The Kissing Coach (5 page)

“Huh. A virgin. I never considered that.”

“No kissing means no nothing-else. So, is it a guy?”

“Can't say.”

“I kissed a girl once. Too soft. Like kissing an uncooked loaf of bread.”

I laughed. “That little gem might be a good first-date ice-breaker. It's on the border, though.”

“Well, I wouldn't lead with it,” she said, winking at me.

The next day, I was surprised to get a message from Devin saying:
Same time next week?

I confirmed that we'd meet at seven o'clock on Tuesday, at my place again.

When by best friend Steph found out I was seeing him again, she offered to come, but I declined, saying she'd only complicate matters.

We were out for dinner on Friday night, sharing some tapas and enjoying a few adult beverages, and Steph wouldn't let up on the teasing.

Being no slouch, she had correctly assumed I had a wee crush on Mr. Devin Nelson.

“How long before you get some tongue?” she asked, giggling.

I gave her a stern look across the table. “I can't discuss the specifics of client sessions with you.”

She munched on the celery from her drink. “All this talk about kissing has been giving me the most intense cravings.”

“I know, right! Like, I'm not even thinking about sex—though it would be nice—but all I want is some dreamy guy to hold me in his arms and take his time kissing me.”

Her eyes widened. “Where? Show me where this dreamy guy kisses you.”

“Here.” I touched my finger to my lips. “Here.” My cheek. My ear. My neck on the side. My neck on the front. Back to the side. Lips again. Lips some more. Throat again.

“Here's me,” Steph said, pointing to her lips, then her forehead, the tip of her nose, then lips multiple times, then straight down her chin, down her throat down her chest. She closed her eyes and moaned, “Oh, baby, don't stop,” and kept pointing at herself, moving slowly down her stomach and then to her jeans, and then to where I couldn't see because the booth's table was in the way. I had a pretty good idea what she meant, though.

Giggling, I said, “Stop it you weirdo, those guys over there are looking our way.”

Her eyes flicked open. Steph has pretty, blue eyes, and they get even brighter when she's been crying, or after a few drinks. “Good,” she said. “If I take one of them home with me, I won't have as much explaining to do.”

“You're a bad influence on me.” I glanced over at the three guys sitting at a nearby table. They were all cute, and since there were three of them and two of us, there was even a guy to spare. “We should send them over a round of drinks,” I said.

“How forward.”

“Someone has to make the first move.”

She smirked. “You're so good at this. You should coach people to date for a living or something.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

As if by magic, our waiter came by with two more drinks, courtesy of the guys at the other table. This really surprised me, because I was familiar with the practice, but I'd never actually had a stranger send a drink over to my table. It was both creepy and romantic at the same time, and I was conflicted in feeling flattered, but Steph wasn't. She waved to the guys and blew them a kiss.

After the waiter left, Steph said to me, “I haven't shaved my legs in weeks.”

I looked at her sideways. “Steph. Are you considering your first-ever, one-night hookup?”

“I've only been with Richard. It's been nearly a year now, and it's time to move on.” She rubbed her eye. “Stupid contact lenses. Hey, that reminds me of something. Did I ever tell you what the big fight was about, the one that led to the breakup?”

“I thought it was just general nastiness. Wasn't he always taking money from your purse?”

She rolled her eyes. “Among other things. Anyway, we were up at his parents' cabin, just the two of us. I thought I'd been meeting all his needs, but ...”

I made an ick face. “This is going to be gross, isn't it?”

“Be a professional,” she said. “Pretend I'm a client.”

I sat up straight and got a serious look, which made her laugh.

She continued, “I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed he wasn't in bed with me. I had my contacts out, couldn't find my glasses, but I wandered out of the bedroom, following the sound of the TV. I was groggy, but I found him in the living room and just started talking to him. He wasn't in a very talkative mood, and he had something pinkish on his lap. I couldn't make it out without my glasses, so I leaned down to see what he had in his hands. Just then, I realized it was a porno movie playing on the TV.”

I gasped. “Nooooo.”

“Yes.”

“And you stuck your face right on it?”

“About two feet away, I realized
what
I was looking at. Mr. Pinkie.”

I giggled into my hand. “Awkward.”

She held her hand up in the stop position emphatically. “Nu-uh. This was beyond awkward. This was invent-a-new-word-that-conveys-abject-horror.”

“And you and Richard broke up because of that?”

“Not over that, but the thing that happened next.” She twisted her lips to the side and looked coy.

“Tell me this instant before I beat it out of you.”

“The next day, I made a little joke about it. A teensy little joke to ease the tension, you know? We were out on the boat, because he insisted on going fishing, even though it's the most boring thing on earth. Anyway, we had live worms, and he had the worm in his hand and he was leaned forward, trying to put the wriggling thing on a hook.”

“Oh god.”

“And I said, 'For the last time, Richard, stop masturbating where you're going to get caught.' He looked up at me, his eyes all astonished, and I said, 'Oh, that's a worm you've got. Never mind.'”

I convulsed with laughter, resting my cheek on the cool table while slapping it with my hand.

Steph mused, “Strangely enough, Richard did not find that amusing.”

As I was trying not to pee myself while laughing, someone came up to the table and asked if I was okay. I wiped the spit off my mouth and sat up, staring straight into the eyes of our waiter. He had gorgeous eyes, green like emeralds. He had short, black hair, and … why had I not noticed how hunky our waiter was?

“I'm okay,” I said to the cute waiter.

“Those guys left,” he said. “They were hoping you'd go over to their table.”

“But we haven't finished the drinks,” Steph said. “How does it work? I don't understand the buying drinks thing at all. Does it buy five minutes or something? Oh, ew. I don't like this at all.” She pushed the drink away.

The waiter said, “Personally, I don't like the send-drinks-over approach.”

I said to him, “That's because it puts you in the middle. Like some sort of drink pimp.”

He chuckled.

I said, “How about you? Do the drunk ladies who enjoy the fantastic margaritas here try to pinch your butt?”

He took two steps back, pretending to be afraid.

“Come back, we don't bite,” Steph said.

“But we may need a walk home,” I said. “What time are you off?”

He gave us a smile that made the whole restaurant seem brighter. “I've been off for twenty minutes.”

Steph said, “We just live a few blocks away. North of here. Perhaps you want to walk with us, if you're headed that way?”

He looked at her, then me, then her, then me again. “Give me five minutes to cash out,” he said, and he walked away. Steph and I both leaned over to check out his butt.

“We should kiss him,” Steph said.

“What do you mean, 'we'?”

“Just kissing. Nothing gross. Like when we were in high school. Remember we'd drink at parties and make out with boys.”

“I feel like I should be the responsible one here and say no, but I don't want to say no.”

“We'll go to your place,” Steph said. “And we'll say we're sisters.”

I shook my head. “I don't like lying. If he assumes we're sisters, that's fine. But don't say we are.”

The waiter's name was Caleb, and he told us his mother was Korean and his father was of Scottish descent. He had looked white in the restaurant, because his skin was quite light, but once we were outside, under just the streetlights, he did look more Asian. He was also terribly cute.

He held out his elbows for us, and Steph and I took a spot on either side of him.

“You're quite the ladies' man, Caleb,” I said, giggling.

“Wanna hear something funny?”

In unison, Steph and I said, “Yes!”

We were walking along the sidewalk past darkened store windows, and some people were around, going to the theater and nearby restaurants, but nobody gave the three of us a second look.

Caleb said, “When I was a little boy, one of my uncles used to tease me about being a Lady Killer. It would always make me cry, because I didn't know what the term meant, and I took it literally.”

“Aw,” Steph said. “That makes me want to hug you.”

He laughed nervously.

“Children do not get stuff,” I said. “Like sarcasm, for example. Sarcasm is wasted on toddlers.”

The other two laughed.

The traffic light was changing, so the three of us rushed across the street, still with arms linked tightly. As I caught our reflection in a store window, I thought:
Half a man is better than no man!

We passed by a place with televisions playing in the window, and I said, “Do you know there's a correlation between young kids with speech problems and households where the television is constantly blaring, even during meals?”

Caleb said, “How does that work? Wouldn't the kids learn better with more examples of people speaking?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “But I think the issue is nobody is actually hearing the kid talk. The parents aren't hearing the words that aren't right and giving the small corrections that matter.”

“
The Corrections
,” Caleb mused. “I read that book.”

“Me too!” Steph squealed, and then the two of them proceeded to talk about the author, Jonathan Franzen, the whole way back to my place. I liked his books, but didn't relate to the family dysfunction. I'd never read or watched anything that mirrored the same flavor of dysfunction I'd grown up with.

I unlatched my arm from Caleb's to open the front door of my building, and didn't put it back. He and Steph didn't seem to notice.

We got upstairs to my loft, and Caleb gushed about how amazing my place was. He ran up the spiral stairs to my sleeping loft and called down to us, “This place needs a firehall pole!”

Steph said to me, “You should get right on that. It could double as a stripper pole.”

I walked over to the kitchen, which was directly underneath the sleeping loft, and waved Steph over to talk with me in semi-private.

She whispered, “He's so adorable. Please, Mom, can we keep him? I'll look after him, I swear.”

Caleb kept talking about the view, admiring the cityscape that was visible from the upper part of the loft.

Also whispering, I said to Steph, “Dude, those drinks are gone. Metabolized. I'm totally sober and there's no way I can pull off a three-way makeout with that guy.”

The main reason, though, and what I didn't want to say, was that Steph and Caleb seemed to have all the chemistry, and I didn't like being the third wheel.

She looked at me through squinted eyes. “Are you sure this isn't about something else? Like you'd be cheating on your kissing client, Devin.”

“No,” I said, my tone distinctly guilty.

She rummaged through my fridge and pulled out a skinny bottle of rosé wine, unopened. “Hello, pink party wine,” she said.

I yanked open the drawer and handed her the corkscrew.

She laughed and twisted off the cap. “Twist-off. Classy.”

“That's my mother for ya.”

Steph called up to Caleb, “How big a glass of pink party wine do you want?”

He came down the spiral staircase, his feet noisy on the metal treads. “Just a small glass. My cheeks get all flushed.”

Steph brought him his glass of rosé and stared at him with adulation. “I wanna see your cheeks get flushed.”

His eyebrows went up, and he glanced guiltily over at me. “Thank you so much for inviting me over, Heather.”

“Feather,” I said.

He nodded. “Heather, and Stephanie.”