The Kissing Coach (15 page)

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 laughed 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.

“It's been forty-two days,” I said to Matthew.

All three of them looked at me like I was speaking Alien.

“Since I had my heart broken.”

“Oh,” Matthew said.

“I had a great time tonight, and maybe tomorrow I'll stop counting the days, but as of now, I haven't stopped thinking about this other life I almost had.”