Work Text:
The first gift was beautiful but not extraordinary. Ani, as she insisted her clients call her, checked the care instructions for her new plant and rearranged the table so that its glossy leaves would get the appropriate amount of sunlight. The simple florist’s card said Thank you without a signature.
She called the florist, who assured her that they had meant to deliver to her yoga studio. With a little more pressing, the woman admitted that the order had been placed online with a gift card. Ani wasn’t sure what she was being thanked for, but it felt nice to be appreciated.
Ani nearly missed the second gift because the roads and walkways in front of her studio were a mess. She barely managed to spot the nondescript cardboard box among the celebratory debris from Metros fans. It was a significant downside to having a place near Bell Centre, but she couldn’t complain much. She had joined in on the celebrations; their home team had just won the Stanley Cup for the third time six years.
She bent down to collect her package, wincing a little as her temple throbbed from a hangover. The shipping label had an unfamiliar shop name and address on it, and Ani frowned.
She checked the soil of her monstera plant as she walked by, reminding herself to water it. “Susan, did you order anything from Akasha Bowls?”
“No, but the name rings a bell.”
Her partner pulled out her phone and searched for the vendor as Ani opened the box. She gasped as she carefully lifted out a green quartz singing bowl from its custom storage case. She couldn’t resist running her finger around the rim.
Despite dismantling the entire box and all the packaging, she couldn’t find who sent them the gift. All she found was another card that just read, Thank you.
“Ani, you won’t believe how much this thing sells for in their online store!”
It’s possible that Ani should have counted the third gift as eighteen separate ones. Just in time for a beautiful summer, she received a wine subscription. The website touted the distributor’s efforts to feature small wineries and the portion of profits that went to charity.
When she entered her gift membership, she gasped. Apparently, she was going to be receiving carefully curated boxes of wine every month for the next year and half. The gift had come as an email, and that time there was no note.
Susan’s parents were getting older, and the drive to Ottawa felt longer every month. When the bakery adjoining Ani and Susan’s studio caught fire, it felt like a sign. The studio would be closed for a few weeks, and it seemed as good of a time as any to look into moving. Before Ani took her partner out of town, she asked a few of her clients, the ones from Ottawa, for realtor recommendations and neighborhood suggestions.
She emailed all four of the names she got from clients, and, to her shock, she got the quickest response from Shane’s referral. Ani would never have expected someone used to working with professional athletes would be so invested in helping her and Susan find the perfect new home and studio.
As they signed their papers, she thanked their realtor profusely, and he replied, “No, no. Thank you.”
When Shane was outed the week that she was supposed to move, Ani insisted that she would keep him as a client. After all, how could she ask him to try and build a rapport with someone new when he was under so much stress? Fortunately, he spent a lot of time in Ottawa when his schedule allowed, so she didn’t have to drive to Montreal often.
She sipped her coffee and checked the road conditions with a frown. The snow had fallen most of the night, and she wished she could bring herself to cancel all her appointments to stay in bed. Instead, she tugged on her coat and trudged outside, mentally preparing herself to shovel out her car.
She opened the door and gasped. Her driveway and front walk were shoveled, and her car was clear and ready to drive. In the snow that had collected in her yard, someone had written, Thank you.
Ani was taking a well-deserved break from closing out their studio’s books for the month, when the bell over their studio door rang. She ignored it in favor of scrolling through Instagram, laughing at the photos of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov playing tourists on their honeymoon. She was about to comment on a picture of them at the base of a human tower when Susan called out, “Ani, come up here and help me!”
“Be right there!”
She gasped as she stepped into the lobby of their Ottawa yoga studio. She could barely see the window past the plethora of balloons dancing on their ribbon tethers. Each one had a variation on Thank you, some in English and French, with one notable balloon shaped like a wide-brimmed hat that said Gracias. Ani chortled as one of them repeatedly bopped her partner in the head; Susan giggled back at her.
They were breathless and grinning when Ani found the card among the chaos.
Thank you so much for your work. Yoga is a wonderful practice. – Ilya Rozanov
Susan blinked down at the card. “We’ve never taught Ilya Rozanov, right? Just his husband… so why would he send us a thank you gift?”
When Ani started laughing again, she fell onto her ass among her balloons.