Fortunately for them both, Lynn was there. “Rachel,” she said patiently. “What is it?”
If she brought Craig Croker up now, she would likely never hear the end of it from Ann, especially if all her worry amounted to nothing more than a tempest in a teapot, which it invariably did. Maybe taking the weekend to think over the stuff with Myla’s dad would be advisable. If she still felt skeevy about it on Monday afternoon, she’d call Lynn and stop by for coffee and let it all out.
In the meantime, she had to say something. She’d called them here, all aflutter.
“I’ve started internet dating,” Rachel blurted, cringing even as she said it. Of all the topics to introduce, this was the worst.
Caught mid-sip, Ann splurted sweet tea. Flapping her hand for a napkin, she laughed, wiped her chin, and patted at the dribbles on her shirt. “Oh. This is better than I’d hoped.”
Lynn’s eyebrows jumped to her hairline. “Rachel. If you wanted to meet someone, you could have told us. Alex has friends at work he could set you up with.”
Rachel poured herself more coffee.
Ann shook her head. “Meeting people isn’t her problem.”
“That’s true,” said Lynn. “Just in the last few months, there’s been Ian Smith and Call-Me-Matt.”
And Craig Crocker. Maybe. Sort of. Ugh, this was agonizing. She had to stop obsessing over this. It was getting her nowhere. She looked up to find the other two women staring at her. She realized that she was supposed to say something. “There’s more to meeting someone than just meeting them. I mean, sure. I met Ian and Matt, but what’s happened since then?”
Ann tapped a finger against her glass. “Yes, what has happened since then?”
“Well, Ian stopped making moves, and Call-Me-Matt gave up.” Which had been a relief, to be honest. “I’m just saying it might be nice to find someone a bit less…extreme.”
“And the way to do that is to internet date?” Ann shook her head.
“I thought it might be a nice way to ease into things.” Rachel felt heat rising up her neck. “For one, anyone who’s signed up for a dating site is definitely looking for someone, so I don’t need to wonder about whether or not he’s looking for a girlfriend—”
Ann snorted.
“—and reading their profiles lets me know a lot about each of them before the one-on-one communication part, which allows me to eliminate people right away without having to waste time on the first few dates.”
“Charming,” Ann said dryly. “Is that what you wrote on your profile?” Then her eyes lit. She slapped her hands on the table and leaned forward, fully engaged for the first time that night. “Your profile,” she breathed. “You have to let us read it.”
The heat surged from her neck to her hairline. “No. No way. Never.”
Lynn placed a hand on Ann’s arm. “Be nice.”
Ann dragged a hand down her face as if attempting to wipe away her satisfied grin. “I’ll try. But I can’t make any promises.”
“Rachel.” Lynn leaned forward, placing her forearms on the table and resting one arm atop the other. “Have you really thought this through?”
Not really. But she didn’t want to admit it.
“I wanted to try it, so I signed up. I don’t see what the big deal is.” Although she did see what the big deals was, at least from their perspective. After all, she’d had time to acclimate to the idea, whereas she’d just sprung it on them.
“There’s a lot to think about,” Lynn said, “starting with your safety.”
“I didn’t put my last name or where I live or anything. I’m not a moron.”
Ann choked, and Lynn elbowed her in the ribs.
“I’m sure you took precautions, but I want you to keep us updated every step of the way. Don’t give out your phone number lightly, and whatever you do, don’t meet up with anyone when you’re alone.”
“What am I supposed to do,” Rachel snorted, “take you two with me on dates?”
“Well, no—although that’s not a bad idea—”
“It’s a terrible idea,” Ann interjected.
“I suppose. But if we know where and when you’re going to meet, we could check in with you regularly and maybe even swing by just to take a peek—”
“You’re overreacting,” Rachel told Lynn.
Ann snorted. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black.”
Since Rachel had no real defense against this, she settled for flipping a spill of red curls from her forehead and rolling her eyes.
“Don’t be mad, Rachel,” Lynn said. “We’re just looking out for you. You’ve had a rough couple of months.”
If that wasn’t the understatement of the year, she didn’t know what was. “I’m fine.”
“And we want you to stay that way.” Lynn signaled to their passing waiter. “I love you Rachel. You’re a good friend and a great teacher, but I don’t know anyone in the world less capable of taking care of herself.”
Rachel brushed Lynn’s concerns aside. “I love you too. And don’t worry. I’m working on my flying teep kick, remember? Once I have that down, there’ll be no stopping me.”
For the second time that night, Ann snort-laughed tea.
11
All things considered, Rachel’s flying teep kick wasn’t horrible. That’s not to say that it was necessarily good. But at least it was now recognizable as a kick.
“OK,” Donovan said, straightening and holding up a hand. “That’s better. Now remember—what are we working on?”
Rachel leaned forward and rested her hands against her knees. “I know, I know,” she panted. “But when I concentrate on jumping higher, I forget to kick. Then when I concentrate on kicking, I forget to jump high enough.”
Donovan nodded. “It’s a problem.”
Rachel suspected the problem might be that they always practiced the flying teep kick at the end of the workout when she was already oxygen-depleted and half dead, instead of at the beginning when she was relatively fresh.
When she said as much, Donovan and Ann just stared at her.
“What will you do if you’re ever attacked?” Ann asked. “Ask your assailant to please stop and wait while you catch your breath?”
Rachel pushed up from her knees, using her forearm to swipe back a clump of frizzy curls that seemed intent on eating her forehead alive. “Well, unless I get attacked on my way to the car after one of these workouts—which seems unlikely, by the way—I hardly think a situation will arise in which I go into a scuffle this winded.”
“What if you’ve been trying to run away but he finally has you cornered?” Donovan asked. “Or it took you forever to escape his guard and get to your feet?”
“Why are we assuming my attacker is male?” Rachel asked, mostly because she didn’t want to acknowledge what a good point he’d made.
Ann scoffed. “What woman is going to attack you? Be reasonable.”
“A school mom.” This time she wasn’t kidding. Hadn’t Jessica’s mom nearly attacked her just last year?
Ann inclined her head. “Some of the moms are a bit questionable,” she told Donovan. “But untrained.” She ran her gaze up and down her sister. “You could probably take most of them.”
Coming from Ann, even this qualified compliment made Rachel puff up. She wasn’t given much time to enjoy the thrill, however.
Donovan fitted the kick pad to his chest and braced himself. “Enough chit chat, ladies. Ann, get back to your weights.” He slapped the pad. “Rachel, kick me again.”
Rachel groaned, rolling her shoulders and backing away to slip into fight stance. “This is the worst.”
“Trust me,” Donovan said. “If you can do this when you’re at your worst, then that means—God forbid—if you ever do have to use this stuff, you’ll be able to use it no matter what.”
The annoying twist of curls dropped down her forehead again. Rachel, who mostly used this class for exercise and generally took such pronouncements with a grain of salt, ble
w her hair back and sighed. “I’m sure it’ll never come to that.”
Donovan nodded, slapping the pad again. “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”
~*~
Monday proved a welcome distraction from the weekend’s worries. With Rachel’s early-morning workout tiring her out and school to occupy her thoughts for the majority of the day, she found plenty to distract her.
Of course, nobody distracted quite like Chris.
“I tried to warn you on the first day,” he told the class, turning sideways in his chair and holding aloft his copy of The Taming of the Shrew. “We’re only in Act II, and already we have domestic violence. Only since it’s the woman character hitting one of the guys over the head, I don’t expect anybody to call it what it is.”
Shayla exchanged a weighted glance with Denise and waded in. “Like Hortensio didn’t deserve it. Lying about who he was and dressing up to sneak into Katherine and Bianca’s home to woo Bianca under false pretenses. I say if he’s going to behave like that, he gets what he gets.”
Chris let his head fall back, slapping his free hand over his eyes. “If it were one of the men hitting Kate, I bet you wouldn’t be saying she gets what she gets.”
Carl, his round face propped in his hand, stared out the window into the parking lot.
“Thoughts, Carl?” Rachel asked.
Carl jolted and dropped his script. He scrabbled under his desk and rose, frantically thumbing through the pages, too flustered to notice he held it upside down.
“While Carl collects his thoughts,” Rachel said drily, “let’s move on.”
Chris pivoted to face forward, shooting Rachel a look of personal betrayal. “I knew you’d take the girls’ side.”
“I’m not taking any sides. I just don’t find this discussion suited to our purposes. I trust it’s still my prerogative to guide the lesson?” She slowly lifted one eyebrow.
“You wouldn’t hit a man over the head with a lute just because he annoyed you,” he challenged. “But you won’t come out and say Kate was wrong to do it.”
Rachel unclicked her pen and shoved it through the bunched-up curls at the top of her head to scratch her scalp. “Because he annoyed me? Probably not. But if he posed a danger to me or someone around me? I’d consider it. Although hopefully in that case, I’d have something more substantial on hand than a lute.” She cleared her throat. Time to drag this lesson back on track. “But we’re not here to decide if Kate’s actions are warranted or not. Hitting Hortensio over the head is not something we can debate. Kate did it. However, it reveals something to us about her character. So instead of debating whether or not she should have done it, let’s talk about why she did it and what this shows us about her.”
“Don’t say ‘Because she’s the worst,’” Shayla delivered a dead-center imitation of Chris.
Chris groaned and covered his face with his script.
“Bear in mind,” Rachel said, “that the characters in Shakespeare’s plays lived in a different time from ours. Their behavior is often a reflection of that time.”
“Actually,” Todd Perkins said, scrunching up his nose, “they didn’t live at all. They’re not real.” He looked around the room for support. “Shakespeare made them up.”
In the silence that followed, the air conditioning kicked off, heightening the stillness.
Rachel stared at Todd, her face carefully expressionless. “Thank you for that.” The words dropped like stones. Ignoring the snickers her flat pronouncement produced, she lifted her chin and slapped her hand against the cover of the book. “Now. Can we please get back to the task at hand?”
~*~
Only a few days into Lockstep, Rachel already felt as if she’d taken on a part-time job. Because the system sent her a new batch of dance partners every day, skipping a session left her hideously backlogged. Her best bet at keeping on top of her partners was to schedule a set time every day devoted to culling. She couldn’t feasibly get up any earlier than she already did to make her early-morning workouts with Ann and Donovan, and evenings found her too emotionally drained to contemplate making decisions. She started staying an extra half-hour after school every afternoon to sort through her options and answer—or, in most cases block—any incoming messages from potential partners.
It didn’t take long for Rachel’s nervous excitement over her prospects to devolve into a grim fatalism. It was one thing to feel overwhelmed by options, and another thing to feel overwhelmed by options and find none particularly appealing.
Rachel opened Lockstep this particular afternoon to find that she had been partnered with a forty-year-old massage therapist who ended every sentence with an exclamation point; however, even an over-excited massage therapist seemed preferable to the skeletal, hook-nosed librarian eerily reminiscent of Ichabod Crane. She half expected him to list “singing school” and “Katrina van Tassel” as interests. Those would have been preferable to his actual life passion, which he listed as “Dressing up to go to ComicCon.” She couldn’t hit the block button fast enough. Her third dance partner for the day was no better. In his profile picture, he wore a sideways trucker hat and wielded a katana. Un-ironically. She blocked him without even viewing his dance card.
Her fourth partner, a sweet-faced school teacher from the Gulf Coast, looked more promising. He somehow managed to mention the Second Amendment in every section of his dance card. Rachel felt her blood pressure rising. Block.
Her fifth partner, however, warranted attention. Rachel liked his wholesome and clean-cut look. Even better, he’d listed his favorite book as To Kill a Mockingbird and recorded his top three interests as travel, the Gospel, and breakfast food. He listed his occupation as personal trainer. Handsome, fit, spiritual, and well-read? Yes, please.
Then she scrolled down to read what he looked for in a woman.
I’m looking for my soulmate. This girl is the best example of womanhood a man could hope for. She’s a beautiful person, inside and out, and has a beautiful, God-fearing mind. She is caring, respectful, faithful, honest, loyal, organized, intelligent, funny, elegant, maternal, sharp, courageous, witty, and wise. She’s sensible and warm. She’s fit, but not obsessed with her figure. She’s beautiful, but she doesn’t care. She can kick back on a Saturday night and have a good time at the game, and then dress up for church the next day in heels and pearls. She’s a Proverbs 31 woman who is full of confidence but also isn’t afraid to submit. In short, she has the qualities that will make her worthy of being my world, my life, my all.
“Well,” Rachel muttered, “good luck with that.”
Then she blocked him.
For exactly one week, Rachel kept up with Lockstep, sorting through strings of dance partners with grim determination.
It was not to her partners’ advantage that she read their profiles during what would normally be her essay-grading time. Her fingers positively itched for her red pen. Often she couldn’t make it past the first sentence, which sounded mean until she reminded herself that one of the first sentences had been I enjoy living life as a hole! Although perhaps that wasn’t a typo. With the sort of men she was getting as matches, sometimes it was hard to tell. Still she soldiered through, gritting her teeth against the constant abuse of your and you’re and wondering how it was possible the school system had failed all of these men so badly.
What was worse, some of them did not seem to realize their profile pictures were their first impressions—their first shot at swaying women. Why would a grown man upload a photo in which his eyes were closed? Why bother with a snapshot of a face partially obscured? Unless, of course, he’d been hideously burned with acid, leaving him with the sort of scar that would necessitate a Phantom of the Opera mask. Because that was the only scenario that made sense to Rachel.
And all the men posing in baseball hats were certainly bald.
Some profile pictures defied explanation. The man wearing a three-piece suit while sporting a giant rubber horse head. The man doing Tai Chi in a sunlit glen, wea
ring a ski mask. He had to know this made him look like a murderer. Not exactly a photo that screamed date me. Although it probably did incite screams.
But Rachel wasn’t a quitter. She had paid for three months of dance partners, and she would evaluate three months of dance partners. Every afternoon, she brewed a cup of coffee and hunched over her computer, hoping any colleagues who happened to glance into her classroom on their way home would assume she was working. As long as she could keep ahead of the avalanche, she could head off undesirables at the pass before they messaged her. It was so much easier to block them when she was still anonymous.
Then disaster struck. A string of afternoon scheduling snafus led her to skip four blocking sessions in a row. So much for keeping ahead of the avalanche. Rachel’s dance card filled to overflowing, spilling onto multiple pages. Her in-app messaging system clogged with hopeful greetings.
What was a girl to do?
Summon reinforcements.
~*~
Rachel called a Saturday-morning emergency session at Stu’s. Although she wasn’t completely certain her plan would work, she had to try something. Fortunately, Lockstep allowed Rachel to log in with her ID from multiple devices simultaneously. The three friends scarfed their meals and buckled down. Rachel and Lynn logged in from smartphones, and Ann worked on a borrowed tablet.
Rachel outlined their plan of attack. “Before I even bother looking at the messages, I want to sort through all the dance partners and block everyone who needs it. Hopefully, that’ll clear some of the messages without my ever having to look at them. Then I’ll only worry about answering the ones I haven’t blocked.”
Ann’s brows went up. “That sounds really brutal.”
“Just wait,” Rachel warned.
Ann scrolled down the screen, her head jerking back. “Ugh. Why do so many of them look like serial killers?”
“Now you see what I’m dealing with.”
Lynn tutted. “Under the question of what he’s most thankful for, this man said ‘God, family, and cattle.’”
Rachel peered at the screen. “Is he a farmer?”
Unbreakable Page 8
