Tessa Kinney

(from the television) "... exhale pressing to down dog, inhale to plank and then exhale back to down dog..."

"Ouch, SHIT",

Tessa Kinney is losing her mind slowly, however surely. She is a thirty-one year old woman who is pretty attractive in her own right, she's slight if anything and she doesn't really have to try. Regardless, she thinks she does and becomes increasingly exasperated with herself upon failed attempts at self-improvement. My prediction, too much spare time.

Her latest strategy has been yoga videos. The problem she has been encountering this time around is weak wrists. Years of laptop use have weakened her wrists and made some of the yoga postures uncomfortable for her. Truth be told, she's mostly just lazy. Her wrists would get better in time but she's really just looking for a way to get out of forcing herself to do the videos.

She does this every time. She used to ride a bicycle to work everyday and she stopped after only a few weeks claiming she smelled like sweat when she got there. In actuality she did smell a bit like sweat but she went to the gym in the same building as her office every morning before work anyway and showered there before she ever stepped foot inside.

Excuses, excuses.

"I want to die" she would ever so dramatically say to herself after every bag of chips, after every cookie, but she just continued to do as she always had done. She never really wanted to die, she just wanted her will power to work, or at the very least, for it to exist.

This latest round of self-delusion took a turn for the worst. Tuesday, in the lunchroom at work, Tessa ran into Jacob. Jacob was a bike-courier she knew from her apartment building. She was pretty sure he was into drugs but he had always seemed so docile and safe to her. One night she saw him in the hallway with a woman, a girlfriend she had assumed. The woman's face was covered with running mascara, she was looking at the floor and he was wiping her damp hair away from her eyes. She couldn't tell if they were wet and upset or sweaty and passionate but whatever they were they were alive and she couldn't remember feeling like that. It had been years since she had felt much of anything, short of self-pity. He turned and looked at Tessa, caught eyes for a moment and turned back to his lover. She fled the scene with haste.

She dreamt of him that night, and countless nights since. She couldn't explain it to herself. Maybe it was loneliness, maybe it was lust. Maybe, just maybe, it was a premonition.

Before she thought she spoke,

"Hi Jacob" and instantly her face was flushed with heat and red.
He turned to her, they met eyes and, "Oh hey, Tess right?", he said smiling.
"It's Tessa actually. Listen, I need to ask you something. I'm a bit embarrassed"
"Ok..."
"Um, Can you get pills?" not able to believe herself, how could she ask that?
"Yeah, sure. What are we talking about here? Vitamins!" he said with a smirk.
"Diet pills"
"Sure, yeah, I can get them for about a dollar a pop but it would take a couple of days" he showed confusion, or maybe surprise, with his eyes and burrowed forehead. She could never distinguish between the two expressions.
"Thanks, really. Thanks. Here's sixty-five dollars. I'll drop by on Friday to pick them up, ok?" She quickly put the money in his hand and turned to walk away.
"Tessa?" he called to her back.
"Yes?" she said turning to face him again.
They paused and held an awkward glance.
"... nothin', see you Friday."

She couldn't wait to see him again but she couldn't believe what she had done.