The Kissing Coach

by Mimi Strong

  I'd seen that look before; he was scared.

  “What's wrong?” I asked. “Too soon? What?”

  We were still standing just inside the door of his apartment, but Devin was inching away from me, further into the galley-style kitchen.

  “You were drinking,” he said.

  I gasped and covered my mouth. “Yes. I had some wine with Justine. I really shouldn't have, of course, but ...”

  Staring into his eyes, gone dim and no longer dancing, I retraced our conversations for clues. At our first meeting in the coffee shop, he'd mentioned he didn't drink. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, of course, but now …

  “Devin, why don't you drink? Did you ever have a drinking problem? Or is it a spiritual or religious thing? If so, I'm really sorry I didn't know, and that I kissed you with wine on my breath.”

  He frowned, his eyes sad now.

  “Talk to me.” I took a step toward him, but he pulled back by two.

  My voice shaking, I said, “I can leave, if you want.”

  He shook his head rapidly, still not saying anything.

  I said, “I'm getting worried. Should we sit down somewhere and talk about this?”

  He opened a cupboard, took out a glass, then poured some water and drank it down quickly, then refilled the glass.

  “My mother used to kiss me goodnight,” he said.

  I didn't know where this was going, but I didn't want to be standing at the edge of his kitchen. I didn't want him to clam up, either, so I stayed where I was.

  “Yes?” I said, prompting him for more.

  He opened the cupboard again, as though addressing someone inside it, and not me. “She could hide it from my father, because they never kissed. She said she didn't like his mustache.”

  “Hide what?”

  He turned to me, seemingly startled to not be alone.

  His voice matter-of-fact, he said, “That she'd started drinking again.” He cleared his throat. “That she'd never actually quit at all.”

  “And you kept her secret?”

  “She gave me the bottles and I buried them in the neighbor's garbage.”

  “The whole time you were growing up?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  I remembered the things he'd told me at our previous meetings. He'd stopped getting a bedtime kiss, but I'd assumed it was just part of him getting older. Had it been to avoid knowing her secret, smelling it on her?

  He opened the cupboard wide and stared into it again, as though it held the answer.

  Had Devin's mother been drinking the night of the accident?

  My stomach was heavy; my whole body was heavy, like cement, yet I wanted to turn and run.

  “Devin, it's not your fault.”

  When he answered, his voice sounded cold and distant. “Everybody's so quick to say that, because they don't want to believe the truth. We all have responsibilities.”

  Though my instinct was to keep talking, keep reassuring and encouraging him, I remembered my limited amount of training and tried to step back and observe. His breathing was short and shallow, and he was in emotional distress, overloaded.

  Stepping into the kitchen slowly, I said, “Let me make you a cup of tea. Would you like that? Chai? Or just regular tea?”

  He nodded.

  I stepped carefully around him and hunted everything down.

  “Should I heat the milk on the stove?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Just use the chai teabags and add honey and milk when it's done.”

  I made the tea as he watched, his breathing still shallow and his gaze unfocused.

  With the mugs in hand, I walked over to his living room, where I found a couch similar to my own, but charcoal gray.

  He sat next to me and we sipped our tea.

  After a few minutes, he said, “I feel better now. Such a shock to the system to remember everything at once.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You were right. About the kissing thing. There was a reason after all.” He gave me a strangely angry look. “Guess you're happy you're right.”

  “Happy? No.”

  I struggled to contain myself. I did not like his tone, did not appreciate the anger being directed at me. I hadn't done anything wrong, so why did I feel hurt, as though he was accusing me? And why did I feel guilty?

  After several very long moments, he said, “Thanks for coming by, but I think I need some space.”

  I stammered and pulled out my phone, scrolling through my contacts.

  “Devin, I should refer you to someone else. Someone with actual experience in trauma. I'm trained to help people list their goals in point-form.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I feel awful. I feel like I've been practicing brain surgery without a license.”

  “I'm fine,” he said, but his tone said otherwise.

  My skin tightened, and I became smaller, shrinking in on myself. If I became small and hard, nobody could hurt me.

  I wanted the release of crying, but I couldn't cry, not when he was the one in need.

  “I'm okay,” he said. “Just … sorry I freaked out.”

  “Let me give you some phone numbers.”

  “No, I don't want that.”

  “Not now, but you might, tomorrow.”

  He snapped, “Fine. Do what you gotta do.”

  What followed next was an awkward, stilted interaction where I made him find some paper and a pen, and write down some phone numbers for counselors I knew of.

  When I left his apartment, we did not kiss goodbye.

  As I walked down the hallway, he did not call after me that he'd be in touch. He closed the door.

  It's over, I thought as I pressed the elevator button.

  It's over.

  I stepped into the elevator and rode down to the lobby.

  It's over.

  I walked all the way home.

  It's over.

  I turned my key in my door.

  It's over.

  Inside my apartment, I set my purse on the floor and curled up in a ball next to it.

  Small and hard, like a pebble.

  You can't hurt a pebble.

  COPING WITH ANXIETY

  1. Know this: Emotions are real and physical. A single thought can cause a reaction, with your brain triggering the release of stress hormones. You might tremble, sweat, or become tense. Your emotions are real, they're physical, and they matter.

  2. The worst way to deal with anxiety is with denial of the issue.

  3. Try to be loving toward yourself. Treat yourself at least as kindly as you'd treat your least favorite co-worker.

  PART IV

  We all make mistakes, and there should be no shame in a mistake you learn from.

  Share your story with others and you won't be so afraid, and they won't be alone.

  You might even … talk to your mother and find out you aren't so different after all.

  My mother showed up at my place the next morning—Sunday morning—with croissants and takeout coffee. I'd posted something vague on Facebook the night before (and had no recollection of doing such), and she saw it as the cry for help it was.

  We hadn't spoken since the day I'd been helping her paint, when I'd dropped the bombshell about the real reason I'd dropped out of college.

  “Feather, what's going on?” She looked me up and down, as though my wrinkled pajamas might hold some clue.

  “I just had a bad day. Such is life.”

  She put the food on the kitchen island's counter and pulled out a stool for me.

  I took a seat and she pushed the stool in, like she'd always done when I was growing up.

  She disappeared to the bathroom, and I sipped my coffee and picked apart one of the croissants. A moment later, she was at my back, brushing my hair.

  It had probably been a decade since she'd brushed my hair in the morning as I ate my breakfast cereal, but that time folded up to nothing.

  “I feel like a little girl
,” I said. “You used to braid my hair.”

  “You're still a little girl to me,” she said. “You take so much pride in being self-sufficient, but you know half the time when I hear you say things, you're still a kid with her hair in tangles.”

  “I'm nearly twenty-three.”

  She paused in brushing my hair and I felt her kiss the top of my head.

  “You're my baby. My one and only.”

  “Stop. You're going to make me cry.”

  She took a seat next to me. “Why? Why would it make you sad that I care about you?”

  I stared at my croissant, trying to understand it myself. Perhaps if my mother had been consistent, it wouldn't knock me over so dramatically the few times she said all the right things. But what was I going to do? Tell her she had been a shit mother for most of my teen years? Tell her that every time she had called me a little bitch, it was like a nail being pounded into a fence that would never be the same?

  And where would that get us?

  “Feelings are complicated,” I said.

  “That must be a generational thing. When I was your age, things weren't so complicated.”

  “Hmm.” I reached for a second croissant.

  “I know why,” she said cheerily. “When I was your age, I had a baby.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  She turned to stare at me. I could see her out of the corner of my eyes, but I didn't want to look directly into her eyes.

  “Never apologize,” she said. “Maybe you weren't planned, but you were loved.”

  My eyes started to hurt at that word. Loved.

  “You are loved,” she said. “You were the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not proud of the person you've become.”

  My throat hurt.

  She reached for me, putting her arm over my shoulders. I flinched, surprised at the contact, but she wouldn't let me go.

  When I saw that she was crying, I felt myself shift, taking another form. Was it time to let go? What would happen if I did?

  Time passed.

  For the next month and a half, I tried to forget about Devin and move on.

  I found myself driving past his apartment, and I tried to stop myself, but I'm much better at giving out good advice than taking it. And if you don't believe me, look in my closet at the jeans that shrank in the dryer, yet that I refuse to get rid of because I think I might be able to drop five to ten pounds and wear them again someday. You really shouldn't have a wardrobe category for Just In Case I Get Stomach Flu.

  It had been forty-two days since I'd seen Devin, and Steph saw fit to give me an intervention.

  Apparently, she was tired of hearing me re-hash every word I'd said and everything he'd said, and was tired of trying to speculate on what he might be doing now, and whether or not he thought of me at all.

  “You need closure,” she said to me as I came out of the changing room of her store, wearing bright blue stretchy jeans.

  “These jeans should help.”

  “Only if you wear them on a date. A real date, with a guy who isn't your client.”

  A conservative-looking lady who was also in the change room area paused as she looked past herself in the three-way mirror, listening in on this salacious client business.

  I said with a groan, “He wasn't my client anymore at the end.”

  “But he was when you were kissing him.”

  “Because he was paying me to kiss him.”

  The woman at the mirrors raised her eyebrows, then disappeared into the changing stall, shaking her head.

  I grinned at my wickedness, enjoying being thought of as a bad girl.

  We all look up to bad girls (and bad boys) because we like the fantasy of being tough. A bad girl takes what she wants and doesn't eat peanut butter from the jar while sobbing over some guy who broke her heart.

  “Close your eyes,” Steph said.

  I obeyed, and when she told me to open them, I was wearing the most beautiful necklace, with a feather-shaped pendant and a tiny heart charm.

  My whole life, people had been giving me things with feathers on them, but never anything as beautiful as this.

  “When did you get these in?” I demanded.

  “They're not from the store. I got it somewhere else.” She leaned in close behind me, both of us smiling at each other in the mirror's reflection. “It's not even an early birthday present. It's a just-because present, because I want you to know that even though I have a boyfriend now, and we don't see each other as much, you're always in my thoughts.” She reached into her shirt and pulled out a similar necklace, this one with a large heart and a tiny feather.

  “Ohmygod that's so dorky,” I said. “Matching!” I turned around to grab her in a fierce hug. “I love it, I love it, oh, yes I do.”

  “Good. Come to my place at eight o'clock tonight and play nice with Caleb's friend Matthew.”

  I jerked away from her, frowning and pretending to be angry. “Always a catch.”

  Back home, I tried on every top I owned along with the bright blue jeans. I was in a good mood, and everything looked okay, but I settled on a yellow peasant-style blouse with butterflies. Some of the butterflies were the same blue as the jeans, and I didn't usually like to be so matchy-matchy, but it looked so cute.

  I took a quick picture of myself in the outfit, for reference. For a while, I'd had a style blog on Tumblr, where I posted photos of myself in my outfits. As my coaching business picked up, the coaching became my focus, and I stopped posting. I took down the site and photos, but I knew those pictures were still out there. Not that anyone cared, but I didn't like my image being out there without me, without boundaries. I think if it were possible, I'd prefer to wipe my entire existence off the internet.

  I'm not one of those girls who wouldn't take the guy's last name when she gets married. I relish a brand-new identity. A fresh start.

  Before the blind date, I stopped by the postal outlet in the mini-mall near my apartment. I spent a good five minutes looking over all the stamps, settling at last on a stamp with a butterfly, similar to the ones on my yellow blouse.

  As I handed the envelope to the woman at the counter, I had an impulse to grab it back from her, but didn't.

  In the blue envelope was a check, made out to Devin Nelson. The dollar amount was a full refund of what he'd paid for our coaching sessions. I could have used the cash, but I'd gotten hung up on what Steph had said about closure.

  Refunding Devin for the coaching seemed like the right thing to do. With the return of the money, I would be absolved for whatever psychological harm I'd done.

  I'd debated over what to write in the letter, but in the end, I'd simply stuck a yellow Post-It Note onto the check.

  Walking out of the place, I did feel lighter, but not necessarily better.

  Caleb's friend was not as cute as I'd hoped, but he was tall, and as the evening progressed, he became funnier.

  Matthew had short, sandy brown hair, big eyes, and a near-constant grin. He billed himself as a “nice guy,” but to my relief he wasn't one of those nutty guys who actually thinks women prefer jerks. (For the record, women prefer confident, physically attractive men, even though a percentage of them might be jerks. In fact, jerkitude naturally occurs at all levels of confidence and attractiveness, just as bitchitude strikes with alarming frequency in the female population.)

  We had dinner and played some games at Steph's place, then Matthew suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the full moon, as it was such a warm summer evening.

  As we were out, walking down the pretty residential streets just behind Steph's building, Steph came up with some outrageous lie about needing to get something from the late-night grocery store, and ran off with Caleb.

  Alone, Matthew and I walked along under the light of the full moon.

  I asked him to tell me more about what he was taking in school, and soon we were walking in easy conversation. I lau
ghed at his jokes, not to make him like me, but because they were funny.

  He'd been the class clown when he was in junior high and high school, irritating all his teachers. He thought that his desire to become a teacher himself now was some sort of divine, cosmic joke.

  “You'll get students just like yourself,” I said. “I wonder if teachers think that stuff is funny. They probably can't laugh, or they'd lose control completely.”

  “Some of my teachers laughed,” he said. “I had some good teachers.”

  “Me too. I think I appreciate them more now.”

  We got to the corner and decided to cross the street and keep going.

  He said, “Did you know Jim Carrey used to do a comedy routine when he was in school?”

  “You're kidding.”

  “No, I saw it in this interview. He had a smart teacher who told him that if he behaved all day and not be a cut-up, he could do a short routine at the end of the day. So he funneled his energy into planning the routine.”

  “That's incredible!”

  “I want to be that kind of teacher, you know? I want to spot something in kids and help them shine.”

  I stopped on the sidewalk, surprised by how emotional this made me.

  “That's the most beautiful thing,” I said.

  He got this look in his eyes, and I knew he was going to try to kiss me, right then and there under the streetlamp. I tilted up my chin and waited.

  Matthew moved in and sank his lips upon mine. They tasted like lips. He slipped his tongue into my mouth. It tasted like tongue.

  I leaned into him, pushing my body against his, but I didn't feel anything except his body.

  We kissed for a while, and then I pulled away and said, “Guess we should head back.”

  “Right,” he said.

  We walked in silence until we met up again with Steph and Caleb in front of Steph's building.

  I didn't want to go back into her place and play another party game.

  “It's been really fun,” I said. “My car's right here, though, so I'm going to go home.”

  Without looking his way, I sensed Matthew's nervousness, his wanting to ask me out. I could have left, and had him ask Steph for my number, and then all of that nonsense, but I decided the truth would be more kind.