12 Steps to Mr. Right

by Cindi Madsen

  “Exactly,” Abigail said. “And I can always create guys who look nice and aren’t jerks.”

  Another point in the virtual world’s favor, until it came to wanting a real hand to hold or a warm body to cuddle up with on the couch. Shared laughs and kisses. Someone to make you look forward to tomorrow, because you knew you’d be going through it together. Then nothing else compared…

  But I didn’t bother saying that—Abigail knew it as well as I did, or she wouldn’t have asked for my help.

  So I shoved back the pang of longing and focused on the job at hand. “As Rachel’s doing your hair, we’re going to work on conversation tips, whether you’re talking online or in person, and which are better for which. Good topics, how in-depth to go during the first few dates, and stuff like that.”

  Research showed that lonely people often missed social cues. “Eye contact is good—I know your first instinct is to avoid it, and you don’t want to stare so intensely it makes him uncomfortable, but eye contact shows interest. If things are going well, flash him a smile. Turn your body slightly toward his. Gently brush his arm.” I demonstrated. “Notice his cues, too. If his eyes glaze over after a minute or so of the subject you’ve chosen to discuss, switch it up.”

  Rachel came back, mixed dye and foils in hand, and the three of us picked out a style from the pictures on my phone. When Rachel swore the one Abigail liked best was possible, my client let out a happy squeal.

  As Rachel applied the tan-colored hair goop, I ran scenarios with Abigail. We talked about turning an online convo into an eventual meet-up, and then I scooted the roller chair closer so I had her full attention.

  “No matter what, do not bring up an ex. After you’ve gone on a few dates, in the unlikely chance he asks, then you can offer a few details. Nothing ruins a mood like bringing up past relationships.” I couldn’t help thinking of how Andrew had briefly referred to his last night. Since I asked a question and he answered, it wasn’t a big deal, and he hadn’t lingered on his ex. Bumps along the way were common enough in the dating world, but the main thing holding me back was that I just wasn’t sure there was enough chemistry between us to pursue more.

  Then again, sometimes chemistry took time.

  After Rachel finished putting in shorter, angled layers near Abigail’s jaw, she turned her bangs into brow length side-swept ones and showed Abigail the products to use to minimize frizz.

  I opened the makeup kit I’d brought as a present for Abigail and added a few color touches and an extra swipe of mascara. Then we hit a few nearby clothing shops.

  Several purchases later, I pulled out my phone for pictures. We found a spot of grass surrounded by hydrangeas with huge purple flowers, and knowing that she loved botanical pictures, I decided it was the perfect background.

  Abigail’s original attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace, so I asked her questions and got her comfortable with her surroundings before trying again. I messed with effects and filters, softening and highlighting. With the bangs brushing her brows instead of in her eyes and the eye shadow and mascara, her bright blue eyes practically glowed in the pictures.

  I now had access to Abigail’s dating profile, so once she approved the pictures, I uploaded them. She’d made the changes I’d suggested during our last meeting, including linking her Instagram account, which was filled with tons of the botanical pictures she took as a side hobby—and yes, several pictures of her animals, although she promised to keep it to a minimum—and her profile looked a hundred times better already.

  Everything’s coming together nicely. This was one of my favorite parts, seeing how a few subtle changes could make a huge difference. I pocketed my phone and turned to Abigail. “So? How do you feel?”

  Abigail ran a hand down the full skirt of the navy blue vintage-type dress she’d bought and flashed an all-out, beautiful grin. “Kinda hot, actually.”

  Happiness and accomplishment tingled through me. There was nothing better than knowing I’d helped a woman become a more confident version of herself. Because as Sophia Loren said, “Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief she is beautiful.” That was what it was really about. Not the haircut and the makeup and outfit so much as making the woman feel like her best version so she could be her best version. For the first time since I’d met Abigail, I could tell she believed she was beautiful.

  Now to give her an extra boost to fill her confidence well, since sometimes idiots who were too blind to see genuine inside-and-out beauty came along and tried to drain it. “Just you wait,” I said. “Next time we talk, you’re going to have so many hits on your profile that you won’t know which guy to go for—of course, I’ll help you with that, too.”

  I glanced at the time. I needed to grab dinner before heading to the other side of town for my Twelve Steps to Mr. Right Workshop. “I’ll check in with you next week, but if you need me before then, just remember I’m only a call or email away.”

  …

  I hooked the projector to my computer and pulled up my PowerPoint slides for Session Two.

  Once that was ready, I put Hershey’s kisses on all of the chairs and then popped one in my mouth. Women began to filter in, and I took a swig from my water bottle and ran my tongue over my teeth before greeting them.

  Just as I was about to start, Amy Lynn walked in. “Hi,” I said, working to recover from my momentary surprise and mask it with a welcoming smile.

  Amy Lynn crossed her arms tightly, displaying classic defensive behavior, a mix between unimpressed and I don’t really need to be here. “I told my sister I’d come so she’d ease up. I’m not saying anything’s wrong with Jacob.”

  Sometimes the best way to change someone’s mind was to not try to. “Well, welcome.” I grabbed the chair I rarely used and squeezed it into the front row. Once Amy Lynn had hesitantly lowered herself into the chair, I pressed a pink foil-wrapped Kiss into her hand.

  To start, I quickly reminded my attendees of the first two steps and pulled up the slide for Step Three.

  Lessons learned, baggage all shoved away. Now I’m definitely ready for the next guy.

  I encouraged everyone to think for a moment about their past relationships, either their most recent or the one that left them the most devastated. “I know it’s not easy, but the silver lining is our crappy relationships can now be used to help our future ones. Sometimes a heartbreak shakes you awake and helps you see that you’re worth more than you were settling for.

  “Which transitions nicely to…” I clicked the remote to pull up the next slide. “How to find the right guy. Are y’all ready for that?”

  Like any good speaker, when the response consisted of nothing more than a few feeble nods and a couple of murmurs, I cupped a hand to my ear and said, “That was so weak I could hardly hear you, and this is exciting stuff here.” I raised my voice. “I said, Are you ready to learn how to find the right guy?”

  Yeses sounded through the crowd, along with some whooping, cheering, and laughter. Out of my peripheral vision, I noticed Amy Lynn had finally uncrossed her arms, but she executed an Olympic-worthy eye roll at the cheering. Or maybe just at me.

  If I’d let skepticism get me down, I never would’ve made it this far, so I kept up the optimistic Team-Finding-Mr.-Right attitude. “That’s what I like to hear!”

  I leaned against the table my laptop rested on and crossed one ankle over the other. “A bitter woman says, ‘All men are the same.’ A wise woman decides to stop choosing the same type of men.” I let that sink in for a moment and then said, “So, now that we’ve admitted our attraction to the wrong kind of guys, it’s time to learn how to find the right kind.”

  I clicked the next slide. I’d added a graphic with a man in a tux holding flowers that never failed to make me smile. Picture perfect and fictional, but he represented something real and attainable, and that sent excitement tingling through me. These women would find him, and so would I.

  Under our figurative Mr. Right was the next
step.

  Step Four: Make a list of qualities you want in a man. Use what you’ve learned in the past to decide, and then attain, what you really want.

  “Why don’t you jot down a few qualities now? It’ll help me better show you how to make your lists not only a good dating guide, but also a tool that’ll lead you to an attainable man.”

  I thought of my list in my nightstand drawer. It’d been a while since I’d pulled it out and looked at it, and now that I was on the prowl again, I should read through it and see if any revisions needed to be made.

  After about five minutes, I straightened and moved to the center of the room. “Once you get your final list, I want you to rate the items by importance from first to last. Then I want you to assess the qualities and really think about if they’re realistic. If you’re asking for things you possess yourself. And I want you to cut at least two items, so that your list keeps you open to guys you might not usually consider. After all, we want to attract different types of guys than we have in the past, right?”

  At first they didn’t verbally respond, but at my cupped ear and raised eyebrows, I got several “Rights!” with one especially enthusiastic “Hell yeah!” that made the room break out in laughter.

  “Mr. Right will love you for who you are,” I said, “and he won’t be a fixer upper. You need to want him for who he is now. I’ve got a few guidelines to help you as you fill out your lists.”

  The next slide showed types of guys to avoid.

  The guy who talks negatively about everyone, and/or says sexist things; the guy against labels—aka, “I don’t want to label us,” or “What does boyfriend really mean, anyway?”; the guy you wouldn’t like without the benefit of sex; and finally, the guy you know is a player/has commitment issues—you often see him with a string of girls, people warn you about him, and he’s rarely to never had a serious relationship.

  Yes, Lincoln did flash to mind when I read off that last one. He was the reason I’d added it, after all.

  Then we moved on to what to look for.

  - Goals & ambitions

  - Deals with conflict in the relationship fairly

  - Respects you

  - Good communication

  - Makes an effort to spend time with you

  - You feel safe & happy with him

  - He encourages you to live your dreams

  My time was up, so I thanked everyone for coming and told them to have an amazing week. “Oh, and remember that next week we’ll go on a field trip to a bar, so we can learn how to spot red flags in person. That way, you don’t think you’ve landed a guy who fulfills your list and accidentally end up with one from the ‘To Avoid’ side.”

  Women came up to ask questions or make comments, and I spent several minutes talking to them before turning to pack up. But then I noticed Amy Lynn, still seated in her chair.

  She dropped her gaze when I made eye contact. I thought she’d get up and leave, but she bit at her thumbnail and slowly looked back at me. “Do you, um, have a list of signs that a guy might be… Well, might be lying? Or possibly cheating?”

  I abandoned my attempt to shut down my computer and moved to sit in the chair next to her. “There are signs, yes. Do you…?” I was almost scared to say it after how vehemently she’d defended Jacob, but she obviously asked for a reason. “Do you think Jacob’s cheating on you?”

  “No. Of course not.” She ran her thumb along the seam of her pants. “I think he might’ve started cheating before our brief separation, though. I know it doesn’t matter, because it was the past and we’ve started over, but I just…I can’t help but wonder.”

  I was of the it-definitely-did-matter opinion, but I’d keep that to myself and stick to the first part of her inquiry. For now. “People who cheat usually start acting differently. They might suddenly be dressing up or hitting the gym a lot. Mood swings are common—either overly nice or angry in an instant. Both are stemmed from guilt. They want a lot of space and privacy, and their phones are off-limits. Excuses of business trips or working late come up often—if that’s usual, not so suspect, but if it’s new and added to all the other things, it’s worrisome. And of course the frequency you have sex usually changes—”

  Amy Lynn burst into tears.

  My stomach dropped. This was the opposite of the tingly excitement feeling. I wanted her to dump the guy if he was a jerk—and from everything I’d learned, he was—but I hated that it had to hurt before the healing came.

  My mind flashed back to when I’d vowed to do as much as I could to prevent this part, the night Velma cried her mascara and the rest of her makeup right off her face as she asked how this could be happening to her again. Wasn’t going through one painful divorce bad enough?

  I patted Amy Lynn’s shoulder, trying to provide what little comfort I could.

  “He was so weird the two months before we took a break,” she said with a sniff. “But he did say he regretted how he let things fall apart with us, and he’s made more of an effort this round, so maybe I should just let it go?” Her eyebrows arched, making it clear she wanted me to weigh in.

  “I think you should talk to him. Communication is important, and once you open up an honest dialogue—and the tricky thing is to talk calmly, without attacking or accusations—you can see if you can work things out, past or not.”

  She wiped her tears and nodded.

  “You have my card, right?”

  She nodded again.

  “Give me a call anytime. And you’re welcome to come next Saturday if you’d like.”

  “Thanks,” she said, and then she stood and started toward the door. She abruptly spun back to face me. “Could you not tell Annabeth about the maybe cheating thing? I don’t want to hear ‘I told you so,’ especially if it’s not even true.”

  “I’ll leave how much you tell her up to you,” I said.

  Then she was gone, and I was left with the reminder of how much breakups hurt, no matter who was wrong or right.

  Chapter Eleven

  Since I’d been thinking about Aunt Velma’s last divorce less than twenty-four hours ago, I couldn’t help studying Dick, her third husband, as we pulled chairs up to the dining table Mama had set with her fine china and enough silverware to confuse even the most highly trained in dining etiquette. My program had been in the beginning stages when Velma started dating him—she never was any good at being single, which was probably why she pushed me on my love life. She couldn’t imagine being okay without a significant other.

  Luckily, Dick was flag free, despite choosing to be called Dick over Richard, and he adored Velma, which made me fairly confident he’d stick. And if he ended up going down the lying, cheating road, I’d be first in line to make him regret it.

  Aunt Velma scooted her chair closer to the dining table and frowned, her gaze honing in on my hair like a confidence-destroying missile. “I thought you were back on track—that’s what Jackson said.”

  I reached back and fluffed the bottom of my apparently offensive hairdo, which I’d curled and teased so it’d be elegant enough to go with my dress. “It’s an evening ponytail.” According to the magazine sitting on my coffee table, it was “dressed up and romantic” and female celebrities sported the look on the red carpet.

  “Hmph.” Aunt Velma shook her head. “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

  I caught Jackson snickering over our exchange, so I plastered a syrupy sweet expression on my face. “Jackson, could you not find a tie tonight?”

  Everyone paused to study his tieless button-down shirt and he forced a smile in place, the muscles in his cheeks straining to hold it. “I was in such a hurry to get here and enjoy Ma’s pot roast, that I guess I plumb forgot.”

  “Plumb forgot?” I mouthed. How he got away with such over-the-top behavior never ceased to amaze me. At least it helped provide entertainment and a distraction from my disgraceful ponytail and was probably better than pointing out that according to Aunt Velma, putting lipstick
on made people more dateable, and I could only assume the same could be said for a pig.

  Mama cleared her throat. “Hold up, everyone. We still need to say grace.” She gave a pointed look at Daddy, who had a piece of cornbread inches from his lips. As soon as he lowered it back to his plate, she glanced around, her forehead creasing. “I always feel like someone’s missing, ever since…” She didn’t finish, but the way her eyes lingered on the spot next to me, where Mason used to sit, said it all. Of course she loved Mason—the whole family did. But seriously? There were eight adults and three kids at the table. Did we really need to point out the lack of the guy who used to cram into the corner next to me? They claimed I needed to move on, but so did they.

  Saying that would only mean they’d work harder to set me up, though, and Mama and Aunt Velma had already introduced me to every eligible bachelor in the neighborhood over the past couple of months. I was surprised another stranger hadn’t shown up to dinner today, the surprise guest they forever claimed had nowhere else to go for dinner and could I believe that?

  At least being a no-show last week has given me not just one, but two Sundays off from trying to make conversation with a perfect stranger.

  “I’ll say it,” Jackson volunteered, loud enough to get the attention on him again.

  Guess that meant I owed him one.

  As soon as everyone said “amen,” I glanced at my watch, as surreptitiously as possible. Only an hour and a half to go, and I’d make my excuse to sneak away and head to Azure for my date with Wade.

  With any luck, it’d go smoother than my last date.

  …

  “How was the banker?” Ivy asked when I sat across the bar from where she was mixing a drink, the muscles in her arms jumping as she shook the silver cocktail shaker.

  After checking the counter was clear of spills or condensation, I placed my beaded handbag on top. The stool wobbled as I tugged my skirt back down in the respectable range. “He got psyched out about my job and basically asked me to coach him on our date.”