Becoming Zara

by Lillianna Blake

  I bit my lip. “Maybe…”

  “I’d love to see you start interacting with two men that you find interesting from the dating site. You might not get to the point of setting up a first meeting just yet, but if you can get first dates set up with them before we meet, all the better. That will be the goal anyway.”

  “Got it.”

  I was suddenly feeling pretty positive about the whole thing. We made arrangements to meet at a coffee shop near my condo, and I handed the phone back to Judy feeling rather proud of myself.

  “Thanks. This might be just what I need.”

  “I think so too. So see you next week at our regular time then?”

  “Sounds good. We should have lots to talk about after I meet with your friend the love doctor.”

  We both laughed as Judy saw me to the door.

  “Yes, and you might even have a date or two to tell me about.” She smiled and my heart lurched again at the thought of actually going on a date.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself that this was going to be a fun experiment.

  I sipped my wine and stared at the profile pictures that I’d pulled up on the dating site. I started by looking at the ones that had been matched to me and had already shown an interest. I quickly deleted the ones who had the words “chubby chaser” anywhere in their description or said anything at all about fetishes of any type. That was all just a bit weird to me, even if the fetish didn’t have to do with a particular body shape. So there went Tom, Josh, Bill, and Franklin.

  Next, I looked closer at their profiles to see which ones seemed the most interesting to me. I had the thought that it might be clever for a dating site to not show the client the picture of the person one was considering until after they’d had a chance to review their entire profile of information. I was trying to do that myself now, but my eyes kept wandering over to the image on the left-hand side of the page.

  I sighed. There was just no getting around physical attraction. I was sure even the good love doctor would agree with me there but I’d be interested to know her thoughts on the matter. For now, I made the decision to stop fighting my instinct and eliminate those who I knew I had zero physical attraction to. Shallow perhaps, but honest—and I was trying to be more honest with myself these days, after all.

  Now I was left with Anthony, George, Prescott, Timothy, and Maneesh. Of the five, I was a little surprised to find that I was most attracted to Maneesh, who was born in the United States but of full Indian descent. Apparently I wasn’t only attracted to tall blond men after all. Before thinking about it too long, I drafted a quick note introducing myself and sent it off to Maneesh.

  One down.

  After studying Prescott’s profile page and picture, I made the gut decision that I couldn’t date a guy named Prescott. It just sounded way too pretentious, and in reading his profile I did get that vibe from him, so he was now officially off my list.

  From an attraction standpoint, I’d probably be the next most attracted to Anthony, so I copied and pasted the same note to him that I’d sent to Maneesh. So those were the two hopefuls.

  I knew that Dr. Reese didn’t have an expectation that I’d actually have dates set up before I saw her the next day, but being the overachiever that I was, I decided to send off notes to the other two men as well, increasing the odds that one of them would get back to me before the meeting.

  I tried to put out of my mind the fact that I was sending these communications early evening on a Saturday night, which suddenly seemed like a bad idea. I didn’t want to be the loser woman home on a weekend night, but at the same time I had to promise myself that I wouldn’t think poorly if one of them happened to respond to me during the peak dating night of the week.

  No judgements, Zara. You’re all on the site for the same reasons—one being that you don’t have a regular date for Saturday nights. I had to laugh just a bit to lighten my own mood over the whole thing. I’d just let it go now and see what would happen.

  Chapter 15

  I logged into the dating site app on my phone while waiting for Braden at our favorite coffee shop. It was a little ritual we’d started doing shortly after he’d begun training me. Sunday was usually his only day off, and I felt quite privileged that he opted to want to spend those mornings with me. I often teased him that I waited each Sunday morning for his text saying that something had come up—code for “there’s a hot girl in my bed so I’ll call you later”—but that hadn’t happened—yet.

  I’d heard back from two of the guys last night—Anthony and George. I was slightly disappointed that Maneesh hadn’t responded, but I wasn’t surprised either. I decided that this online dating thing was going to end up teaching me something about patience.

  After some back and forth within the online messaging platform, I eventually had an after-work coffee date scheduled with Anthony for Monday and a lunch date with George on Wednesday. I was pretty pleased that I had this news to report during my meeting with Dr. Reese later this afternoon.

  “Whatcha looking at?”

  “You scared me!” I’d literally jumped up from my chair at Braden’s breath on the back of my neck as he spoke.

  He laughed as he placed our coffees down on the table. “You were so engrossed in whatever you’re looking at that you didn’t see me come in, so I thought I’d surprise you with your favorite grande luscious treat.”

  I looked at him sternly. “Braden, you had them make it with skim, didn’t you?”

  “Well, what do you think? What kind of trainer would I be if I let you drink whole milk? The nerve that would take.” He winked.

  I got his joke. This was a conversation that we’d had a few times—about splurging once in a while on little treats. This was one of those splurges once a week that Braden encouraged. He actually rarely had anything to say about my diet. He said that was really my business and he’d be happy to give me advice if I wanted it, but he thought he’d still be able to get me to another level with my workouts—as long as I wasn’t going crazy with the calorie intake.

  “So anyway, what are you looking at? Were those pictures of naked men I saw on your phone?”

  I glanced down at the image still on my screen, which did happen to be a new match who had for some reason included a profile picture of himself in a towel. I laughed and silently debated how much I should share with Braden. There was no point keeping anything from him, and he might actually be a good person to talk to about it because of his own recent foray into the dating scene.

  “I’ve decided to try online dating.”

  I hoped my face wasn’t red but I could feel the heat on my cheeks.

  “Oh, really?”

  I was a little taken aback at how surprised Braden looked when I told him.

  “Yes. Do you have an opinion about that or something?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “Well, I just thought that you were focusing on yourself right now—that you weren’t really interested in dating.”

  “I’m not as much interested in dating as I am in meeting my future husband. I do want to be married at some point—at least I think that I do.” I looked at him carefully. “But you understand that, right? I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing with your own dating adventures lately.”

  “Yes. I do”

  He spoke slowly, like he was really choosing his words carefully, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking but not saying. I motioned for him to continue. “And?”

  “Oh, nothing. So any luck so far? With the dating site?”

  I decided to let it go. Braden had been acting a bit strange lately. In the back of my mind, I wondered if it had to do with the two of us hanging out. I figured that we’d need to at least lessen that once he started dating someone seriously—or once I started dating someone seriously. The thought came from nowhere and it left me feeling weird. Braden was nudging me.

  “What? Sorry. Yeah, well, there’s something else I should tell you.”


  I really didn’t know what he was going to think about Dr. Reese, but I had filled him in on what had happened with me the other night at the restaurant.

  “Go on.” Braden leaned forward, taking a big drink from his coffee—always attentive and easy to talk to.

  “So you know that I saw my therapist yesterday.”

  He nodded.

  “While I was there, she told me about a friend of hers who’s a dating coach and—well, I have an appointment with her this afternoon. And she gave me this assignment to try to arrange dates with two different men from the dating site.”

  Braden raised an eyebrow—probably because just the other day he’d listened to me complain about my matches at the site.

  “What?”

  “Go on. Who is going to have the privilege of taking the lovely Ms. Zara out on a date?” He winked at me.

  “Okay, so I do have dates set up with two guys—and stop teasing me.”

  Braden reached across the table for my hand and his touch caught me by surprise.

  “I’m just messing with you. Seriously, Zara. Any guy will be lucky to take you on a date.”

  I pulled my hand away—trying to make it subtle—but suddenly feeling slightly uncomfortable and not at all sure why.

  “Thank you for that vote of confidence. Now speaking of dates—spill it.”

  I listened as Braden recounted his date with Shannon the night before. If I believed what he was telling me, the date ended early and he wouldn’t be calling her again. For some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was always a little too happy when Braden told me about his non-love connections.

  Chapter 16

  I eyed Dr. Reese from across the table. She did have a certain charisma about her. She didn’t seem to fit the picture I had in my head of what a “love doctor” might look like, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and just a hint of make-up on what looked like flawless skin. I noticed the men watching her. There was a way about her. It was a confidence that was sexy and alluring. Whatever she had to teach me, I was going to be a willing student.

  “It’s so good to meet you, Zara.”

  “And you, Doctor.”

  “Please. Call me Carol. We’re going to be friends, so let’s get that out of the way.”

  I smiled, liking her style. I felt at ease and ready to talk about my love life—or lack of love life—with this perfect stranger who had vowed to help me.

  “So, do you think you can help me?” I’d filled her in on what the crux of my issue had been—my past and how far I’d come, and ending with the events leading to my tears the other night at the restaurant.

  “Zara, I know I can help you.” She grinned widely and I wondered about her perfect teeth.

  Everything about her was near perfect, as I could tell, but she didn’t seem fake or pretentious at all. There was an absolute “realness” about her, and I was pretty sure that this was what seemed to be attracting the entire male population in the cafe at the moment.

  “Well, it’s good to know that I’m not a lost cause.” I laughed, feeling a bit nervous.

  “First of all, let’s stop any negative self-talk, okay?” She was smiling as she reprimanded me.

  “Got it. It’s something I’ve been working on a lot with Judy, so I really don’t know where it’s coming from all of a sudden. Yes, I’m going to try to be better about that.”

  “You do know what you’re doing. You’ve come a long way, and I think you do recognize your own strengths—your beauty. Do you feel that you do?”

  I nodded my head slowly, wanting to be honest with her. “Yes—well, I thought that I did up until the other night when I actually started caring again about what men think of me. I guess maybe I just wasn’t quite ready for that, so when I started feeling some of my old self-esteem issues rearing their ugly head, it took me by surprise.”

  “So then, I think we’ve met one another just at the right time.” Carol pulled out a pad of paper and pen. “To begin with, I’m going to ask you a series of questions—this is all for the purpose of helping you formulate a clear vision for the kind of man and relationship you want to attract to your life.”

  Carol proceeded to ask me her questions. Some of them were about physical appearances and the kinds of men that I’m sexually attracted to—those were the easy ones to answer. Others really caught me by surprise, and I realized that I’d never really thought about some fundamental core beliefs that a couple might want to have in common. These included things like spiritual beliefs, the best way to problem solve as a couple, ideas about family and how to raise any future children—and a whole host of other really important things that I’d never actually thought about all that much. I knew that I’d also never really thought about marriage all that much, so in my defense, there was a big difference between being attracted to a possible bedmate and being attracted to a possible future husband.

  But it did cause me to think about my past relationship with Dan and all of those boxes that we really hadn’t ticked when it came to compatibility. I think I had just enjoyed the idea of being loved by someone, and, for a while, Dan had been that person for me—until he wasn’t anymore and I was left broken-hearted.

  “So tell me about this dating site you’re on and the two men that you’ve selected as potential dates.”

  I sat up straighter in my chair, pleased with my announcement.

  “I actually have the two dates set up—for Monday and Wednesday. Anthony first and then George.”

  “Very good, Zara.” Carol smiled at me and made a note on her pad of paper. “So what can you tell me about Anthony that would make you choose him? Does he tick off any of these items we’ve just been taking about?”

  I bit my lip as I tried to remember what I’d liked that was in Anthony’s profile.

  “Well, Anthony was one that I was, at least somewhat, physically attracted to—well, who knows how closely he’ll resemble his profile picture. I’ll find out soon enough, I guess.”

  “Yes, and you might be surprised at what actually happens when you meet someone face-to-face. Here’s the thing about online dating—it’s a great way to see on paper who might be a match for you, assuming, of course, that the information is accurate; but we have that to deal with in real life dating upon first meetings too. Then when you are actually having that meeting, you should have a very good idea instantly if there is any sexual attraction at all. And this is important—not just superficially but in how we choose a mate. In my opinion, the sexual attraction must be there. If there’s a lack of chemistry, everything on paper could be perfect, but it just won’t work.”

  I thought that what Susan was saying made a lot of sense. I went on to tell her about George—that I’d found him somewhat attractive, but that I’d loved how witty his bio was. I did love a good sense of humor, and placed it right up there toward the top of my list.

  We chatted a bit more and Susan gave me some great tips about remaining calm and centered during the date—about bringing my best sexual energy forward and then letting things happen naturally.

  I agreed to email her after each of the dates and we had another meeting set up for next Sunday. I left the meeting with my very own love guru, feeling hopeful and excited about the next day’s date with Anthony.

  I was ready to rock this dating thing!

  Chapter 17

  I took a deep breath in as I looked around the coffee shop, smoothing my hair with one hand and my dark gray skirt with the other. I’d come straight from work and I was about five minutes late. I’d had a last-minute case of the jitters and really wanted to skip the blind date to head straight to the gym—and Braden. But then I thought about Dr. Reese and my assignment—and of course the poor guy who I’d be standing up, who really didn’t deserve that. So here I was, nervous as could be but ready to get this date over with.

  My eyes continued to scan the room, settling on a guy in the back corner who looked liked a way more handsome version of the Anthony I’
d agreed to go out with. He was waving in my direction but he had such a funny look on his face that it caused me to look behind—to see if there was someone else he was waving at. I took a few steps in his direction, trying to maintain eye contact, but noticing his eyes scanning my body. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw a hint of something pass over his face. Was it disappointment? I gulped back my fears—hearing Carol’s words in my head and trying to stay focused on my own sexual energy.

  He still hadn’t said anything or really acknowledged me in any way, aside from the first initial wave so I was really second-guessing that this could be Anthony. I approached his table, trying to catch his eye. Dude, I know you know I’m standing here next to your table. Look up.

  Eye contact. Finally.

  “Hi. Are you Anthony, by any chance?”

  If it was him, I was more than a little irritated because I was already finding him quite rude—making me feel so awkward coming up to him. It certainly wasn’t very chivalrous—a quality I wanted to be sure to add to my list.

  “Yes, hi. You must be Zara?”

  He continued to stay seated, so I stuck out my hand in his direction.

  “Yes, it’s nice to meet you.” I willed myself to smile, wanting to turn my thoughts around because Anthony really was quite gorgeous. I pointed to the seat opposite him. “May I?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  Anthony didn’t seem at all sure, and I felt like running out of the coffee shop. I was pretty certain that this was an epic failure in terms of how good blind dates were supposed to start. Clearly Anthony was not pleasantly surprised by me in person at all, and I was trying not to feel the weight of that—at least not here in front of him.

  “So, I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  He was sipping his coffee and munching on a scone. I wondered if I should excuse myself to go get something since he hadn’t offered, and not having something to drink was making me feel even more awkward.