As I walked into the class my mind was elsewhere, still reeling from the argument I’d had with Eric. I laid out my mat, took off my shoes and sat down, folding in half, stretching my hands towards my toes. It didn’t feel great, and I wondered why I was never one to feel the endorphins you heard people discuss in relation to exercise. I mean okay, so I was only stretching but still, it would be nice. Allison came in, tossed her mat next to mine, laid down and groaned.

“Why do we do this?” she asked.

“Because we’re shallow and vain,” I replied.

Allison is a gorgeous blonde bombshell, and I hate her for it. At 5’8″, she has a good three inches on me and while her thick blonde mane is natural, I am paying a fortune to have highlights added to my boringly dirty blonde hair. She is curvy and has long legs, and there isn’t a guy in the world who doesn’t do a double take when she enters the room. Other than that, though, I love her. She has become my best friend, which is why I lay next to her and announce that I want to kill my husband.

“Why is that, as if I didn’t already know?” she asks.

“Because he’s an insensitive jerk who doesn’t ever stop to consider how I feel.”

“What’s he done now?”

“He’s told his parents we’d be happy to join them in Hawaii, so that we’ll be vacationing together again, and we all know how well that worked at Christmas.”

Over Christmas, we had gone skiing with his parents, who are not fond of me. A fact their son refuses to acknowledge. His father is insanely competitive, and his mother is stuck in the 50’s and thinks men are meant to be served. Granted, I too, can be overly competitive, but I know better than to belittle people who aren’t so athletically inclined. His father is a jerk and his mother is convinced that I am secretly gay. A fact I overheard her expressing to her other daughter in-law while we were in Aspen. Apparently it’s not normal for a girl to be so boisterous when watching a football game.

“Why would they invite you?”

“Because they want to drive a wedge between us, and guess what, it’s working.”

“I’ll go with you, and we can make them think I’m your secret lover,” she teased.

“That would be so brilliant and it would serve Eric right.”

“When are you going? Maybe Dan and I could happen to be there at the same time.”

“Don’t toy with me, Allison. That would be too great.”

“I’m not. I’m not working, and Dan has 6 weeks of vacation this year. We were discussing just last night how we have to decide what weeks he’s taking.”

And so that is how it came to be that we all vacationed together that fateful summer.