Deep Down Inside Ch. 13-16

Camille called back to him, "You're what, thirty-four? You shouldn't be having that kind of pain. And you say you've never injured it?"

"Thirty-two, sane age as Alex. But nothing major. And I know, it pisses me off."

I invited Jane to sit on the couch as Camille mixed us drinks in the kitchen. Kaden stood by the glass door leading to the patio and our small side yard. Our lot wasn't very big, and our house was long and narrow, so a wide strip of grass along the north side functioned as our only yard.

"We can do it on the patio if you like, Kaden. In fact, let's! Let's do it outside, it'll be much nicer."

Camille brought Jane and I two of the janky Orangina mimosas and then I tapped her glass with mine. "Good match while it lasted."

"To victory," she toasted back.

"Hey, we never finished the game."

"Yeah but Camille and I were ahead, so..."

"Well it was worth a loss just to see Kaden's face every time Camille sliced the ball."

Kaden gave me the stink-eye. "Big mistake teaching her my best move."

I took a seat next to Jane on the couch as Camille disappeared into the first floor office to get yoga mats. She reappeared having also slipped into a pair of small compression shorts and a lycra sports bra, and carrying a pair of my gym shorts for Kaden. With our barbecue taking up half of the concrete slab, she set the spongy mats about a foot from one another.

Jane's purse buzzed and she fetched out her phone. "Camille, do you know how long this will take?" she asked from the living room.

"That's up to Kaden. My day's mostly free. Just hanging with hubby. Why, do you have plans?"

"My girlfriend's going to a boat launch party and is asking if I want to go." She turned her phone so I could see it. "Nice boat, huh?"

It was a huge sailboat, brand new, maybe fifty feet. "Yeah, that's a nice boat."

"Hey, can you take a picture of me with my mimosa? I want to let her know I'm starting early." She then hollered outside to Camille again, "This isn't awful, by the way."

Kaden was assuming his first pose on the patio now, Downward Facing Dog, as Camille led by example beside him. "This is great for hamstrings." She lifted a hand to run it over the back of her stretched thigh, the smooth bare skin not dimpling whatsoever, behaving as taut as a trampoline.

Kaden's knees were bent, being unable to straighten them fully and form the perfect arrow shape like Camille.

"Yeah, yours are super tight. We'll have to work on that."

Downward Dog always struck me as one of the less elegant poses—two straight lines meeting at a forty- degree angle—but having attempted it in the past I knew both the pleasure and pain of it. It's like stretching a rubber band between the thumb and forefinger and then pushing straight up through its stretched center with a third finger. In downward dog the ass feels like the third finger pushing upwards, the rubber band being the tension running down either side of the body as the ass is vaulted up.

Camille maintained the pose with one arm so she could reach over to Kaden again, this time tracing a finger along his Achillie's tendon. "Right now you feel it here, but if you lift your heel slightly and try to straighten your knees you should start to feel it here." She moved her hand upwards towards his butt, but the inappropriateness struck her midway there and instead moved her directing hand to her own ass. "If you can get to the point you start feeling it here then you know the stretch is doing its job." She drew a line right at the crease of her ass and thigh, trapped in those tight lycra shorts. "This is where the magic happens."

Her words swirled in my head as I watched her essentially pointing between her legs. Kaden was on his knees so he could follow what she was demoing. Of course he was thinking about the 'magic' he'd like to see happen there too.

I watched them so intensely that I almost spilled my janky mimosa when Jane spoke. "Kaden said you might be able to help with my Instagram. I saw Camille's, I thought it was great."

"Thanks! Yeah, I took most of her photos."

"So those aren't professional?"

I comically buffed my knuckles on my chest. "I wouldn't say they aren't professional." Hopefully my puffery came off as sarcastic as I intended it to, but you never know.

"Well Kaden had said that you said not to use professional."

"Professional shots are fine. But I think they should be outside of the studio. And don't rely on VSCO filters."

She grabbed my shoulder. "You know what? I was thinking that too! I told you I studied photography right? Like I should know everything you're saying. I mean, I had to study old paintings with triangles drawn on them and got all the rules like no lines through the head and learned high-key and low-key lighting, and I was really good at color theory, but we never got outside. We looked at Ansel Adams landscapes but I hated blacknwhite."

"This is still building towards the weather woman position, right?"

"One hundred percent!"

I suggested she ditch the stock photos and try to to treat her landscapes and skylines as backdrops to her portraits. And to get as many different skylines as possible, cloudy, rainy, windy, especially as she travels. And knowing she was leading up to it and before she could ask, I volunteered to bring my camera next time we all went out. She then began hunting through her photo gallery asking for my opinion on her favorite pictures.

Just to keep myself occupied I pulled up Camille's account to see if I could find any good examples. My eyes were out the side door, however, watching as my wife and Jane's boyfriend worked their hamstrings on foam rollers. They'd gone through a quick routine and I guess Kaden was not as limber as she thought and a foam roller always helped. Both of them leaned to the right, crushing the side of their right legs along the dense, cylindrical surface and breaking up the muscle fiber.

Camille's back was to his front and the way their body's angled over the roller made it look almost like they were posed for spooning. And the rolling back and forth resembled two people totally grinding on each other.

My dick pulsed and I diverted my gaze down and away from outside and towards my phone, where I quickly tapped the icon for Camille's Instagram home. First new post in her feed was a photo of Boo-boo. He hugged a girl on either side of him, pulling the girl on his right around in front so she had to look back over her shoulder. Her ponytail was frozen mid swing, so he must've pulled her in close just as the camera clicked. And there was no mistaking her beautiful big smile—it was Camille.

I studied it as if it might be some kind of deepfake. Of course it wasn't, though, no reason it would be. It was her, and the picture was recent. She'd met up with Abi and a couple of the Hooligan's girls for lunch last week, but she'd never mentioned Boo-boo. The description stated he'd met some old friends from Hooligan's and ended with the hashtag: #hooliganshotties. The picture was the first in a set, so I swiped through the rest of them. The other four photos featured only girls. The accompanying description under Camille's read:

-Camille looking more beautiful than ever. #dancingqueen #ballbuster

"Ballbuster" struck me. From Camille's own telling she was the uppity waitress at the bar, so yeah, she probably busted his balls. But who says "Ballbuster" anymore? As my stomach knotted up with jealousy, my hunch grew into full blown suspicion. If I had worked at a bar where we'd fucked the waitresses wouldn't I always come back around to that aspect of it? I thumbed back to the picture of him holding Camille. He was an attractive guy, a toothy smile, kind of a large mouth, all his features were big, including his sweet-on-you eyes that I'm sure never failed to seal the deal. Did Boo-boo have enough imagination to imply a double meaning to his hashtag? I looked at that toothy smile and mentally heard him say something stupid, "She might bust my balls at the bar but on break I bust my balls in that sweet ass!"

Fuck, my dick was even harder than before. I had to cross my legs and run an arm over my lap when Jane called out to Kaden, "I scheduled an Uber. Quickest was ten minutes though."

My shoulders dropped, making me realize how tense they'd been before. I was anxious to get the story on Boo-boo and why she hadn't said anything about him showing up at lunch, and so I was relieved to hear Jane and Kaden would be cutting their visit short.

I set my sights on my wife again, now demonstrating Plow Pose. She lay flat on her back, arms down either side as Kaden knelt on his mat to observe. She then brought most of her body into the air, leaving her arms in place and her head and neck flat against the floor. Her torso, hips and legs pointed to the sky with her shoulders supporting their weight. She then bent her legs at the hips, bringing them towards her head. She stopped when her toes touched the ground, her locked out knees looming a foot above her forehead. "This is Plow Pose," she informed, her voice pinched due to the angle of her neck. "You asked what my favorite was for hamstrings, well this is it. The legs just fall into place and I can stay like this forever."

Kaden walked on his knees to get closer and sipped his water. The sixty-degree bend of her legs forced her lycra shorts to ride so high up her butt they started to resemble a bikini from a bird's eye point of view, which Kaden had. Her butt cheeks were essentially one-hundred-percent nude along the section of ass facing the heavens, and the small amount of stretchy lycra was skin tight between her legs—not quite a camel toe but the impression of her labia majora was unmistakable. I could only imagine what Kaden observed kneeling a foot away, face to ass with my wife.

She called up to him, "This isn't exactly a beginners pose though.

Jane seemed unphased by it, texting her friend and occasionally glancing about the room as she waited for a response. I thought back on our tennis match, how I thought maybe Kaden wasn't being as forward with Camille as I thought or else Jane would've shown some kind of annoyance. But maybe not. Maybe Jane paid little attention to anything that wasn't Jane. Maybe I was guilty of making more out of the situation, but then she was likely guilty of making less of it.

Camille came up quickly on her feet when Kaden took it upon himself to attempt Plow Pose on his own. In one quick motion he'd lugged his legs over his resting head only to have his back and hips fold into a C. "Shit!"

"Bend your knees, bend your knees," Camille instructed through laughter. "Bend them all the way to your chest if you can." He couldn't and was grunting and laughing simultaneously. "OK, lean back then." She quickly got below him and braced her hands against his low back. "OK, straighten your hips, you big goof, and bring your legs back up. Let's just get your back straight and then if you must try this pose we can find a safe position for your legs."

As he straightened his back Camille moved one hand to his right bun, where she could better leverage his weight, but even that was proving difficult. Kaden was six-two and somewhere around one-ninety-five, and little five-seven Camille didn't have enough mass to counter his. She tried to spin around and brace her back against his ass, and that allowed him to get his legs up, but then they fell back down over Camille. Both legs landed on her shoulders, taking Camille down with them. She fell on her back and shrieked laughter. The ending result had Kaden's legs on top of Camille's chest with her head resting on his crotch. Their body arrangement looked as if she'd been giving him a shoulder ride and fell over backward. Both laughed hysterically as they lay there. Kaden's drunken donkey laugh caused his stomach to roll, which made Camille's resting head bounce, and given its location, I knew the back of her head was bouncing on his dick. I doubt she was aware given all that was going on, but it was not lost on me.

Jane and I were cracking up inside as Camille tossed his legs off her and sat up. Still laughing, she said, "You are so not flexible."

"Come on, I almost had it."

"No you didn't. You're hamstrings are way too tight. I think you do so much rock climbing that your legs can't keep up with the rest of you."

"So was that Ashtanga yoga?"

"Not specifically. Pretty much all yoga incorporates Plow Pose."

"Let's do some of your Ashtanga."

"Dude, you can't handle Ashtanga." She shoved him in his chest.

"Alright, show me something. Show me a move that I can't handle."

Camille smiled like a kid who'd just been cut loose from Sunday School. She started in Child's Pose and ran through a sequence that had her chin to the knee of her outstretched leg while her other leg was bent and locked behind her armpit. That evolved over another series of stretches until she was in the splits, holding her toes up at shoulder height and seemingly balancing on her ass.

Kaden chuckled, "OK, maybe you're right, I'm not a fucking human pretzel."

Camille, moving with her breath, then proceeded into a sequence of handstands, headstands, and backbends, demonstrating coordination, flexibility, strength, and just what a beautiful, curvy body she had.

"Wow," Jane said, and I can't explain how proud I felt to be Camille's husband. I'd seen all the poses before, but watching Jane and Kaden experience it for the first time made me realize just how goddamn impressive my wife's yoga had become. This was the stuff you see on TV, competition gymnastics level shit, and then pieced together with a calm breathing and fluid transitions that made it seem effortless. I remember seeing Camille for the first time—straight off the cover of Elle or Vogue, I'd thought—and I would've called you crazy if you told me there was a part of her even more extraordinary than her beauty. But there was. So many more parts, in fact. She was the personification of perfection. I fucking loved her so goddamn much.

While going through her sequence Kaden was frozen, until he had to back up to give her more room when her leg helicoptered past his face. He had a slack jawed smile and his eyebrows crept up with each new pose. Her lycra shorts slipped into her ass crack no matter how many times she pulled them free, but the erotocism of it wasn't what chewed into Kaden's fascination. He didn't leer, he was that captivated audience member the cameras zoom in on during AGT.

"Shit! My Uber was supposed to show up a minute ago," Jane said, popping up from the couch and dropping her phone into her purse. "Special K, I gotta go. My ride's here."

As I followed to see her out I laughed, "Special K?"

She laughed back, "Good huh? He really hates it too!"

The car pulled up just as she reached the curb. I felt a pang of guilt. Jane was a spoiled, selfish human being, but she'd perfected the mean girl attitude into her personal brand of charismatic wit. If she succeeded in getting the weather girl spot, she'd play to the camera amazingly well. If I wasn't married to Camille, I would be forever jealous of Kaden for being with her. But I had Camille, and there was no comparison.

I walked back down the entry hall to the living room, the hardwood floor sounding hollow in the most satisfying way. I approached the patio door, Camille was standing, asking about his back again. Even after failing at Plow Pose, he seemed to think it was mostly better. His look of awe was gone. He ran his tongue over his teeth. Maybe something painful was caught in a gum, but a caginess about him made me think otherwise. Likely the gravity of our morning together finally caught up to him. Not only was Camille one of the prettiest women he'd ever laid eyes on, she'd beat him at tennis—beat him with his own move. I know secretly he loved it. The battle of the sexes is rooted in attraction. And then to have her rock her crazy yoga prowess, with her mesmerizing flexibility and strength, that put his earliest notions of Camille to rest. He'd called her an 'Ice Queen', but after a little in your face Ashtanga he knew she could fuck you in ways no other chick could even dream of. If she so chose. And her desires were out of his domain.

He came inside and stayed a few minutes longer, trying to come up with something to fill the rest of his day once his girlfriend had ditched him for a boat ride.

"Women suck, they just love to mess with your head."

"I like her," Camille said, pouring herself a big glass of water in the kitchen. "You two are both just outgoing. Eventually you'll have the same circle of friends and it'll be fine."

"I don't know. Her friends are dumb as bricks. And I bet Miranda's the one who invited her on the boat. That girl, man.... Comes up short on looks and makes up for it by fucking every guy she meets."

"Oh come on, Kaden, I know you aren't that archaic in your views."

He was retreating from his feelings bigtime, and Camille hadn't quite picked up on it yet. It was kind of a sudden shift.

"You know it's the truth. Run with dogs, you get fleas."

"I think what Camille is politely saying is in the past you've been appreciative of women like Miranda." I didn't offer the straightest line of reasoning, but it felt like I needed to get into the conversation. If he was going to be a dick I'd rather it be towards me.

"Even I have standards, brother." He put a hand on my shoulder, his way of saying my aggression wasn't necessary, I already had his respect.

His eyes traveled to Camille in the kitchen, then to me, and then back to Camille. A shit eating grin had slithered onto his face. "Hey, do you know this one? How do you fuck a feminist?"

Camille took a deep breath, bracing for the inevitable.

"Any damn way you please." He cracked up at his own joke.

"Why Kaden? Just why?" Camille said, palming her face.

"It's funny. You know it is. And it doesn't get better than that so I'm gonna get out of here." He wrapped his arms around me. "Take it easy brother."

He then slow walked into the kitchen with open arms and a smile meant to goad Camille into finding him awful but irresistible.

He gave her a big hug. "If your back starts hurting again just call Alex. I can look up a good sequence for it."

"No Plow Pose, right?"

"No Plow Pose, I swear."

After he was gone, as soon as the door shut behind him, I turned to my wife and took her hand, the tips of her fingers curling over my index finger.

"I almost feel bad for him."

"I was thinking the same thing."

"A little less after his...," she shifted her voice into a deep mocking of Kaden's, "how do you fuck a feminist, blah, blah, blah." Her temples bunched up in frustration. "Where did that come from? Didn't it just seem out of the blue?"

"He coming to terms, I think. It's hopeless. So he's fighting, I guess."

"Fighting against what?"

"His growing obsession with you, maybe. I don't know. Look, this is what we wanted. We're helping the heavens bring justice to a guy who uses his good looks and daddy's money to be shitty to people-to women."

"Yeah, but-"

"So you fucked him. You made him want something he can never have. Maybe more than anything else. That's gotta sting."

"You really think?"

"An over privileged asshole like Kaden, yeah, it stings. I saw it in his eyes. You fucking did your Ashtanga and Jane left with barely a goodbye and he.... he looked, I don't know, a little left out."

"Yeah, I noticed something like that."

She twisted her mouth off to the side and her forehead slumped dourly.

"Don't even feel bad." I thought about it for a second. All we'd really done was clear a path between him and my wife. He chose how to pursue it. "Zero encouragement on your part. You were nice to him, that's it. The rest was ego entitlement. This is Kaden self imploding. I just didn't expect him to be so self aware he'd fight back."