The Kissing Coach

by Mimi Strong

  Or not.

  I mean, I am not a doctor. I took a six-week course over the internet. Perhaps you'd better not take any of my advice.

  Months earlier, I had actually talked to my mentors about my regrets after the kissing sessions with Chuck. There'd been more than a hint of judgment, and I was too embarrassed to admit I'd made the same error again.

  The only person I could trust was Steph, and I went to go see her at work on Thursday, after taking all of Wednesday to sit around my apartment in dirty sweatpants, feeling horrified about the dick-grabbing incident. (As with most embarrassing things, the crotch-burglary attempt had been growing and growing in my mind.)

  I arrived at Dream Candy, the boutique owned by Steph and her mother, just before lunch. They were still getting summer stock, and the store was bursting at the seams with clothes begging me to take them home. As usual, Steph had picked a handful of things that were just-so-Feather and set them aside for me.

  Steph's mother and business partner, Shannon, came over to the changing room as I was getting started and asked if I liked the new strappy dresses.

  I wasn't thinking about dresses, but reliving the horror of the weiner-clutching incident. Over and over in my head, my stupid hand reached for the bulge in Devin's jeans. Again and again, I grabbed it in my sweaty palm, like it was the gearshift of my Toyota Tercel. With these vivid thoughts, my skin alternated between being hot and cold, sweaty and clammy.

  Shannon said, “Am I crazy, or are these to die for? Tell me. Tell me if I've gone taste-blind.”

  “You're fine. The dresses are gorgeous,” I said. I reached for one, only to find myself (in my mind) grabbing for rod-shaped things like I was the Baton Bandit. Sweating again, I stuffed my hands in my pockets.

  Steph's mother stared at me like she knew exactly what I'd been thinking. You're the cock-a-doodle-grabba-grabba, her face said.

  “Gor-gee-ous,” I repeated carefully. “The dresses.” (Not the sausages I'd been trying to purloin.)

  “Are you okay?”

  “Great! How are you these days? How are your new downstairs renters?”

  “Funny you should ask. They came home at two-thirty this morning and were whooping it up with music blasting. And do you know what I did?”

  “You stomped on the floor?”

  “No,” she said. “I got some foam earplugs from the bathroom and stuffed them in my ears and tried to get back to sleep. And you know why? Because I don't want to be an old person. Not officially.”

  I rearranged the clothing hangers inside the changing room and only thought about crotch-robbery for two seconds. “And complaining about loud parties makes you an old person?”

  “Plus this vertical crease between my eyebrows. I'm thinking about Botox.”

  “I don't see any crease.”

  She frowned with gusto.

  “Well, now there's a crease, but try not making that face.”

  “I'm in customer service. I have to do something when someone drops a shitfit on me and storms out.”

  “I roll my eyes a lot.”

  “That's good, and it doesn't cause wrinkles. But enough about my horrible aging. What do you know about this fella Steph's dating? He's a waiter who wants to be a financial wizard?”

  I pulled the door of my changing room mostly closed so customers coming in wouldn't see me nude, but kept it open a crack so I could keep talking to Steph's mother.

  “Caleb? He seems really nice. I thought maybe he liked me, but he really liked Steph.” I laughed. “Typical.”

  “Oh, Feather. Plenty of guys like you,” she said.

  “Plenty, yeah, but they like me, they don't love me.”

  “Don't put yourself down, honey. Plenty of people love you, like your friends, and your clients love you. Everyone I've referred to you sings your praises.”

  I hopped around on one foot trying to get into some too-tight jeans. “Did Steph tell you I have a crush on one of my clients?”

  Her voice pitched up as she said, “No.”

  “Well, I'll just pretend I don't know damn well she did, and I'll just re-tell you.” I got both legs in the jeans, but the thighs were going to be an issue. I silently cursed all the extra calories in the pink wine from the week before. My policy was to not drink my calories, but I'd been jamming them down lately, with root beer floats nearly every night.

  As I struggled back out of the jeans, I told Steph's mother some vague details about Devin Nelson, like how his beautiful brown eyes made me feel comforted and terrified at the same time.

  She said, “Sounds like you have chemistry.”

  I smoothed down the blouse I was trying on. It was black, and drained the color from my face, but I liked how icy it made me look—like I could handle anything. It would also hide food-dribble stains.

  “I never believed in chemistry,” I said. “I always thought it was a crappy excuse to date someone who's wrong for you. Total bullshit, you know?”

  “The heart wants what it wants.”

  I chuckled. “It's not my heart that's the problem. Sorry if that's TMI.”

  Steph appeared alongside her mother. “Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to embarrass my mother with that kind of talk.”

  Shannon grabbed her daughter, put her in a head lock and noogied the top of her head playfully.

  To say I was envious of their easy, peaceful mother-daughter relationship would be an understatement.

  When they were done tousling, blonde hair flying everywhere, Shannon came in close to the opening in the doorway and said, in her motherly tone, “You give so much advice for your work. Make sure you talk to someone who can guide you.”

  “I thought that was what we were doing here.”

  She smiled. “In that case, I say go for it. Refer his business to another coach so you can date him yourself.”

  I started to laugh. “I guess Steph didn't tell you everything after all. My business is coaching him to be more comfortable with girls. To get over his fear of kissing them.”

  “Oh dear.” She frowned. “Honey, you're in way over your head. You need to end this right now.”

  “But I think I'm helping him.”

  “Sure. Sure, you are. But what's it doing to you?”

  I pulled off the blouse, annoyed at how tight everything was and how hot the change room was under the bright lights.

  “I'm fine,” I said. “I'm resilient.”

  “People say that because they want to be tougher than they are. Yes, you are capable, but I worry about you. You're one of my favorite people.”

  I fanned my face with one hand. “Stop. Don't be so nice to me. I wasn't raised this way and you're going to make me cry.”

  She frowned. “I've met your mother. She seems lovely.”

  “Well, you weren't raised by her. She didn't slap your face and tell you what a bitch and a slut you were.”

  She stepped back, visibly shaken.

  “I'm sure it wasn't so bad,” Shannon said. “The teen years can be very trying for parents.”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said.

  Shannon's reaction was exactly why I didn't usually tell people. Only my counselor had been sympathetic. Everyone else told me to suck it up, and that they knew a kid who got beaten daily and so on, with a bunch of sad stories that only made me feel worse. As if how bad you felt was a competition.

  Both Shannon and Steph disappeared to help other customers, and I picked out one item from everything I tried on as the only thing I wanted.

  At the checkout counter, Shannon brightly said, “Nice choice.” (They say that to everyone.)

  “Thanks for the motherly advice,” I said.

  “You do know that boy of yours has his eyes on another girl, right? I mean, men don't just decide they want to change and overcome their issues. There's always an impetus.”

  I didn't want to believe her, but she had a point.

  As I walked out the door, Steph called after me, “Hey, what about lunch?”

  “I have to
do some work, but we'll have lunch soon, I promise!”

  “Okay, but not tomorrow, because Caleb's taking me out.”

  “That's great!” I said, my voice pitching up at the end of my lie. Of course I did want my friend to be happy, and to have a nice boyfriend, but … where was mine?

  I walked out of the clothing boutique and nearly ran right into someone—Devin Nelson.

  “Are you following me?” I said with a wink and a crooked smile.

  “Of course. I'm curious about what you do when you're not ...”

  “Kissing people?” I said. And grabbing at their Sausage McMuffins and … don't look down! Feather, do not look at his crotch. Just don't. Eyes up. Focus on his gorgeous, brown eyes, his broad chest, that narrow waist and …

  I jolted my head back up.

  He was looking down at the sidewalk, seemingly embarrassed.

  “I don't know much about you,” he said. “You're always asking the questions, and our sessions are all about me, me, me.” He looked up again and caught me in his gaze. As usual, he made me feel at home and far away at the same time.

  I asked, “Are you out Shopping?”

  “Going for lunch,” he said. “All alone. Perhaps you'd like to come to the same restaurant and we can wave to each other from our respective tables.”

  “Or I could sit with you.”

  “The restaurant would appreciate us getting only one table dirty.”

  “Then it's settled,” I said. “Let's get a table dirty.”

  We started walking, and he stopped at the end of the block, at an Indian restaurant.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  They had a menu posted outside the door, with some appealing-sounding lunch specials, so we went in.

  If memory served, the restaurant had served donair a few years earlier, but it had been transformed into a much more sensual space, with colorful fabric—either scarves or saris—draped from the ceiling rafters.

  Once we were seated, he said, “Go ahead, you can ask.”

  I smirked. “I won't, because some people find it rude.”

  “I'm one-quarter Indian,” he said.

  “Really.” I sipped my ice water. “I'm mostly German, some French. I always wished my background was more intriguing.”

  “I just realized something,” Devin said, looking serious.

  I expected a joke, like that he'd just noticed I was white, but he said, “This is a date. I've never asked a girl on a date before, and I just did. I am making astounding progress.”

  Images and memories of us making out on my couch came flooding back, along with the feelings. My body was hot and heavy, my mind fuzzy. We'd been kissing, lips embracing, hands touching, and I'd reached for him through his jeans, massaged his sexy hardness while bursting at the seams with my need for him …

  “Astounding progress,” he repeated.

  I opened my menu to have something to look at besides his beautiful eyes. The menu was in English, but in my agitated state, the words swam as black dots on a sea of oh-shit-I-totally-grabbed-his-dick-when-we-were-kissing-and-now-I-will-die-of-shame.

  I tried to focus on the words, looking for butter chicken, but my brain yelled dick, dick, dick!

  “The lamb is my favorite,” he said.

  I shut my menu. “That's what I'll have.”

  The waitress came back to take our order. She was a pretty girl with dark hair and thick eyeliner—possibly Indian, or Greek, or mixed, like so many people my age.

  Devin fidgeted as he ordered, and she leaned in close to hear his softly-spoken words.

  She pulled back with a laugh, saying, “Devin, you can just say you'll have 'the usual' and I'll know!”

  Horror splashed over me like a glass of ice water. Devin was in love with the waitress, and that was who he wanted to kiss. I looked her up and down: nice figure, great boobs, perfect skin, very little makeup besides the eyeliner. She was a natural beauty, and her movements had grace, like those of a dancer. No wonder he'd fallen for her. I wanted to die. Just die.

  After she walked away, revealing a back side that looked as pretty as her front side, Devin said to me, “What's on your mind today?”

  I adjusted the shopping bag at my feet. “A few errands.”

  “No client meetings today?”

  I smiled. “Nope.” I had nothing planned, but had ducked out of lunch with Steph so I could go home to a root beer float and sugar coma.

  He said, “I can't help but be curious about what goes on with your other clients.”

  My cheeks warmed. “None of the other sessions are at all like what we've been … working on.”

  Our cups of chai tea arrived. Devin raised his eyebrows as he blew on the tea. The mug was enormous, which made him look younger, like an adorable little boy.

  After a moment, he said, “What do you think of dinosaurs?”

  “They're interesting.” I smiled and sipped my chai. The air conditioning inside the restaurant was powerful, and the warmth of the cup in my hands was comforting. “And you?”

  “I try not to think about them very much,” he said. “Because even though scientists are still uncovering new details, like how some of them may have been covered in feathers, we'll never really know, will we?”

  “If I could be a time traveler, I think going back to see dinosaurs would be at the top of my list.”

  He grinned. “Me too. But you'd have to go back in a dinosaur-proof cage so they wouldn't eat you—”

  “—and alter the timeline, right?” I finished. “Like, you'd give some poor velociraptor family indigestion and they wouldn't fall into the tar sands that day, and then there'd be a domino effect and your grandparents would never meet and you wouldn't exist.”

  He kept grinning. “Of course, if you didn't exist, then you wouldn't be around to cause the indigestion. Hence the paradox.”

  “That's why there are multiple timelines.”

  “Oh, of course,” he said. “Infinite timelines and parallel universes. That's so much more reasonable than ruling out the possibility of time travel.”

  I fidgeted with my chai, swirling the foamy milk on the surface so it resembled the surface of Jupiter. “In one of these parallel universes, you might be my coach.”

  He reached his hand across the table to shake mine. “Hi. I'm parallel Devin. What are your top three goals for our work together? What can I help you with?”

  I glanced around for something to change the topic to, but he kept waiting for a response.

  “Dating,” I said. “Once upon a time, I wasn't fussy at all, and now I'm too fussy. All the good ones are taken.”

  “Not all the good ones,” he said. “You have to put yourself out there, where the guys are. Have you ever tried climbing?”

  “Mountains?”

  “You can start with some indoor walls. It'll really increase your upper-body strength, and when you get to the top of the wall, you feel invincible.”

  I stared at his beautiful face. The guy could be a model or an actor, I thought. Damn, he's prettier than me. Why didn't I spend more time blowing out my hair this morning?

  “That was almost inspiring,” I said. “But if you were my coach, I wouldn't come back for a second session.”

  “Why?” He had the look of a burst bubble.

  “Because I have zero interest in climbing, and you're pushing your interests onto me, which makes me want to resist you.” He crumpled a little before me. I continued, “Plus you're way too cute.”

  His hands went to his hair, ruffling it around, and then splitting down the middle. He smoothed down his shiny, black hair so it was slicked flatter on both sides. “How about now? This is how I used to look as a kid.”

  The waitress approached our table with fragrant plates. “Devin!” she said, laughing as she put our food in front of us. “You look so nerdy.”

  “He was telling me about time travel and causality,” I said to her. “I'm afraid he might actually be a nerd.”

  She
reached over and ruffled his hair back. He closed his eyes, seeming to enjoy her touch, and I died a thousand times inside.

  “That's better,” she said, then she walked away.

  I tried to enjoy my lunch, but I found myself with little appetite.

  I thought about the rules: Seeing a client outside of a session is a bad idea, unless it's a large social gathering. Lesson learned, I told myself. Unfortunately for us humans, we learn more from personal pain than from anything else. I knew, intellectually, that I should have declined a lunch invitation, but I'd gone and accepted, and now I had to choke down a spicy lunch while a pretty girl flirted with Devin, right in front of me.

  The rest of lunch was miserable.

  Devin shared some anecdotes about managing a hotel, but I put up my professional walls and steered away from sharing any stories about coaching, citing confidentiality.

  After we'd eaten, I insisted on picking up the bill, telling him I could write it off against my taxes. I tipped the waitress a generous twenty-five percent, to overcompensate for my feelings of wanting to push her into a tar pit.

  On the bright side, I did make it back to my apartment before the curried lamb made its dramatic and fiery exit from my digestive system.

  Lesson learned, I told myself for the second time of the day. Curry does not agree with me.

  I didn't have any client appointments until six o'clock—people with actual day jobs tend to be the ones with the money to pay for coaching, so a lot of my work takes place after five—so I spent the rest of the afternoon on my computer, looking into returning to school.

  My first time in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career, so my courses had been a scatter-shot assortment of general studies. At twenty-two, however, I was a much different person than seventeen-year-old me, and some of the specific programs actually looked appealing.

  I had more of an idea about how the world worked, and what made me tick.

  I filled out some forms to receive information on a few programs. All the details were available online, but requesting something on paper felt more likely to lead to something real. We humans are symbolic creatures, and we love the idea of a process, even if it's having readily-available-online information delivered to us on paper, by a person who wears blue polyester shorts no matter the season.