding should render the concept irrelevant to both parties—so I’ll order a salad, pick off anything even remotely resembling a carb, and ask for oil and vinegar on the side.

Nothing could seem less appetizing as I sit in a pool of my own sweat, running on only lemon water and a chocolate RXBAR.

I could feel Feather closing in on me like a dreadlocked panther in the way you can sense someone undressing you with their eyes from across a dimly lit bar.

“I’m going to move your leg,” she whispers in my ear, so close I can feel the baby hairs on her forehead scratching my eyelid. She likes to “perform stretches,” she calls it, gliding from person to person before she bongs the final bell, gently telling everyone to get the hell out. She’s not my favorite instructor, but I like that she course-corrects your poses and stretches you by telling, not asking. Touching without permission.