Prologue
ZEN AF
I generally thinkof myself as an even-tempered person.
Calm.
Composed.
Collected.
Cool under pressure.
Hell, I teach yoga, for god’s sake. And if ever there was an occasion tonotbe cool, it’s when you’re in a 105 degree Bikram studio with your whole body weight resting on your elbows and your legs bent backwards over your head in an invertedsayanasanapose.
Talk about getting bent out of shape for no reason…
Sorry.
What was I saying?
Oh, right.
Me.
Sedate, serene, steady-as-she-goes Shelby Hunt. The quiet woman who lives on the quiet corner of the quiet tree-lined street in the quiet Boston neighborhood. The very picture of suburban bliss, with her two-hundred-dollar haircut, a walk-in-closet full of designer clothes, a new car in the driveway every year, and a handsome, successful husband in her bed every night.
It’s such a pretty lie, evenIalmost believe it.
Almost.
The truth is, there’s nothing remotely perfect about my life, or than man I’ve spent the past decade sharing it with. And there’s certainly nothing evenslightlyquiet about the past few days, given the sheer hell that’s broken loose…
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before I fill you in on the series of unfortunate events that have, for all intents and purposes, flipped my whole world on its axis, I need you to understand something. I’m not some swooning damsel who faints at the first sign of danger and waits for a man to swoop in and save her. I am no delicate flower, wilting in the heat as soon as things don’t go my way. It takes a lot to get me worked up; to ruffle the glossy feathers I take such painstaking effort to present to the outside world.
I mean…
Imeditate. Igarden. I own not one buttwoaromatherapy candles. (Granted, I only burn them once a year since they smell a bit like patchouli and make my eyes sting… But that’s not the point.)
Whatismy point, you ask?
Simply this: that I, Shelby Hunt, have never been the kind of woman who screams or throws tantrums when life doesn’t go her way — which, despite what an outsider might think looking in on my seemingly perfect life, is more often than not.
I take things as they come and don’t complain, because, in my experience, complaining rarely accomplishes much of anything. Why bitch over life’s many unfortunate twists and turns when, instead, you could take all that useless angst and channel it into something productive? Like, say, the ability to breathe deeply through a head-to-footsirsa padasanapose, even after your pelvis has lost proper circulation from contorting into a veritable pretzel?
See — I’mtotallychill.
Cool as a cucumber.
No.
Coolerthan a cucumber.
Placid as a pickle. Even-keeled as an eggplant. Untroubled as a… a…
Curse the lack of produce beginning with the letter U.