Sole Devotion

The dirt road up to the lodge ate my Corolla's suspension the whole way. Twelve miles of gravel and potholes. Worth it, though, because the place sat in a bowl of firs with mist sitting on top of the trees like a lid.

I'm Isabelle. Twenty-three, yoga certified, and broke enough to say yes when a client wants a private session on a Friday evening at a lodge three hours from my apartment. The pay was my usual private rate, for yoga. We settled that over the phone before I ever left town. Money first, then the mat. That's how I run it.

The lodge used to be a hunting camp. Somebody converted the wide porch into a studio, wide-plank fir floors, big windows facing the trees. It smelled like cedar and old smoke. No incense. I liked it already.

Simon was already there when I came in.

Forty-five, he'd told me. Forest service, retired early after an injury. Tall in a folded-up way, gray coming in at the temples, flannel shirt with the sleeves pushed back. He sat cross-legged on the mat at the far end of the room, hands on his knees, like he'd been holding that position for an hour waiting for me.

"Hey," I said. "Simon, right?"

He stood up too fast. "Yeah. Hi. You found us okay?"

"Eventually. Your road is a crime."

He laughed at that. A real laugh, short. "The county keeps promising to grade it. That promise is older than both of us."

I set my bag down by the wall and kicked off my sandals at the door. Studio rules, and honestly my rules too. I like working barefoot. I hooked the sandals on the rack and padded across the planks, and I felt him watch me do it. Not my face. My feet.

I've been teaching for two years. I know what eyes on bare feet means. I clocked it, said nothing, unrolled my mat across from his.

"Late session works for you?" I asked.

"Best time. Quiet." He sat back down. "The lodge clears out by five. Nobody on the trails, nobody in here."

"Nobody but us."

"Right." His hands were flat on his knees and I swear his fingers were pressing hard enough to whiten the knuckles.

We started slow. I led him through a warmup flow, cat cow, some standing stuff, easy breathing. He was stiff in the hips but he listened well. Some clients argue with their own bodies the whole hour. Simon just did what I said and breathed. Retiree patience, I guess.

"Good," I said. "Now we do the partnered stuff. That's why you booked the private, yeah? Your form said assisted stretches."

"That's right."

Assisted forward fold was first on my list. He sits, legs out. I stand behind him, hands on his shoulders, and walk my weight down through him as he folds. It's a good stretch for tight hamstrings, and for me it's about reading his breath through my palms.

I got set up behind him. My bare feet planted on either side of his hips. He looked down at them and then away, fast, like a guy caught reading somebody's mail.

"Breathe out," I said, and leaned.

He folded. Tight everywhere, but he went. I pressed steady, counted his breaths, eased off, pressed again. His shoulders were shaking a little under my hands. Not strain. Strain I know. This was something else.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah." It came out dry. "Sorry. Just, it's been a long time since anybody touched my shoulders. Anybody at all, really."

I eased him up slow. He sat back upright and stared at his own knees.

"I lost my wife three years ago," he said. "Cancer. Fast. She was forty-two when it took her and I've been on my own since."

"Oh. God. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It is what it is. I'm not telling you to make it weird. I'm telling you because I'm about to say something else and I'd rather you know I'm not some random creep. I'm a grieving widower who's been sitting on one thing for a very long time and never said it out loud to anybody."

I sat down on my heels across from him. "Okay. I'm listening."

He took a breath like he was about to deadlift something.

"You noticed I watched your feet," he said. "When you took off your sandals."

"Yeah. I noticed."

"I booked this session because of that. Because of the feet." His voice cracked a little and he pushed through it. "The lodge has a barefoot policy in the studio. I read that on the site and I read it four times. I don't need the assisted stretches, Isabelle. I mean, I do, my hamstrings are a disaster. But that's not why I drove twelve miles of gravel road and booked a private for a Friday night. I have a thing about feet. A fetish. The real kind, the kind you don't pick, and I have never in my life asked a woman for anything around it."

The mist moved on the windows. A finch hit the feeder outside and flew off. I let the silence sit for a second, because I didn't want to answer fast and I didn't want him reading that as rejection either.

"That's a hell of a confession," I said.

"Yeah."

"You're trembling."

"I know." He held his hands up, and they were shaking. "Forty-five years old and my hands won't behave."

"Okay, well. First, thank you for being straight with me instead of just sneaking looks all session and leaving me to guess." I shifted my weight. "Second. What exactly are you asking for? Say it plain, because I don't do vague."

He looked at my feet, then dragged his eyes up to my face. That took effort. I could see it take effort.

"I'm asking if I could touch your feet. Maybe hold them. Kiss them, if you'd allow it. That's the shape of the thing. Nothing past that tonight unless you wanted it, and I'd ask first either way."

"And the money," I said. "That's for the session. The yoga. That part's settled and it stays settled, and the yoga hour is the only thing it covers. Anything past that is off the clock, free, and it's because two adults wanted it, not because of what anybody paid. If I say stop at any point, we stop, and you still get your stretches. I need you to hear that."

"I hear it." He nodded, quick and firm. "The session is the session. I'd never tie the two."

"Good."

I looked at him for a second. He'd been honest before I asked. He'd asked before he touched anything. Nobody had laid a hand on me. Those were the boxes I check, and he'd checked them all himself, unprompted, with shaking hands and a dead wife in his backstory that I believed because grief like that doesn't get faked for foot access.

"I'll be honest with you too," I said. "I've never done anything like that. Feet. It was never my thing."

"It doesn't have to be your thing," he said. "I know what I'm asking. It's a strange ask."

"It's not the strangest thing I've heard in this job." I wiggled my toes on the cold planks. "But I want you to know it's not a no. It's a maybe. And maybes need a minute."

"Take the minute. Take an hour." He actually smiled, small and crooked. "I've waited three years. I can wait sixty more minutes."

"Smooth," I said, and he laughed again, that same short real laugh.

I got up and crossed to the windows, barefoot on the fir, and looked at the mist eating the treeline. Behind me I heard him settle back onto his heels, patient as a stump, and I thought about what exactly a yes from me would look like, and whose hands I'd want on my arches, and how strange and warm it felt that I already knew the answer.

I turned around. He was still on his heels, hands flat on his thighs, waiting like a man at a bus stop in the rain.

"Simon," I said. "You can touch."

His whole face changed. Not a grin. Something quieter. Like a knot coming loose.

"Yeah?" he said. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure. I thought about it while I was staring at the trees like a weirdo. And I want to be in on this, not just tolerant of it. There's a difference."

"There is," he said. "Believe me, there is."

"Then come here. Slow, though. You're still shaking."

He crawled across the mat to me, which should have looked silly and didn't. He stopped short of touching, close enough I could see the gray in his stubble. He held up one hand.

"May I?"

"You may."

He took my right foot in both hands. And I mean took it. Cradled it. He held it the way I'd hold a bird with a hurt wing, or an egg, or something you'd find in an attic that used to matter to somebody. He turned it over slowly. He looked at my sole, my arch, my toes, like a map he'd been studying from memory for years and finally got to see in person.

"God," he said, mostly to himself. "Just. God!"

"You okay over there?"

"No," he said, and laughed. "Yes. I don't know. Give me a second. I've pictured this and the picture was worse. The real thing is