The Kissing Coach (8 page)

He shifted to the edge of the couch. “So, same time next week?”

I held still in my chair. I thought we were finished, that he was cured, adequately coached. To keep taking money from him, for kissing this gorgeous, sweet man—that would be wrong.
Plain wrong.
Especially if I sat on his lap and tried to undress him.

He said, “So, Tuesday?”

I shouldn't.
Second base and crotch-grabbing?
No, no, it's gone too far already.

“You bet! Next Tuesday at Seven!”

Over the next few days, I thought about calling another coach, one of my mentors. I imagined myself explaining the situation, admitting I'd been kissing a client.

As you may have guessed already, thanks to big-mouthed Chuck, this wasn't the first time I'd kissed a client. (Chuck is the former client I ran into at the coffee shop the first time I met Devin.)

Chuck had been resistant about getting a haircut. In retrospect, I think he was willing to cut off the man-ponytail, but sensed my excitement to see the transformation, and used it as a bargaining chip. He claimed he was bad at kissing and needed some pointers. I politely refused, but put the offer on the table later, when he was being difficult about the hair.

Now, before you go thinking I'm a big meanie and I make people over the way I want them to be, I have to tell you three things.

1. At our first session, Chuck listed a haircut as one of his top goals.

2. I didn't want to kiss him.

3. Hair grows back, people. Seriously, it's just a haircut, not getting a face tattoo.

It was a good thing for his future girlfriend that he got the kissing lessons, too. Chuck had the strange concept that the man's goal was to use his tongue to drill into the woman's mouth as though excavating for a vein of rich mineral deposits.

How I trained him was through an unorthodox method that I am both deeply ashamed and incredibly proud of. I took the super-annoying buzzer out of my copy of that party game, Taboo, and used it to condition Chuck. I held the buzzer to his ear, and whenever his tongue threatened to gag me during a kissing session, I buzzed the thing in his ear.

Now, if you're interested, you can practice a thought-stopping technique yourself by keeping an elastic band on your wrist, and snapping it when you catch yourself falling into bad habits. However, if your lifestyle allows you to have a person follow you around with a Taboo buzzer at your ear, I do recommend it for immediate results.

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.