When Mar Meyer's husband divorces her for another woman, she reacts by abandoning everything in her past: her home, her friends, even her name. Though it's not easy to start over, Mar is young-looking, fit, and ready for new adventures - as long as she can keep things casual.

With each passing month, Mar goes from one acquaintance to the next. Among them: a fellow gym member down on her luck, a flirty hip-hop instructor, a bossy but comical consultant, a kindly older gentleman . . . and Charlie, a handsome best-selling novelist who wants more from Mar than she's able to give. She learns something new from each encounter. But can she change enough to open herself up to happiness and true connection?

Surrounded by an ensemble of quirky, endearing characters, Mar follows a tortuous and unpredictable path as she navigates the first year of her reinvented life. My Year of Casual Acquaintances is packed with laugh-out-loud moments mingled with scenes of loneliness and self-doubt that will put a lump in your throat.

Excerpt

(In My Year of Casual Acquaintances, narrator Mar is trying to reinvent herself after the breakup of her long marriage. She joins a new gym where she’s determined to meet people and enjoy fun, commitment-free relationships. She assigns nicknames to fellow gym members rather than learn their names. This excerpt describes an encounter in a yoga class with an attractive man she has dubbed “Sexy Eyes.”)

Marlene instructs the class to start in a cross-legged seated pose and tells us to place our hands in a position that sounds something like Angelina Jolie. Then she repeats the phrase and I now understand it to be anjali mudra, which describes the simple gesture of pressing your palms together in front of the heart. What follows is a succession of poses that Marlene calls out in rapid-fire Sanskrit. We engage our mula bandha, drop down in Chaturanga, perform a swooping vinyasa, invert ourselves into a V-shaped Adho Mukha Svanasana, find our drishti as we balance one-legged in Vrksasana to resemble a tree, squat down into an imaginary chair in Utkatasana, salute the sun with Surya Namaskar, and so much more.

My comprehension of Sanskrit is about on par with my fluency in Mandarin, but I stumble along, trying to keep up. I find it helpful to watch Sexy Eyes and follow his lead. His long body is agile and lithe, flowing from one pose to another with effortless skill. He has a light winter suntan that suggests an affinity for outdoor activities. His hair is dark on top but graying around the edges, straight and thick, in a boyish cut that tumbles across his face whenever he lowers his head or turns sideways in the twisty poses. His biceps and triceps, thigh muscles, and calves all tauten as he moves from pose to pose. His limbs are well-sculpted, but his is not the bulging physique of a bodybuilder – which is fine by me, since I regard the muscleman look as a major turnoff.

The truth is, I’m not watching Sexy Eyes to guide me through the poses as much as I’m ogling him. And why not? I haven’t been with a man in a long time, and without question, this man is highly ogleable. I reflect with catty pleasure that there’s no way Alice can derive this kind of pleasure from observing Henry, whose pale limbs and long bloated torso have gone soft and fleshy from years of inactivity – though in the bedroom, I guess, he hasn’t exactly been inactive. Stop thinking about Henry, I command myself. I steal another glance at Sexy Eyes for distraction.

Near the end of class, as we execute a recumbent spinal twist, Marlene sits in a serene lotus pose, organizing small towels into a neat pile. I’m all in favor of multi-tasking, but is it appropriate for her to be folding her laundry? It isn’t until we assume our final corpse pose, or savasana, and she tiptoes around the room to distribute a warm towel to each of us, that I understand the lavender-scented cloths are to enhance our final relaxation with aromatherapy.

I nearly burst out laughing at my own cluelessness, but Sexy Eyes turns his head toward me as he adjusts his pose, and our brief eye contact stifles my impulse to laugh. As I take in the soothing scent of the lavender, my eyelids grow heavy. The next thing I know, Marlene is summoning the group back to consciousness with a gentle voice to lead us through the final om. I’m so drowsy it takes a massive effort to pry open my eyes.

On our way out of the studio, Sexy Eyes asks me, “Did you enjoy the class?”

I smile up at him. “I did. But all those yoga terms go way over my head. I need a cheat sheet with translations and drawings.”

“You might try Marlene’s Introduction to Yoga class. Only English is spoken there.” He must see my smile fade because he adds, “Kidding. Keep coming back and you’ll catch on in no time.”

Is he being polite, or is that an invitation? I’ve no idea, but I float downstairs to the lobby, my body humming with an unexpected frisson of excitement. I can hardly wait to get back to hatha yoga to work on all those unpronounceable poses.

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About the Author

Ruth F. Stevens likes to create stories that will make readers laugh and cry. A former public relations executive in New York and Los Angeles, she is a produced playwright and author of a previous novel, Stage Seven, which was a featured selection of national online book club and Alzheimer’s awareness organizations. Ruth is a proud member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and the Dramatists Guild of America and serves as a volunteer and acquisitions editor for AlzAuthors.

Ruth lives in Torrance, California with her husband. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, hiking, hip-hop and fitness classes, yoga, Broadway musicals, wine tasting, leading a book club, and visiting her grandsons in NYC. Visit Ruth at https://ruthfstevens.com and consider signing up for her monthly newsletter to receive publishing updates, book reviews, and special offers.

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