by Mimi Strong
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 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 ground 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.”
Shayla was still rubbing her collarbone, angling her hips away from him but her toe pointing at him, as we’d practiced.
“You’re broke,” she said, leaning against the parking meter like it was a stripper pole. I wished I had Shayla’s body confidence, but all mine shoots out of my mouth.
“Yes, and I’m moving back in with my parents.” He put his fingers to his forehead, an embarrassed smirk on his lips. “So much for all my big city plans. I thought I had the world by the tail, but I made a few bad investments and then went double or nothing and came out with nothing. Real estate. May as well go to Vegas and play the roulette wheel.”
Shayla darted forward, smacking him on the broad chest with both hands. “Snap out of it! You’re the same age as us, and we’re all broke. I’ve never been to a party that wasn’t BYOB. You’re so freaking handsome now, so stop complaining! You used to be skinny and weird back in high school, and nobody but Peaches took much notice of you, but now you’re back, and look at you. You could be the mayor of Beaverdale, if you wanted.”
“The mayor,” I echoed, hoping he didn’t latch onto the beans Shayla spilled about my crush.
He fixed me with his sexy gaze, silently pumping me for details. Gah! He wouldn’t look away. He was smothering me.
I blurted out, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after graduation.”
He raised his eyebrows while frowning, making the isn’t-that-interesting face.
“I’m back in town, so you can see a lot of me,” he said. “As much as you can handle.”
“You’re too late!” Shayla squealed. “She’s already hooked up. You had your chance and—”
I clamped my hand over her mouth. Who was the one with the big mouth now?
“Still a bit drunk from last night,” I explained to Adrian.
“We should hang out,” he said. “All of us. Like old times.”
I gave Shayla a warning look and slowly removed my hand from her mouth.
She shook her head. “Maybe something good will happen for one of us soon, and we’ll have a house party. We live up on Lurch Street now.”
He licked his lips. “You both look… really good. I should have never left Beaverdale.”
“Hey, remember when you took me to Dolphin Falls?” she said to Adrian. “You tried to kiss me, but I was afraid of that gross lip ring you had.”
> He snorted. “I didn’t try to kiss you, and you’re the one who wanted to go there and take yearbook photos of people in their cars.”
“Right,” she said sarcastically. “We only went there to—” she made air quotes “—take photos. I guess you’re still a big nerd after all, even with all that body on you.”
“Speaking of big nerds, whatever happened with you and Garret?”
She laughed. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
This reunion was getting weird, so I stepped back, looking for an escape route. The sidewalk was all clear, so I grabbed Shayla by the arm and started dragging her away.
“See you around, Adrian!” I called over my shoulder.
“Nice to see you two!” he answered. “We should totally get together the old gang and have a five year reunion.”
I turned, still moving, and walked backwards as I waved.
He looked so cute, stuffing his hands in his pockets and shrugging up his shoulders.
I wanted to say something, so I opened my mouth and did: “Hey, Adrian Storm! Led Zeppelin still sucks!”
Shayla buried her face in her hands, shaking her head. “I swear, I cannot take you anywhere.”
“Sorry I dragged you away before you could throw your leg over his shoulder or whatever was next.”
“What are you talking about? I wouldn’t flirt with Adrian. As soon as I realized it was him, I backed way off.”
“Then why were you rubbing imaginary lotion all over your neck and baring it to him, flexing your seductive neck muscles like Dottie taught us?”
We got to her Rav and she clicked open the doors. “That wasn’t conscious, I swear. When I see a guy that hot, it just happens. My brain doesn’t work right.”
“You should look up his number and call him.” I slid into the passenger seat and put my sunglasses back on. “Don’t hold back on my account. He looks like he climbs mountains, with lesser men strapped to his back. He doesn’t want to date a little fat girl with a big mouth.”