Chapter 9
Early Saturday morning, Greene household
G abby woke up to a text from Phil, who was supposed to have the kids: Busy today. Tell kids I love them . Normally, she’d be perfectly content to keep the kids on a Saturday, but not today. With a groan of despair, she buried her face in her pillow. Even though she’d behaved like a seventeen-year-old last night, this morning she was going to be thirty-eight like her driver’s license said. Thirty-eight-year-old Gabby needed to get her ass to EOD HQ.
For her first day of spy training, Gabby was hungover, without childcare, and unsure whether she had broken up with the EOD via text or not after that second cocktail.
She had three choices:
1. Drive the kids to Phil’s anyway—but what if he wasn’t there?
2. Bring the kids to work. They could just play with iPads in the corner while she learned how to take down the Russian mob. EOD would know what it was getting that way.
3. See just how serious Justin was about his babysitting offer.
She went with door number three, and praise Leslie Knope and RuPaul (the gods of her universe), Justin was at her front door with two lattes within fifteen minutes. He breezed into the house and handed her a coffee. “Auntie Justin is here to save the day! Lucky girl, you caught me in the Starbucks drive-through.”
While Gabby swigged some coffee, Justin went to the medicine cabinet. “Ibuprofen? You look like roadkill, Gabs.”
True statement. Her hair was partially plastered to her head like she’d been run over. Tufts of frizz that hadn’t been crushed by tires were free to blow in the breeze of passing semis. She was something you would pass and think, “Poor thing, I wonder what that was?”
Gabby gestured to Tarragon, still on the dining room table. “Maybe your taxidermist could do something for me. She seems to be really talented.”
Justin flashed her the same annoyed look Kyle used and said, “Kyle, brush your mother’s hair. We can’t send her to work like this. It’s an emergency.”
Kyle stood like a deer in the headlights. It had probably never occurred to her that Gabby needed help. Her children were growing up like they were Melissa Joan Hart, except without a gig as Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Like a NASCAR pit crew member, Justin hit Gabby’s cheeks with some blush and handed her a lipstick. “At least you don’t look freshly dead now. Go get ’em, tiger!”
Forty-five minutes later, Gabby found off-street parking outside the EOD and pulled her mom-mobile in. Her Dodge Grand Caravan screamed, “My vagina is exit only!” and the bumper sticker on the back included a stick figure of everyone who had entered the world through said vagina, plus Mr. Bubbles, and Phil. The bumper sticker was worse than a wedding ring, but she hadn’t taken the time to scrape it off the van.
That was a problem for Future Gabby. She took a deep breath and walked into HQ looking more confident than she felt, at least she hoped. Markus, who had probably never driven a minivan, was waiting inside the entrance. She and her exit-only vagina were going to be training with someone who looked like he might make it through to the next round on American Ninja Warrior . There wasn’t a single TV show that Markus wouldn’t be great on. He was handsome enough for a soap opera and a shoo-in on any dating show, except that he’d have to pretend to be a marketing executive or a tech guy.
Gabby sputtered, “I’m sorry about the weird text last night. I was—”
He raised one eyebrow. “Gabby, if you wanna break up with me, you have to do it to my face.”
She laughed with relief. “Text breakups are the lamest,” she said, as if she were wheeling and dealing relationships via text all the time. Last time she dated, smartphones didn’t exist. Did anyone break up via text on a flip phone? She hadn’t.
On the way to the gym, he explained the day’s agenda. “We’re going to do some basic hand-to-hand combat and maybe some fighting with improvised weapons. Most fights aren’t planned.”
True. She and Phil had always gotten into it over appetizers on a “date” or while furniture shopping. They might still be married if not for that H?rlanda love seat episode at IKEA.
Markus gave her an up-and-down look, probably searching for some athleticism that wasn’t there. “Do you have any experience?”
“I can give a backhanded compliment.” She thought deep. “And I’ve thrown a guy’s clothes on the front lawn before. That was more of an early twenties move, though.”
“That’s not in the manual, but it could come in handy. You might not even need knife throwing.”
Knife throwing? Gabby started sweating. She was in over her head.
Because it was Saturday, they had the training gym to themselves. At least there wouldn’t be witnesses to her misery. Markus led her through some light stretches. “What kind of workout routine do you have right now?”
“I belong to a gym.” Last time she went to a step class at her gym, the instructor gently suggested she move to the back so as not to confuse the other members of the class. Through a fake smile, the instructor had assured her, “But you’re doing great!”
“I’m just trying to assess your base level of fitness.”
He could already see that she couldn’t touch her toes. That should be his first clue.
Markus looked like a professional athlete, but with soft brown eyes and a doofy smile. It was flat-out disarming. After one final stretch, he stood up in a “let’s do this” way and motioned for her to join him.
“Because you’re not trained in martial arts and we don’t have tons of time, I’m going to teach you how to break free if someone has you pinned.”
She nodded. That sounded doable.
Markus locked eyes with her. “I’m going to play the assailant. I’ll walk you through what’s happening in slow motion.”
She smiled without processing what he meant. So far, EOD training was a lot like that free one-on-one personal training session she’d had at the gym. Hopefully, this went better than that. She’d vomited in a trash can by a bank of ellipticals and briefly distracted everyone from CNN and The Bachelor , depending on which TV they were watching. After that, she had decided not to sign up for the personal training package.
“In a typical situation, your assailant will come up behind you.” He stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her midsection.
No one had held her like that in a while. With his muscled forearms around her, she went all soft inside. Her vision blurred to sepia tone.
“Tell me if I’m being too rough. I know this is your first time.”
“I’ve had two kids, Markus. You know I’m not a virgin.” She could have slapped herself for the joke, but there it was.
“Um…” He cleared his throat, and she died inside for letting her mouth run. She had verbal diarrhea.
“Don’t worry. I promise not to talk from here on out.”
He snickered. “Good luck to both of us with that one. In a hug hold, your best move is to drop out of their grip and run.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Okay.”
“Try to escape my hold. Drop down and roll away.”
She let herself fall to the floor through his arms. Instead of catching herself, she just dropped like a sack of flour. “Ouch!”
“Now roll!” he yelled. He dropped to the floor and showed her how to roll. He made it look good.
Gabby got to her hands and knees and crawled at the pace of someone looking for a remote under the coffee table.
“I thought you said you weren’t a virgin.”
Relief washed over her at his reference to her tasteless joke. Nothing was sweeter than when someone pretended your bad joke was funny. She should be in time-out, and he was being straight-up gallant. She smiled and kept her mouth shut.
“Let’s try it again. This time drop to your knees and make it look like you’ve done this before,” Markus said. “I’m going to put you in a sleeper hold. With my arm around your neck, you won’t be able to drop out.”
Gabby took a deep breath and focused. She needed to get it together!
He gripped her hard and explained. “You have a three-part move. Stomp on my foot, elbow me in the gut, and throw your head back to break my nose. Pantomime it, though.”
She did an exaggerated fake stomp.
“Good.”
She elbowed him.
“Nice work. Let’s go through that one more time a little faster.”
Stomp. Elbow. She threw her head back, but this time she connected with bone and Markus dropped his arms and buckled. He grabbed his nose, which was pouring blood.
“Ohmygod! Did I break it?”
He didn’t answer because he was running for the men’s locker room.
After a few moments, she followed him and knocked softly. “Are you okay, Markus?” She googled “broken nose symptoms and treatment.”
Depending on his pain level and whether it was out of joint, she’d have to take him to the ER in her mom-mobile. God help her, but she wanted to peel Phil out of the customized family window decal on the back of the van right now, as if Markus would notice the sticker with his eyes swelled shut. Either way, that stick figure dad needed to go.
“What’s your pain level?” she called through the door.
“I’m fine, Gabby.”
Her pain level was climbing by the minute.
She texted Justin: Idk if I can do this.
U have been there 10 minutes. CHILL!
It’s bad. Once again, she wanted to call and tell him exactly how bad this was. Then he sent a follow-up text filled with insanity. He was thinking of putting the cat on Craigslist to recoup his money but wasn’t sure on the price. Kyle wanted to go to the mall with Sienna, and were they out of the lactose-free milk?
You’re right. I’ll stay.