Page 21 of Thank you, Next

Brody’s gaze widened, and he leaned back farther out of Alex’s space. “That’s some wild, cosmic shit.”

“I know,” Alex said, trying to memorize Jane’s concise summary of her personal quest.

“Well, I did get married, like, spiritually, right after we broke up.” Brody shook his head. “But I never thought you had anything to do with it before.”

“But you can’t know that I have nothing to do with it.”

Brody held up a hand. “This is a lot, my little half-Nubian queen.” Oh God, that was worse than the lotus flower thing. “I think we should meditate on it.”

“I have cabana reservations.” Jane never sounded whiny, but she kind of sounded whiny.

“Can I take another bite of edible first?” Alex did not want to meditate sober, that was for sure.

“Groovy.” Brody took both of their hands and led them to the meditation room. They grabbed Lana along the way. She smiled beatifically.

Yeah, Alex definitely needed more edibles.

Alex was not a woo-woo person. She tolerated a certain level of woo-woo because of Lexi, and she understood why people believed, because her mother studied anthropology with an emphasis on religious practices. But she wasn’t a believer.

She still did yoga for exercise, but that was for her lower back and tension headaches—not her spiritual well-being.

Sure enough, Brody’s meditation room had all the woo-woo trappings. But since she’d come here looking for answers and not a discourse, she kept her mouth shut.

Jane and Lana told her that they were on the same page without saying a word. But they were good sports about it and sat on the cushions that Brody indicated. Alex sat across from Brody in front of an altar, and he took her hands.

“You said you had questions. We all have questions, Alex. But seeking answers on an earthly plane when the spiritual—the sexual—plane is more likely to have answers is a dangerous game.”

“I just want to know why you think we didn’t work out.” Alex’s regret grew every moment that Brody stared at her. When she was twenty-one, it had felt like he was staring into her soul. At this point, it was just uncomfortable.

“Thinking is overrated.” Brody’s voice was laced with frustration. “That was why we broke up.”

“Because I think too much?” Alex fought really hard not to look over at Lana and Jane, whom she could hear fidgeting and trying to contain their laughter.

“No, lotus flower, it’s because you believe your thoughts.”

“Of course I believe my thoughts. They are rarely wrong.” Alex wasn’t arrogant enough to believe that she was always right. But she knew for a fact that she could figure out most problems with little help from anyone else. That’s how she’d survived her entire life.

“But you act like they’re never wrong, and I need to be with someone who is more open to the world’s wonders. Being with you made me realize that I was playing small and being held hostage by my own limiting beliefs.”

“Wow.” Alex wasn’t quite sure what else to say. He really made her seem like an obstacle to his personal growth.

“Yeah, like, you were just so locked into how you thought the world worked, and so closed off to any other possibilities, that I just didn’t see us going very far. You never let me in.”

Well, shit. That would explain why things didn’t work out. “You know. This has been incredibly enlightening.”

Alex made moves to get up off the cushion and leave, but Brody stopped her. “I think we should sit with this for a while.”

Feeling bad for interrupting his day, she felt obligated to sit back down.

•••

Please tell me that he was the only yoga teacher you’ve ever dated,” Jane said as soon as they got into the car.

Lana leaned up between the seats. “Does he always make that really intense eye contact?”

“Yeah, kind of.” Alex hadn’t really noticed it when they were dating, but he was really intense about being laid-back. And he’d hated how wound up she got about small things, like politics or a rude driver who cut her off. In turn, she’d hated how lackadaisical Brody was about important things, like having a real apartment in his name so he wasn’t sleeping on his friends’ couches even though he had a pillowcase full of cash or whatever the Venmo equivalent of that was.

But she hadn’t noticed the intense eye contact thing as a problem until he’d practically dragged her into the meditation room at the ashram, with her friends tagging along behind, and told her to stare into his eyes for the answers to why they hadn’t worked out.