by Mimi Strong
I rolled out of bed and took myself to the bathroom for a hot shower and a big glass of water.
As agonizing as the workshop sounded, it was something to do, to keep my mind off Dalton Deangelo. As I washed my hair, I thought about his bumpy abdominal muscles, and how some other girl would be enjoying them. Maybe he was showering with her right now! Euch, what a pig.
I sincerely hoped that the dinner rolls he ate the night before were converting to fat at that very moment, because I’m mean like that.
The workshop was at the Beaverdale Community Center, and we took Shayla’s little Rav. Thanks to coffee and toast, I was feeling human.
We parked the Rav in front of Black Sheep Books, and we both hissed like angry cats at the window display of our enemy as we walked by.
“They have dead flies in their front window,” Shayla said.
“Figures.” I narrowed my eyes at the red-painted bricks. Just as Superman has his Lex Luthor, Peachtree Books has Black Sheep Books. I have, on occasion, threatened to burn them to the ground, but they had it coming.
“Doesn’t look very busy in there,” Shayla said.
The little store was full of customers—at least five people—but it was good of my best friend to demonstrate her loyalty by lying.
I pushed my sunglasses up my nose, enjoying the sun on my pale skin. Catching glimpses of myself in shop windows, I liked what I saw. After I turned twenty-two, I stopped looking like a pudgy teenager and turned into a voluptuous woman. My blond hair had darkened through my teens, and I’d recently started getting highlights put in at my hairdresser’s.
That morning, most of my favorite clothes were in the laundry, so I’d put on my favorite turquoise dress with a black belt. The brilliant shade of blue brought out my eyes and made me look neither tan nor pale, and the hem line ended at the exact perfect spot above my knee—the almost-skinny stretch. Around my neck, I wore chunky wood beads that tied in with my cork-soled sandals. Not bad for a hangover morning.
Shayla wore jean cutoffs and a striped shirt with a wide neck, falling off the shoulder.
A man in a city-worker reflective vest wolf-whistled at us from where he was kneeling on the sidewalk, tugging out a dandelion by its root.
“For shame, Lester,” Shayla said to him. “I’m your cousin.”
Lester wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, his thick bicep tanned and rippling beneath the sleeve of his tight, bright-white T-shirt.
“The whistle was for Peaches,” he said, grinning. “She ain’t my cousin.”
I linked arms with Shayla and giggled like we were thirteen again and talking to out-of-town boys at a softball game.
After we were past hearing range of Lester, Shayla said, “They can smell it on you. One night with a man attracts more men.”
I shoved her away. “Gross.”
“Not literally, dumbass. You just wait, though. This is going to be your summer. Grandma Clever taught me to trust my intuition, and I can feel it in my bones.” She poked me in the arm with one fingertip. “The object of your ladyboner lust will be back. Dalton Deangelo is going to call, and you should give him another chance.”
I glanced back over my shoulder at Lester, who had been following my butt with his eyes and looked away quickly. He had such broad shoulders, and he was always tanned from the landscaping work he did around town. I did not care for the Birkenstock sandals he wore with wool socks, but that was just a wardrobe flaw. I’d never considered Lester Dean as a dating option before, but he was recently separated from his wife, and not that much older than me—barely thirty. An older man was certainly intriguing.
“What do you think of Lester?” I asked Shayla.
“Irrelevant. Dalton Deangelo will call.”
She pulled open the glass door of the community center and we stepped into the brutally air-conditioned space, the air so cold it gave me goose bumps. My father would have freaked out over the waste of taxpayer dollars.
Shayla continued, “Once you two start dating, you can invite me along to exciting Hollywood parties.”
Hollywood parties? No, I didn’t think so. Meeting Dalton had been fun, but all that nonsense he’d said about us being stardust seemed ridiculous—ridiculous like the cheesy lines Drake the vampire always said to his waif-like love interest of the week.
Shayla and I travelled down a corridor and found the room of our workshop. The hand-lettered sign read:
Charm - A Workshop for Ladies!!
Your teacher: Dottie!!!
Shayla and I took two seats at the back and checked our phones for messages before the class started. People milled around us, taking their seats.
A woman’s hand, short-fingered and covered in jewelry, snatched my phone from my hand. “What if I’d been a handsome fellow?” she asked.
I stared up at her, my jaw dropping open. She had pale skin, beautifully wrinkled with laugh lines, bright pink lipstick, and twinkling blue eyes. Her hair was chin-length and as pink as her lips. As pink as a Halloween wig.
She continued, her words clear and crisp with spaces between, like little bells ringing, “You. Won’t. Find. Him. If. You’re. Texting.”
I reached for my phone. “Maybe he’s texting me right now.”
The women seated around us laughed.
The pink-haired lady, who looked to be around seventy, tucked my phone into the pocket of her flower-patterned dress, and strode up to the front of the meeting room.
“He’s not texting you. You wouldn’t be here if he was. It’s Sunday, and if you had yourself a big hunky man, you’d be doing the crossword together in bed. And by crossword I mean sex stuff.”
A lady near me sighed.
The pink-haired lady continued, “My name is Dottie Simpkins, I’m seventy-two, and I drive a convertible with a bumper sticker that says ‘If the sun’s up, the top’s down.’ I’ve been married six times, and if you take all my advice today, I guarantee you can cut that number in half, minimum.” She stepped up to an easel that held a number of poster-sized cards and flipped over the front one to reveal a drawing of a mermaid. “Lesson One. Keeping your legs together.”
I turned to look at Shayla, my expression asking her what the fuckity-fuck she’d gotten us into. She batted her dark eyelashes at me, her gold eyes amused.
I whispered, “You’re the worst.”
Dottie snapped her fingers. “Young lady! You, in the turquoise. Thank you for speaking during the session and thereby volunteering to do the demonstration.” She clapped her hands together. “Up, up. Up from your chair and join me here. You seem like the type who learns better by doing than by being shown.”
I scowled at Shayla as I shuffled past, giving her my best you’re-dead-to-me look.
Dottie pushed one strand of cotton-candy-pink hair behind her ear and stared at my legs as I walked up.
Nodding, she said, “You probably don’t like the feeling of your thighs rubbing together, do you? You walk like a cowboy.”
I put my hands on my hips, my face flushing hot with embarrassment. “Maybe I have dry skin and I wouldn’t want to catch myself on fire.”
The group of ladies seated—about two dozen, most of them well over forty—laughed at my comment. At this, Dottie seemed to relax, giving me a wink and a smile that made me feel pretty. I’d heard about the woman before, from another class Shayla had attended, and now I could see what she meant about Dottie’s terrifying yet magnetic personality.
“Let’s all stand for this,” Dottie said.
The women set their purses on the chairs and we formed a standing circle in the open half of the room.
She continued, her words still like bells, but running together now like an entrancing melody. “Ladies, stretch your bodies up tall and shift your weight over your heels where it’s supposed to be. Relax your toes and let them be light as air, light as little helium balloons. If a sheet of paper could slide under your toes, you’re doing it right. Now, I want you to close your eyes and own the g
round beneath you.”
In the silence that followed, the chatty part of my brain started up a monologue. This is my ground, my space. You don’t shush me, Dalton Deangelo. Nobody shushes me on my ground.
“Encourage your chattering mind to be still,” Dottie said, as if she’d been reading my thoughts. “Keep standing and owning your ground. Keep your toes light and your spirit will soar. Here’s another thought: Be yourself, because everyone else is taken. Fat or thin, be your wild, wonderful, unique self. Now when you’re ready, I’d like you to gently open your eyes and take a look around, not at the carpet in this room or the furniture, but at what matters. Have a look at the people around you, and all of their beautiful faces. Our lives are all different, yet we share in this tapestry of life. Fate has tugged on each of our threads today, and here we are together. Why? Because it was meant to be. Now gently open your eyes and look around at the beauty and collective wisdom in this room.”
I opened my eyes and beheld the woman standing across from me. She looked surprised, her eyes wide open, taking everything in as though for the very first time. Her hair was long, thick, and a mix of white and silver. She offered me a smile, and there was such kindness, it made my own eyes sting with a flush of grateful tears at the ready.
Blinking, I looked to the next woman, who was as round and short as the previous one was tall and thin. She had short, spiked hair, dyed red, and seemingly endless piercings in her earlobes, nose, lips, and eyebrows.
Dottie gently urged us to keep looking around the room, silently greeting each other. I recognized several of the women as regular customers at the bookstore, which made sense, as we do sell a number of self-help books.
The third woman I looked at was my third grade teacher, Mrs. Chan. She was a little older now, but her hair was still pure black and swept up in the bun I remembered. I enjoyed the look on her face as it scrunched up, puzzled, then relaxed into a smile as she placed where she knew me from. The woman next to her had to be her daughter, with the same round face and brown eyes.
Except for the mother and daughter duo, Dottie was certainly right about every woman in the group being completely unique.
Dottie gently called our attention back to herself and repeated, “Be yourself, because everyone else is taken. Every one of us is a role model. We just don’t know yet for whom.”
I was nodding before she finished her sentence.
The rest of the workshop was quite the experience, and not at all what I’d expected.
Charm, as Dottie explained it, is a combination of using your feminine charms and embracing your individuality. To draw a man to you, you stand or sit in such a way that one toe points at him. That should lure him in, bringing him over with an offer to dance or buy you a drink. Then, when you’ve got him near your claws (ha ha, I mean hands), you gaze up at him like he’s a strawberry sundae while discreetly stroking the parts of your body you want to draw attention to.
When we got to that part of the workshop, I raised my hand and said, “What part do I rub to draw attention to my brains?”
Dottie didn’t miss a beat. She said, “Honey, it’s not a job interview, so I suggest you go with the boobs,” and moved on to the next question.
Shayla scrunched her face at me. “Smartass.”
“Hey. Smartass is who I am. I’m an original.”
Dottie squealed and grabbed me in a spontaneous hug. “You’re doing so well!”
Over her shoulder, I stuck my tongue out at Shayla.
She mouthed the words teacher’s pet.
I left the workshop feeling more confused than ever. Three hours of being told to be yourself but also act in specific, manipulative ways will do that to you.
Shayla was trailing behind me on the walk back to her Rav.
“Hold up, I’m doing the mermaid walk,” she said.
“You look ridiculous.”
She was walking the way Dottie had taught us, with her upper legs close together, like she was wearing an invisible tight skirt instead of her jean cutoffs with the frayed edges.
Once she finally caught up to me, she said, “Hey, let’s try out our new charms on that hottie over there.” She pointed her chin to a man who was puzzling over a parking meter. “Just for practice,” she said.
I would have agreed, but the very tall, very handsome Nordic-looking man with the broad shoulders and narrow waist was not suitable for practice. He was more like the final exam. He was the man equivalent of a PhD thesis paper.
Shayla abandoned her mermaid walk and dragged me up to Mr. Clearly Not From Around Here.
“They don’t need to be fed on Sundays,” she said.
“Who?”
“The parking meters, silly.”
He turned to her, and I followed his gaze as it travelled from Shayla’s eyes to her lips and then to her fingertips, which were rubbing back and forth along her collarbone and exposed shoulder, where her striped shirt was falling off.
Dottie had recommended wearing high-maintenance clothing that required constant adjustment. Men are attracted women who are constantly correcting their clothing, or so Dottie said. I had a little pebble in my cork-soled sandals, but I didn’t think she meant I should take my shoe off my sweaty foot and shake it around to impress this guy.
“I guess I scrounged up a pocket full of change for nothing,” he said. His voice was deep, but I shouldn’t have been surprised, since it had so far to go, up that long neck of his. How tall was he? Six foot four? At least.
He had a good-sized shoe on him, too. My whole body experienced a naughty, tingling sensation as I drank him in with my eyes, from his hiking boots to his lightweight brown chinos and up. My gaze got stuck briefly around his zipper, pondering exactly what was causing a sizable shadow in that area. A wrinkle in the fabric? A giant python? A tree trunk for one to climb with her bare-naked vagina?
Oh dear. My cheeks flushed with heat, and my nervous hands went to my hair, twirling strands between my fingers.
That had been another one of Dottie’s man-charming tricks: twirl your hair and draw a strand across your mouth, dragging your fingers across your lips to make him think about you touching his naughty business with those lips. (Okay, she didn’t say that last part, but come on.)
Shayla beat me to it, already rubbing one forefinger against her lower lip as she gazed up at the stranger with her golden eyes, artfully peeking through a fringe of eyelashes.
The muscles in his cheeks moved as he clenched his handsome jaw, smooth shaven with just a few specks of his gold-hued beard hair, glowing in the afternoon sun like grains of brown sugar on a cinnamon bun. Heaven help me, but he was one beautiful man, from his dreamy blue eyes to his thick, sun-bleached hair and fair eyebrows.
I hadn’t seen a man so utterly breathtaking since high school, when I’d been the President, Secretary, and only member of the Adrian Storm Appreciation Club. Adrian had been tall as well, but so scrawny that our art teacher joked that the metal lip ring was the only thing keeping him from blowing away in a stiff breeze. Adrian always wore extra-large black T-shirts for his favorite bands—shirts so big you could have fit two Adrians in them—and I’d dutifully note the names of the bands and listen to their music as though Adrian had recommended them to me personally. I didn’t like the same music he did, nor his favorite movies. Our tastes were polar opposites, but I could appreciate the things he liked, and I thought that with enough exposure, I might also like them.
One of his favorite bands, if you believed the T-shirts, was Led Zeppelin. Which was kind of a funny coincidence, given that this handsome, muscular stranger in front of me was also wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt over his broad chest.
Hot buttered noodles, it was him. Adrian Storm.
CHAPTER 6
At the sight of Adrian Storm, my blood did that thing where it turns to iced tea. You’ve got warm blood in you one minute, then iced tea.
Right there, in the sexy indentation below his lower lip, was the tiniest knob of scar tissue from
where the stainless steel lip ring had been. The one he’d flicked while waiting for the slow lab computers to load up yearbook photos.
“Looks like you got the wrong size shirt,” he said to Shayla. “This one keeps trying to get away from you.” He reached down and shifted the wide-necked striped shirt so it was centered again and not falling off Shayla’s lovely chocolate milk shoulder.
“It’s supposed to do that,” Shayla said, pulling the shirt to the side again and sweeping her fingertips across her bare skin.
Adrian turned to me, the full force of his gorgeousness nearly knocking me down in my hungover, post-workshop, confused state. “I used to wear shirts that were way too big. Remember that, Peaches?”
“Looks like you grew into your collection, big boy,” I said. “You’re all bumpy now.”
Shayla shot me a look of shock, but she knew as well as anyone that my mouth does not wait for my brain to send orders.
“I’d say the same about you,” he said, those dazzling blue eyes roving down my body slowly, seeking every valley like a summer rainstorm.
“Adrian!” Shayla yelled, recognizing him at last.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “That dress is the perfect color for you, isn’t it? Take off those sunglasses and let me see your pretty eyes.”
I snatched away the sunglasses and crossed my arms over my chest. “My eyes are up here. Stop eye-groping my peaches.”
Adrian chuckled, his chiseled cheeks taking on a rosy glow.
He said, “What are you up to these days? Are you just visiting, or did you never leave B-town?”
“I went away to college.”
Shayla snorted. “For one and a half semesters.”
I shot her a searing shut-up look. “At least mine’s paid off.”
“I’m a disappointment, too,” Adrian said, lowering his eyes, his long, fair eyelashes nearly brushing his cheeks. “I guess I should just come right out and admit the awful truth.”