The next morning the studio felt less like a gift and more like a test.
That was probably healthier.
Beautiful rooms are dangerous when a woman has just escaped one form of fantasy and is vulnerable to another. Better to understand the room for what it was: useful, expensive, precise, and entirely indifferent to whether I succeeded inside it.
The retractable training display was already awake when I walked in, the third movement section running silently across the far wall in a clean loop of difficult intent.
Today there would be no Auston.
No lawyer.
No failed marriage.
Just me, the mirror, the barre, the taped hand, and the humiliating fact that the body always knows exactly how much of itself it has truly gotten back.
I warmed up slowly.
Ankles first.
Hips.
Shoulders.
Breath
