1. Delia
one
Delia
Six Weeks Ago
I felt my heartbeat quicken as my eyes landed on the instructor first before I even took a look around the auditorium. It was hard not to notice him with the way he commanded so much authority.
Even though I could tell he was in his forties, I still couldn’t tear my eyes away from his chest as he lifted his shirt to wipe his face, bearing a six-pack and a smattering of dark brown chest hair. He was tan and muscular, but what I really couldn’t look away from were his piercing green eyes noticing me back.
Next to him was an older woman with a piercing look to her, blue-gray eyes, and gray hair atop an angular face structure. She had on just a sports bra and sweatpants, and she was holding her hands behind her back and swaying.
I glanced at the flyer I’d smooshed into my pocket in case they asked me to prove I belonged there. I held it awkwardly, waiting for someone to eventually demand some sort of credentials, even though my credentials should be obvious. I was at a women’s self-defense class, and I was a woman.
Kassandra bumped my ribs with her elbows, and I pulled away from her, hissing, “Ow, stop that.”
“Should we go sit with the other girls?” she asked, ignoring my protest.
I looked where she was pointing and realized the instructor was pointing, too, his slender finger stretched out to a half-circle of women on the floor at his feet. From this angle, it almost felt sexual or ritualistic.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said, not a touch of humor in his face.
“Right, yeah,” I muttered, embarrassed by my momentary lapse in awareness.
I walked toward the girl, keeping my head down and sneaking looks at the male instructor.
He looked so familiar, like I had met him before. I wondered where I might have seen him.
The gym? He obviously works out.
I sat crisscross applesauce next to a younger girl with her mom and looked over at Kassandra, next to a young woman in a full, ankle-length skirt.
There was something like twenty women, an eclectic group that looked like they’d never be together otherwise, bonded by only two similarities: their gender and their desire to protect themselves.
Work at the bar had gotten harder lately, with guys following me to my car, pinching my ass when I walked by, and sometimes shoving dollar bills into my bra even though I was a bottle girl, not a performer. I had a taser, but I still felt like I needed more, an assurance that I could stay safe even if I had no weapon on me.
“All right, ladies. I’m Robert, one of your instructors for today. This is Heather. We’re going to start with some simple self-defense moves that are not kicks or punches. Some of these moves are able to be done from farther away, and some are good for when someone grabs you and brings you in close to them. Remember that not every move works for every situation. My goal here is to give you more tools in your toolbelt,” the instructor said, his eyes scanning each of us. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed like they lingered on mine for a bit.
I glanced down and noticed my nipples poking out from my sports bra. I tried to will them to soften, hoping no one would notice.
“I know a tool I’d like to borrow from his toolbelt, right?” Kassandra whispered in my ear, and I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms.
The woman, Heather, clapped her hands together loudly and proclaimed, “Okay, ladies, so we’re going to start with one of the simplest tools in your arsenal.”
She lifted one of her legs gracefully and announced, “The leg.”
Robert turned to face her, and before any of us even realized what was happening, he grabbed her around the middle and captured her tightly, his face close to her face.
She immediately began twisting, ultimately sending her foot flying down onto his. He moved his foot before she could, and she then took his shoulders into her hands and pulled him into her so that she could effectively knee him in the groin. He blocked it with a pad on his hand, and the two separated.
“Okay? So what we’re going to do is get into groups of two and practice these two moves. One is a foot stomp, and the other is a groin knee,” Heather explained.
Robert spoke up, saying, “The thing to keep in mind with the groin knee is that you are taking control in this situation. So you’re grabbing the shoulders,” he turned to Heather and took her shoulders in his hands, “and you’re pulling them into you. Otherwise, you won’t have the right kind of force behind the movements. Okay?”
No one responded. We all just nodded quietly, and Robert repeated louder, “ Okay?”
“Okay!” we all shouted.
Heather said, “Ladies, the best weapon we have is our voice. People who attack women are cowards. They rely on silence. They want you to stay quiet about what they’re doing. When you do these exercises, I want you to accompany it with a loud ‘Stay back!’ Can you all practice that?”
Her shouting ‘Stay back’ reverberated through the empty room and intimidated all of us.
I glanced over at Kassandra, who gave me an embarrassed smile, and then we giggled a little.
“All right, on the count of three. One, two, three,” Robert said, and we all screamed ‘Stay back’ from our stomachs, our shouts piercing together.
He nodded without a smile and signaled to us to stand on our feet.
After about an hour of warmups, we got into lines of two. Half of us were in a line with Heather, and half of us were in a line with Robert.
Kassandra and I were at the back with our hands on our hips, chattering away to each other as we watched the other women move fluidly through the line, assaulting our instructors easily and then moving to the back behind us.
When it came to my turn, I looked back at Kassandra, and she gave me a thumbs up, which I lamely returned, unsure. “You can do it,” she whispered, smiling, and gave me a tiny push forward.
I bumped into Robert, and he responded by wrapping his arms around my waist.
My body reacted instantly, my nipples hardening and my thighs tightening. I felt breathless and hot instantly, his arms weighty and strong, pinned against my ribs.
I looked up at him, into those familiar eyes that I couldn’t place, and licked my lips. He nodded, his face serious and his jaw set, and said, “Go ahead. You can do it.”
“Stay back!” I shouted shakily, from my throat instead of my stomach.
He shook his head. “Find your inner strength,” he told me, looking disappointed.
“Stay back!” I shouted again, this time from my stomach. My voice was so loud that it rang through my own ears, and he nodded.
He crowed, “Good! Beautiful! I’ve got you around the waist, you can’t move. All you have is this amount of movement right here.”
He looked down at the space between us. There was so little of it. I could feel his body heat emanating off of him, and I wanted to melt into it.
“Now, feel your legs, feel that you can still move them. This is all about getting more in touch with your body. I want you to stomp my toe in 3…2…1!”
On one, I lifted my leg and sent it slamming down into the ground. He moved back quickly and nodded at me, an approving glint in his eyes. “Good. Now you know what comes next.”
I slid my hands up his chest to his shoulders, feeling self-conscious of how the proximity was turning me on.
I hovered my hands over Robert’s shoulders so that just my fingertips touched his skin, and he reached up and grabbed the back of my hands, pulling them down onto his shoulders.
His hands over mine were warm and strong, and I felt a strange jolt of excitement at his touch.
His fingers lined up perfectly with mine, and he used his to direct mine to sink into his flesh, saying, “Delia, you really have to hold me. Otherwise, you won’t get the leverage you need to knee me in the groin.”
Something about him saying my name ignited awareness in my brain, and I looked up at him in shock as I finally remembered how I knew him. Robert.
He was my ex, Jeremy’s, best friend.
I didn’t know how I managed to forget him. Being that my ex was my practicum supervisor at the master’s program I was in, I saw him every single week of the year since we broke up, usually multiple times a week. But I had managed to wipe his best friend from my memory.
I narrowed my eyes as it all came flooding back to me, the way he had undermined our relationship the whole time, always in Jeremy’s ear about me until he eventually listened.
When he dumped me, it broke my heart. I had depended on Jeremy, loved him, and respected him. Seeing him afterward, seemingly completely fine, as if we’d never happened, had been even worse.
It tore me up to see him in his element all the time, and now, seeing Robert here, the reason I had to rebuild my life, resentment coursed through me. I could practically taste all the negative emotions I had.
“Hey, where’d you go?” he asked, right before I dug my fingers, nails included, into his skin and pulled my knee back enough to really pack my blow with some force. I pulled his shoulders into me as I drove my knee into his crotch, watching the look on his face as I did.
His green eyes teared up and then instantly closed. He pulled away from me, bending over to put his hands on his knees and breathe through it.
He peeked up at me under one dark brown curl that was caught in his wet eyelashes.
“Wow, okay. Hey,” he croaked, his voice hoarse, “good job.”
He reached out and made a patting motion in my general direction, still not standing. “Next time, just let me know that you’re ready so that I can block. But good job. Next!”
He waved me on, and I looked back at Kassandra, who held her hands up as if to say what the fuck was that ? I turned away from her as I hid my smile, walking back to the eclectic group of girls.
As I sipped my water bottle, I watched as Robert excused himself, letting Heather take over while he recuperated from the blow.
He sidled up next to me, silently looking me in my eyes as I smirked over the lip of my drink.
An easy smile spread across his face, and he wiped at his chin with a stiff hand, his eyes trailing toward the women and then back at me. “So, you remembered, huh?”
“Yeah. I remembered.”
“Are you going to keep coming to the classes?”
I shrugged and asked, “Will you be here a lot?”
He smiled sardonically, a hint of malice in it. “Yeah, I’m here pretty often.”
“Then, so will I, so I can hit you.”
He put his hands on his hips and spread his stance wide, swaying back and forth. I tried not to look at his sweaty skin, but keeping my gaze toward the glint in his eye wasn’t any better.
“I might put you with Heather instead,” he said.
I shook my head and returned to drinking my water. “No dice, then,” I said, before gulping it down.
“Maybe you need a diary or a therapist.”
“Or maybe every few months, I’ll enroll in your class and ask for you specifically.”
“Violent outbursts can be a sign of emotional immaturity,” he snapped. His eyes flicked up and down my body for just a fraction of a second.
Anger burned through me. Is this jerk calling me immature as he checks me out?
“Is that what you told Jeremy? That I was emotionally immature?” I turned to face him, squaring my shoulders.
I thought of my knee smashing into his groin again, and I couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory.
“I told Jeremy that you were too young. I’m just now finding out about your maturity issues. Listen, you can finish the class out, but after that, you need to either calm down or not come back. Jeremy dumped you a year ago.” He squinted his eyes and tossed out, “Get over it,” before returning to the group, clapping loudly to get everyone’s attention.
The women stopped what they were doing and stood up straighter, and I cringed, disgusted by the power he wielded in this setting. He took so much enjoyment from playing the puppet master in mine and Jeremy’s relationship, and looking at him now, he still liked control.
I shook my head and walked out, making sure to slam the door so that it shook the auditorium.