Out of My League (Madison Musicians Book 2)

by Jennifer McCoy Blaske

  So, sitting on my bed with my phone that night, I typed, “how to get a guy to like you.”

  “Five Ways to Make a Guy Go Crazy Over You” by Veronica Versaci came right to the top. I clicked on it and started reading.

  ‘Catching and keeping a guy’s attention is no easy task in today’s distraction-filled world. It takes work!

  ‘Is there a guy you’re trying to hook, but so far you’re just left feeling ignored? Well, not anymore! Follow these five steps and before you know it, he’ll be chasing you obsessively!’

  ****

  Well, those were certainly some tall claims that Veronica Versaci was making. If I followed her advice, Scott would be ‘chasing me obsessively.’ Did she have any scientific studies to back up these claims? Was there any kind of money-back guarantee for success?

  Of course. This was the Internet. It was anybody’s guess what, if any, credentials Veronica Versaci had, or what kind of luck she had with guys herself. In other words, it was read and follow the advice at your own risk.

  Still, I had no brilliant ideas of my own, I was running out of time, and I did not want to be ruing my entire life on my fortieth birthday. So, I was just going to have to hope that Veronica knew what she was talking about and that I had it in me to do what she said.

  I read the entire article through, slowly and carefully, a total of three times. Then I put my phone on my night table, turned off my lamp, and rolled over to go to sleep.

  Clearly, reeling in my hunky fellow musician was going to be even harder than I thought.

  Three

  Step #1: Stay Attractive

  Before you even attempt to start flirting, you need to channel your ‘inner sexy’ and let the world see it. You want that guy to think to himself, ‘Who is that Gorgeous Girl’ and be so intrigued he can’t get your out of his mind. A girl who looks her best is like catnip to guys. Meow!

  You’ve heard the term ‘peacocking,’ right? That’s what you must do to stand out from the crowd. Strut your stuff, and command the attention from him that you know you deserve! Work just a sliver of skin into your ensemble—just enough to get his blood pumping, but still leaving enough to his imagination that he craves even more. Let your clothes do the talking and watch that cute guy come walking . . . right over to you!

  ****

  It was late Saturday morning when I walked to the end of our hall and knocked on the door of room 202, which had a round blue and coral chevron sign that said, ‘Christy & Elle,’ with a photo underneath it of the two of them posing on their couch sitting back to back and facing the camera. “Come in!” two voices said.

  Christy was sitting on her bed against the wall typing on her laptop, while Elle was on a purple yoga mat, knees bent and pushing up with her arms and bending back so that her head almost touched her feet.

  “Hey guys,” I said.

  “Thank goodness.” Christy snapped her laptop shut and flopped it on the bed in front of her. “Now I have an excuse to quit working on this stupid paper. What’s up?”

  “I did it.” I sighed, flopping on the bed next to her. “I followed your advice and found an article on the Internet. And I’m doomed. It’s hopeless.”

  Elle uncurled herself and then turned her body into an upside-down V, with her face practically in the mat and her rear end sticking up in the air. I think that’s the position she calls a ‘downward dog,’ although I have no idea why, since we have two cocker spaniels at home and I have never once seen either of them doing anything remotely like that. “What article?” she asked the mat.

  I used to feel uncomfortable trying to have a conversation with Elle when she was bending and flipping in weird positions, but now it seemed perfectly normal to talk to her while seeing any and every part of her body except her face. “I’m playing in the band for a musical next weekend—” I said, probably too loud but I couldn’t tell if she heard me or not.

  “ —and apparently the guitar player is smokin’ hot.” Christy finished off my sentence in her own unique style.

  “Yeah, uh . . . that,” I said. “Christy suggested I do some research to learn how to get a guy’s attention. You know, like you learned to crochet from YouTube.” I hoped that would make it sound less stupid.

  “Interesting idea.” Elle lowered her knees to the mat with her arms still outstretched so that it looked like she was bowing and praying to her dresser. “So why are you doomed?”

  “The very first step is already impossible,” I said. “Apparently I’m supposed to ‘channel my inner sexy’ and ‘strut my stuff’ like a peacock.”

  Christy raised her arms and did a sort of seated dance move. “Woohoo! You go, girl.”

  I sighed. “Do you not see the obvious problem here? I don’t have any inner sexy. Or any outer sexy. Nor do I have any ‘stuff’ to strut. And look.” I pinched some fabric of the grey Orchard City College sweatshirt I was wearing and held it out. “Does this in any way resemble a peacock to you?”

  “Well, that’s easy to fix,” Christy said. “We can take you shopping and get you some new clothes! It’ll be fun—right, Elle?”

  Elle swung around into a seated position, put the soles of her feet together, and started rocking back and forth. “Sounds good to me.”

  I looked at them skeptically. “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure if I’m the ‘strutting’ type, no matter what kind of clothes I have.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Christy said. “It’s a mindset thing. New clothes, new you. You won’t enter the theater as the Annie O’Connor who wears sweatshirts and is intimidated by a cute guy. You’ll enter as a woman who wears sexy clothes, feels hot to trot and knows exactly what moves will make that guy go crazy about her!” She gave a fist-pump into the air.

  “Hmm,” I said. “I think that may be asking a little too much from a few pieces of fabric.”

  Elle stopped rocking, raised her hands, put them palms together against her chest, and bowed her head. “So when should we go?”

  “Now!” Christy yelled, leaping off the bed.

  “Uh . . . are you sure you want to go right now?” I asked. The idea of shopping to improve my image and give me a new look sounded appealing in theory, but the actuality of doing it was more daunting. “Don’t you have a paper you were writing?”

  Christy gave her laptop a look of disdain. “Eh, I’ll work on it tonight. Or tomorrow. This is more important. Let’s do this!”

  And, ready or not, off we went.

  ****

  Once we arrived at the Orchard City Mall, Christy wasted no time taking charge and insisting that we head to one of the more expensive department stores there. “Trust me,” she said. “It’s worth it. My mother took me to a store like this to buy my graduation dress. The people who work here help you find exactly what you’re looking for.”

  We walked past the cosmetics department. I was grateful that Christy was walking so fast we wouldn’t be accosted by salesladies spraying us in the face. We rode the ‘up’ escalator while watching a woman in her twenties play ‘Sweet Caroline’ on the store’s grand piano.

  “I hope you’re right.” Christy and I were wandering around the women’s department, flipping a few random price tags. “Because I haven’t got the slightest idea what I’m looking for.”

  A middle-aged saleslady with heavy makeup, hair up in a bun which showed her dark roots and wearing a black and white dress and orange scarf, approached us. “Hello, ladies, my name is Karen. Is there anything I can help you find today?”

  “Yes, hello,” Christy said, gesturing toward me. “We want something to help my friend discover her inner sexy.”

  I held my face in my hands and shook my head.

  “Ooh, your inner sexy!” The saleslady was practically salivating. She looked so excited to be going on this journey of discovery with us. “Well, nothing says ‘sexy’ like Spanx.”

  “Spanx? Isn’t that like a girdle or massive underwear?” Why did she think I needed Spanx? Did she think I was too fat a
nd needed to squeeze everything in? I didn’t think I even had a weight problem. Did I have to worry about that too, on top of everything else that was already stacked against me?”

  “Oh, goodness no.” She was clearly appalled that I would mention Spanx in the same breath as something as distasteful as a girdle. “Spanx is modern and youthful and a must for any woman who wants to exude femininity and turn heads.”

  Well. I did want to do that. Fair play.

  “It doesn’t squeeze in,” she continued the patter, “but rather smooths out, giving you an elegant silhouette.

  Interesting. I had never really thought about my silhouette. I’d never even realized that I had a silhouette that I needed to think about, let alone worry about whether it was elegant enough. I tried to give the saleslady a quick up-and-down glance to see if she had this so-called elegant silhouette, but she just looked like a typical middle-aged woman to me. Although maybe that was just because she wasn’t wearing Spanx at the moment. Or maybe she was and looked dreadful without them. I certainly wasn’t going to ask.

  The next thing I knew, I was in a huge dressing room with a couple of strange, beige-colored contraptions that took me a few minutes to figure out how to even get them on. Fortunately, there was no hurry, as Elle and Christy were helping the saleslady go look for what Karen called ‘outerwear’ for me. I was guessing that ‘outerwear’ was what normal people called ‘clothes.’

  I finally managed to get the first piece hooked up, then did a lot of tugging, bending, and pushing to get everything in the right place. At least I thought it was all in the right place.

  “How’s it coming, Annie?” I heard Christy ask.

  I peered at myself in the mirror, considering the question and becoming aware of the fact that I could only take slight, shallow breaths. “It’s kind of . . . tight.”

  “I think that’s the idea,” I heard Elle say. “Didn’t she say it was supposed to smooth you out?”

  I turned around, looking over my shoulder to see my reflection in the mirror at different angles. Yes, on one hand it looked smooth . . . but on the other hand, my lumps and bumps just seemed to . . . well, move to other places.

  There was a light rap on the dressing room door. “How are we doing in there?” Karen said. “Do you love it?”

  “Well, it’s, uh . . . interesting.” I wasn’t sure that love was exactly the word I would use, although to be fair, I didn’t normally spend time looking at myself in the mirror in my regular underwear, either. A thought occurred to me. “Wait a minute. What happens when I have to go to the bathroom? It would take me twenty minutes to peel this thing off and then get it back on again.”

  “That’s why some women prefer the second design that I gave you,” Karen said from the other side of the door. “That one has a special hole.”

  A special hole?

  If this “special hole” was what I imagined it must be . . . well, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be going out and about in public with any parts exposed, even under clothing. Plus . . . well, a few images came to mind that could be potentially messy.

  “You know what, I think I like this one,” I said.

  A couple pieces of flimsy fabric flopped over the top of the dressing room door. “Here are some dresses we found for you,” Karen said. “Try them on over the Spanx and you’ll see how wonderful it makes you look.”

  I tried on a red sleeveless dress that was mid-thigh length and had a V-neck. I dared to come out of the dressing room.

  “Oh yes, that is wonderful,” Karen said. “Do you love it as much as I do?”

  I was starting to wonder if Karen loved everything, then I realised she was probably on commission. “It’s a little low cut,” I said in-between shallow breaths, looking at myself in the mirror outside the dressing room. Plus, the Spanx had a unique way of pushing my boobs up, so between that and the design of the dress it almost looked like they were trying to escape.

  “Oh, don’t be silly.” Karen waved her hand. “You’re young, you’re beautiful. If you have it, you should flaunt it!”

  I wasn’t altogether sure what ‘it’ was, or what made her think that I had ‘it’ to begin with. Unless maybe she meant ‘them’? Whatever the correct pronoun was, I wasn’t sure how well flaunting anything fit my personality. But then I remembered what the article had said about ‘strutting your stuff,’ so maybe this was exactly what I needed.

  “What do you guys think?” I asked Christy and Elle doubtfully.

  “A-ma-zing,” Christy said. “And perfect for getting a guy’s attention.”

  I frowned as I studied myself in the mirror. “Yeah . . . but don’t you think it’s a little too much? It doesn’t really feel like me.”

  “Think of it as a different side of you,” Karen, the saleslady, said. “A side that you’ve never paid attention to before. A new, exciting side that’s always been buried inside you and is just desperate to become unleashed.”

  I kind of wished that Karen would go find some other customers to help.

  “Well, I like it too,” Elle said. “The color is great, and it fits you perfectly.”

  “Maybe everything fits perfectly once you’re squeezed into a certain shape,” I said. “Well, let me try the other one on.”

  The second dress was light blue, had a halter-style top and a long slit in the skirt.

  “What is this?” I asked, coming out of the dressing room. “Will I be giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars?”

  “It is a bit much.” Elle nodded wisely.

  “You could buy it in optimistic anticipation,” Christy said. “For when you invite Scott to the Spring Formal in May.”

  Karen gave an approving nod. “I like the way your friend thinks.”

  Of course she did. She worked on commission.

  “I don’t think I’m going to be quite that optimistic just yet,” I said, lifting a knee to see exactly how revealing that slit was. It was pretty revealing.

  “Well, I like the red one a lot,” Christy said. “I think you should at least get that one. With the Spanx, of course.”

  Elle nodded again. She had contributed little to the excursion. “Me too.”

  I hesitated, then went back into the dressing room, took the red dress back off the hook, and looked at the price tag. Yikes. And that wasn’t even adding in the price of the Spanx. By the way, I couldn’t wait to get that off.

  But then my mind produced a brief, yet vivid image of me playing the piano at the theater, bound up in the Spanx and wearing the red dress, and Scott appearing, scooping me off the bench, and twirling me around in his arms.

  “Alright,” I said to Karen before I lost my nerve. “I’ll take it.”

  ****

  We left the department store not only with the red dress and Spanx, but also a pair of high-heeled gold sandals. As Karen was ringing me up, Elle had pointed out that the pair of black Converse high tops I was wearing might not complete the outfit in the way we were hoping for. The entire purchase ending up costing a big chunk of what I was going to get paid to play for the show, but I told myself that it was worth it especially if it did, in fact, cause Scott to be so intrigued that he couldn’t get me out of my mind.

  And, of course, led him to throw me across the piano bench and smother me with kisses and . . . well let’s stick with kisses.

  The three of us hung out at the mall for another half hour, mostly just because we were putting off the work we all knew we had to do when we got back. Eventually, though, we all got bored enough to mutually decide to head back to the entrance where we’d parked. We were just passing the Disney Store when a woman with long dark hair stepped in front of us so suddenly that I almost tripped to keep from walking into her.

  “You have beautiful hair,” she said to Elle.

  “Thank you.” Elle was obviously startled as well.

  See, that’s what I mean about Elle. There she was, just walking around, minding her own business, and a total stranger walks up to compliment her. />
  The woman gestured to the kiosk to the left of us, which was lined with black and pink curling wands, both in and out of their boxes, and had a hair salon chair set up in front of it. “Your hair would look wonderful with some curls. Why don’t you have a seat and I can show you?”

  Or . . . it’s really just a pushy saleslady trying to sell us something.

  “Oh, no thank you,” Elle said politely.

  “It will only take three minutes,” the woman said, turning the chair toward Elle. It clearly wasn’t a question. “Sit.”

  Poor Elle. It wasn’t in her nature to be rude, but this woman obviously wasn’t going to take no for an answer very easily.

  “Well, I . . . it’s just that we’re in a hurry, and . . .” Elle’s eyes nervously darted over to us for help.

  “Hey,” Christy said, “she should curl Annie’s hair!”

  What?

  “No . . . we’re in a big hurry, remember?” I said to them. The entire experience in the department store had been stressful enough. I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with another saleslady or being primped and fussed over.

  “Oh no, we have plenty of time,” Elle said.

  “You know, I’m good.” I realized that it was three against one and I was clearly fighting a battle I would never win, but I had to try not to go down without a fight. “I like my hair being straight.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Christy said. “We’re here to give you a new look, remember?”

  “Listen to your friends,” The Hair Woman said, patting the salon chair, and flashing me a false smile.

  I sighed and sat on said chair, setting the department store bag on the floor next to me.

  “This is perfect timing,” Christy said to The Hair Woman. “There’s a guy she’s trying to impress.”

  “Oh really?” I saw The Hair Woman’s eyes get big in the mirror in front of us. She was obviously thinking, Ca-ching! Guaranteed sale! “He must be a very handsome young man, I’ll bet.”