19. In the Bag
In the Bag
This is all Angie’s fault.
I hadn’t viewed Rhys in a sexual light before.
And let’s be clear, the possibility of any romantic involvement between us is absolutely off the table.
I consider my time with him work. I don’t mix work with pleasure (I doubt there will be much pleasure.
If he’s hopeless at dating, I doubt he’s good in bed).
In fact, I might have to re-evaluate my nightmare. How can I be certain my dream lover was Rhys, anyway? Never mind the fact that I carried on an entire conversation with him and he sounded like Rhys and told me things that only Rhys would know…
I harbor a reasonable doubt, and that’s what I’m clinging to. It’s a stupid dream and I could have been banging 2010s Tom Hiddleston until Rhys made a surprise cameo and jump-scared me back to reality.
I shake my head. Reality is a strip mall in Koreatown.
“Carina!”
“What?”
“Are you listening?” Rhys stops short, almost causing me to careen into his back. He halts in front of a tax office, three stores down from the cafe he’s supposed to meet Michelle. The time has come. The day of reckoning is here.
“How do I look?” He holds out his arms, gesturing to his outfit. “Do I look okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” I grumble, keeping my gaze averted to the parking lot. “You look great.”
Rhys peers into my face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You’re acting odd today.”
“I’m always odd,” I say.
“No, you’re usually full of pep. Like an annoying cheerleader. Now you just seem twitchy,” he notes, “and shifty.”
I narrow my eyes, unamused. “Shifty?”
“Like you just pocketed a candy bar at the liquor store. Shifty.”
For someone who has the social sensitivity of a rock, Rhys is finally attuned to the changes in my mood. I suppose that means I’ve succeeded in growing his emotional intelligence, a win… yay. It’s not so victorious when he trains his newfound ability to read people on me.
“And you look like shit,” he adds without missing a beat.
I rub my temples, mumbling a few choice curses. “I had a lousy night’s sleep.”
“Bad dream?”
I snort. “Very.”
“I had a strange dream myself,” he says, nodding in all seriousness. “Involving you.”
“You did?” I’m afraid to ask, but I need to know. “What were we doing?”
“We were at the beach.”
I take a step back, blindsided by the sick serendipity of the universe. “Oh God.”
Rhys frowns. “Why are you acting like that?”
“Like what?”
“Weird.”
“I’m not weird, you’re weird.” I lick my chapped lower lip. “W-what were we doing?”
He studies me for a moment, his gaze falling on my twitchy hands, furling and unfurling into claws. “Yeah, you sure you haven’t been freebasing Adderall?”
“Just tell me!”
“Okay,” he laughs, “you were showing me around the tide pools. I think you were an actual marine biologist, or at least that’s what it said on your name tag.”
I blink. “I was wearing a name tag?”
“It was more like a sheriff’s gold star pinned to your wetsuit.”
“Seriously?”
“It said,” his hand sweeps the air, “‘Carina the Marine Biologist.’ That’s how I knew you were a professional.”
“That’s stupid,” I snort. “Why would I ruin a perfectly good wetsuit by pinning a hole in it?”
“It’s a dream,” he says dryly. “I didn’t even get a wetsuit. I was back in my grey hoodie.”
“That’s because you’re not a marine biologist.” I’m strangely pleased by my career change in Rhys’ dream. “Was I a good one?”
“You seemed like you knew what you were doing,” he smiles, “and you seemed happy to be back at the tide pools, teaching me about barnacles.”
My head droops a little. “It’s a beautiful place,” I say, suddenly growing despondent at the reminder of how far I’ve strayed from my passions. “So that’s all? I showed you some barnacles and nothing else?”
He tilts his head to the side. “Well, you also picked up a purple sea squirt and asked me to press it. It shot a stream of seawater into my face, and that seemed to please you, so you demanded that I do it again. And again. Some of it got in my mouth and you tossed your head back in fiendish laughter.”
Fiendish laughter? Is that how he saw me? “I would never do that to a poor invertebrate! It’s against the marine biologists’ code.”
“Well, you must have gone rogue,” he laughs, “and you were determined to squirt in my face.”
“That’s sick.” I sniff, offended and disturbed for a variety of reasons, least of all that I’m some evil marine biologist in his twisted Freudian dream. “What right do you have dreaming about me in the first place? I want this dream redacted from your mind.”
“Is it that time of the month?” He jumps back, expecting me to sock him. I was never going to choose violence; I just flapped my arms at him like an angry hawk and made him flinch.
Anyway, what the hell are we doing? Look at us. It’s the day of Rhys’ big coffee date with Michelle, and we’re standing in front of a dusty CPA window, dissecting his silly dream. It’s time to snap back to reality.
I’m starting to suspect that Rhys is idling on purpose so he could avoid striking out with Michelle again. I know a little something about procrastination.
“Okay, enough dawdling. Let’s do a final outfit check.
” With my own deranged dream still hounding me with risqué images (right now, I just had a flashback to Rhys’ shapely ass), I can no longer look Rhys square in the eyes without turning into a stewed tomato, so I turn us toward the storefront window.
Our reflection is barely visible in the dusty glass, obscured by decals advertising 20% off your tax return. Shoving aside my own issues (and what issues they were), I roll up my sleeves and get back to the business of makeovers and matchmaking.
“You look very classy,” I assess, “dorky cute. Adorkable, from the outside, anyway.”
“Adorkable is a dumb word,” says Rhys and just like that, his adorkability shares plummet.
“Be ‘strong and silent,’ remember?”
“I just want to know if Michelle will like my outfit. I don’t need banal personality labels.”
He’s dressed in a smart waffle-knit sweater and dark black jeans, his hair just the right amount of disheveled.
“Banal personality labels are what you’re going to get. Just stand up taller.” I smack him between the shoulder blades. “Stop slouching and please stop fiddling with your collar.”
“The tag itches me,” he stoops down, tugging on his collar to show me the welt on the back of his neck.
“I see it. Here...” Digging into my giant tote bag, I unearth a mini sewing kit and snip at the tag with my miniature scissors.
“Done,” I say, absently dragging a thumb over the irritated skin until I realized what I was doing.
I snatch my hand back before he’s alerted to my touch and things get even weirder between us.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” I assure him.
“That’s what movie characters say when everything is not fine.”
He has a point. Despite manifesting success for two, I can’t help wallowing in a premonition of a forthcoming crash and burn. I blame my dream. It’s put me in a funk. I’m on pins and needles, and my exhaustion is making me believe we’ve lost before we’ve even begun.
No! I won’t have it. I will not think like a loser. I will not think like Rhys. I am a winner… and winners don’t give up.
I stomp my foot. “Stop this loser mindset at once. You are setting yourself up for failure, which may come naturally to you, but I’ll be damned if you drag me down to your level. I win, ergo, as my protégé, you must win.”
Rhys considers my pep talk, his shoulders still slumped like he’s about to throw the game and slouch toward the benches. “What are we winning at, Coach?”
The game of modern dating. Not to put too fine a point on it, the game of love.
He has to score with Michelle because it’s not just about him anymore.
It’s about me. Yes, yes, that sounds supremely selfish, but don’t you see?
I have to be selfish in order to do an unselfish deed.
It has to be about me before it can be about you, the girls, the single ladies, the disgruntled married ones, all of womankind.
It’s about my ability to turn a shitty man into a dateable man.
For every woman who has ever been ghosted…
For every woman who has ever had a creep slide into her DMs and solicit a booty call, then spitefully call her names after she’s rejected him…
For every woman who has ever been called ugly or old or irrelevant...
For every woman who had her ass grabbed by her dumb, V-neck wearing, herpes-spreading, nepo-baby boss…
I will be there.
I will single-handedly transform this cesspool called modern dating into a utopia, and Rhys is the test subject.
The fate of the world rests on Rhys acing this test.
But I don’t tell him that. It’ll freak him out, and he already has trouble performing.
Or he’ll think I’m crazy. But you know what?
I am crazy. I have a lot of time in my corner office to plan and scheme and indulge in my delusions of grandeur.
Mostly, I just want to succeed at something I poured my heart and soul into.
I want to help Rhys be happy. That will make me happy. I want to be good.
“This is just a quick coffee date,” I say, so exhausted I can barely stand. “It’s not as if the fate of your future dating life depends on the next twenty minutes.”
“You’re right.” Rhys takes a deep, shuddering sigh and double-checks his reflection in the mirror. “Are you sure this sweater isn’t too repetitive? Why am I always wearing a waffle-knit sweater?”
“Because waffle knit screams ‘Rhys!’”
He tugs at his collar again. “I saw a nice V-neck the other day.”
“No! No V-necks!”
“But—”
“Rhys! Stop stalling.” I long to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. “Believe me when I say this: you’re a different man than you were before. You dress better. You smell better. Your manners are much improved, thanks to me. I’d say you’re quite a catch.”
He eyes me skeptically. “You would?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? We’re winners.”