RAKEish: A Hot Romantic Comedy

CHAPTER 1

“Once upon a second glance.” The phrase wobbled off psychology professor Dr. Luxury Stone’s tongue like a cheating husband’s confession in a couple’s therapy session. She cleared her throat and repeated it again, only slower. “Once…upon a…second…chance.”

She groaned.

Glance, not chance. Glance. Glance. Glance.

Who knew a five-word sentence could be so cumbersome? She wished she could blame this morning’s continual butchering of the phrase on a sluggish Monday brain. She couldn’t.

The culprit was a fat case of jitters.

She exhaled a breath, releasing her nerves, and repeated the phrase. “Once upon a second glance.”

The quick double-tap horn toot of a taxi driver caused her to practically jump out of her thirty-one-year-old skin.

Geez Louise, get a grip.

If Manhattan had an official noise, it would be the sound of honking. Getting used to that ever-present racket had been the hardest part of adjusting to her life as a visiting professor at Columbia University.

Satisfied her vocal cords were ready for the day, Lux padded barefoot to her desk, muttering, “It’s walk-the-walk time.” The phrase sparked a new flutter of nerves, a stark contrast to her normal calm when going live with her show.

Today, however, she faced a daunting task: discussing a painfully personal topic. More humiliating than any of her previous public speaking misadventures. Even the time she’d taught a class at Missouri State University with the back of her skirt stuck in her granny-like underwear.

Refocusing, Lux blew out a breath, snagged the single pink Post-it stuck to her microphone, reread her scrawled show notes.

1. Speak about how flawed first impressions can be.

2. Move into the beauty of second glances.

That was it. Two broad bullet points. A far cry from last week’s typed, printed, and laminated blueprint which had possessed thirty talking points.

Today’s notes were miniscule because, unlike every other broadcast leading up to this one, she’d not spent a week preparing. Truthfully, she’d barely spent a couple of hours.

The topic had ambushed her late last night, an email notification cutting through the quiet. Its contents—a harsh reminder of her apparent invisibility on dating apps—had stung. Yet it was the catalyst for today’s episode, pushing her to confront a societal obsession with surface-level judgments.

Lux’s watch buzzed, snapping her back to the present. Exhaling, she reminded herself not to say fuck on air, slipped on her headphones, and hit the live button. “Wake up, Manhattan. You’re listening to Monday Musings with Dr. Lux Stone,” she began, her voice steady despite the whirlwind of emotions. “Go ahead. Rub the sleep from your eyes and curse the gods that Mondays insist on coming so quickly.” She bit her tongue to keep from making a lewd comment about once dating a guy whom she’d nicknamed Mr. Monday for that very reason.

“Yes. You heard correctly. I’m not part of your dream. I’m real. It is indeed Monday, and you do, indeed, have to kick off those sheets, push the button on your coffee maker, and commit to adulting.” Lux’s own alarm had jolted her out of her restless slumber at three forty-five. Jolted because she’d been having a nightmare about the Prince of Manhattan. Ew.

“If you haven’t yet opened your curtains or pulled up your blinds,” Lux said, glancing toward her window, “you’re in for a treat. It promises to be a beautiful spring day.”

She pushed a button to play her show’s jingle and glanced at the opened email on her computer screen. Subject line: HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOUR DATING RESULTS! It was a correspondence from a dating app she’d signed up for on New Year’s Day after making a resolution with a friend to do so. This in the hopes they would meet some nice guys to do things with around the city while waiting to meet the man of their hearts.

In short, the email explained men on dating apps aren’t looking for personality-rich women.

In long, the correspondence revealed that over the last four months, 3,214 men (names included) had swiftly swiped past her profile image, dismissing her with a simple flick of the finger.

To add insult to injury, one of the swipers had been none other than Scott Landshire—the freaking prince of her nightmare.

A guy she’d met once and had hated instantly.

The jingle ended. “No rain in the forecast and highs in the low seventies.” Feeling a yawn coming on, she muted her mic and took a quick sip of coffee. There might not be enough caffeine in Manhattan to keep her going all day. Then again, stimulants or not, her brain would never allow sleep when it could instead fixate on the email that had informed her that—when it came to men—she was invisible. As if her image contained the subject line: Nothing to see here, just keep on swiping.

Or at least that’s what three thousand, two hundred and fourteen men must have told themselves as they judged her worth based solely on her profile image.

The knowledge of those rejections settled like a shadow draping over her spirit. While her brain knew she didn’t need a man to be happy, her heart desired someone with whom to enjoy life’s moments.

Her decision to share the results with this morning’s listeners was one that required her to put aside her own humiliation for the greater good. As a psych professor, she had always made it a point to emphasize to her students that knowledge was powerful. But in this instance, it had crushed her spirit. And if it could do that to her, it could do that, or worse, to another.

If she could encourage just one listener to be okay with their appearance, one listener to decide today was the day they’d no longer twist their true self to fit another’s mold, one listener to walk away from a bad situation, then it would be worth spilling her problem.

Not that the plan to share her results for the benefit of all made what she was about to do easy. God, no! It had all the markings of a topic that could go more viral than the infamous peek-a-boo granny-panty incident.

By nature, she strived to keep her failures private, her planners organized, and her vibrator fully charged.

But sometimes, nature had to take a backseat to the greater good.

Here goes my limping dignity.

She unmuted. “Now that you’re awake, turn up the volume, because you won’t want to miss a single word of today’s show.

“I’m calling today’s episode…Once Upon a Second Glance.” She smiled as the title rolled correctly off her tongue. Practice indeed made perfect.

Once Upon a Second Glance gave today’s topic the fa?ade of a black-tie affair.

If only it were that civilized.

She always titled her broadcasts and her lectures and…well…lots of things. She was a strong believer in the value of titles. The right one would do the heavy lifting for you. The wrong one would sabotage your plans.

“Are you wondering what that title even means? Wondering if it’s worth the brain power to figure out?” She spoke slowly so her words had a chance to soak into Monday-morning tired brains.

“No worries. I’ll help you decipher.” She readjusted her coffee cup. It had the words “KEEP TALKING. I’m diagnosing you” scrawled under an image of a therapist listening to her client. It was her favorite mug—not too big, not too small. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was holding this mug in her photo on the dating app.

“If hindsight is twenty-twenty, does that mean we should mindfully pay more attention to things or people we’ve dismissed at first glance? Should we make it a conscious practice to give things not one but two or even twenty additional glances before judging and moving on?”

The answer is yes, people. Absofudginglutely yes!

Three thousand, two hundred and fourteen.

“In a world where instant judgments and surface-level interactions reign supreme,” she continued, “we must challenge these prevailing narratives. Our worth extends far beyond our physical appearance.”

Mother had taught her this all too well. Not by good example—quite the opposite. Mother lived her life under the impression a woman should do everything in her power to remain beautiful. Beauty, according to Mother, was what kept a man in your bed. Well, that and knowing how to give a mind-altering blowjob.

No one had ever accused Mother of being parent-of-the-year material.

“As a therapist with a small private practice, I’ve witnessed the complexities of human nature firsthand, and I refuse to accept the notion that love can be won through superficial glances. Love begins upon a second glance. There is no such thing as love at first sight—just lust at first sight.” Lux had purposefully lived her life downplaying her looks. When she won a man’s heart, she would rest easy knowing his love was not all wrapped up in his admiration of her outer shell.

This way, when her looks faded, his love wouldn’t.

“Think about it,” she said. “How many times have you said or thought, ‘if only I knew then what I know now?’”

As a rule, Lux lived by the edict regret not, which basically meant always look forward. After all, it’s not like looking back would change the dysfunctional environment in which she’d been raised.

“I know it’s Monday, and your brains don’t want to think, so let me give you some examples of times a person might have wished they’d given another person a second glance.”

Of course, her examples needed to focus on dating, since that’s where she was headed with this show. “For instance, all you singles out there, think back to the last would-be-suitor who offered to buy you a drink or a cup of coffee, and you declined their offer because they were too big, too small, too tall, too short, too ugly.” She paused as she silently counted to three, giving them time to recollect. “Now, I want you to imagine what might have happened had you taken a moment and given them a second glance. I shot down my guy in this scenario because he wore a T-shirt with the words: ‘Why read when you can watch the movie?’ to a Literacy Bowl event. My forever man will love reading as much as I do. That being said, given today’s Once Upon a Second Glance topic, I can’t help but wonder what if…?” She’d filtered through several what ifs on the dude last night while not sleeping. All but one of them ended with her deciding she’d been correct.

“For instance, what if he’d been wearing the offensive shirt because someone had spilled something all over him, and the bartender had offered him a replacement from their lost and found bin?” She rubbed at a kink forming in her neck.

“And before you scoff, let me point out in romantic comedies things like that could and would happen to thwart a couple from falling into insta-like, let alone insta-love. And, while I don’t believe in the latter, I strongly believe that if funny meet cutes can happen in a book, they can happen in real life. Thus, I should have given him a second glance.”

The realization humbled her already belittled self-esteem. She was no better than the gazillion men who’d swiped past her profile picture. Hell’s fudging bells.

“If you’re wondering what the why is behind today’s topic, it’s because of something that happened over the weekend. You see, I received not one, but two emails from a dating app I joined in January. The first provided me with the number of men who glanced at my profile picture and, in under one second, swiped not interested.” She paused, swallowing the emotions welling inside of her. Emotions she could normally control, but on little-to-no sleep, they were all over the place.

“I’ll be honest. That email was one gigantic ouch to my ego.” And that had led to her second-guessing her long-standing stance to underplay her appearance until after she’d caught the heart of a guy.

“The other part of the unfortunate email listed the names of those men.”

After receiving the information, she’d been pissed. The creator of the app would hear from her. After all, this list could cause irrevocable harm to an individual suffering from depression or low self-worth. She didn’t care that the owner had immediately recalled it and sent out an apology. The damage had been inflicted.

“Hurt pride aside,” Lux spoke succinctly into the microphone, “being dismissed as unworthy of another’s attention—in under one second—caused me to toss and turn last night. During those awake hours, I reconsidered some of my past first impressions of people in general. Not guys trying to pick me up in a bar. Those times where I took one look and said no thank you.” She glanced at her sticky note. Not that she needed to. She knew what was there.

“One person kept popping into my brain. His Royal Highness, Scott Landshire.” It was one thing to be swiped out of existence by men she knew nothing about, but a totally different beast to have had it done by a guy she actively disliked. He’d joined the dating app in January as well and, ever since, had been reporting about his dating experiences in his monthly column RAKEish. A Guide to Dating from a Modern-Day Rake’s Point of View.

Why RAKEish? From what little Lux had bothered to learn about the man, his deceased mom had nicknamed him her ‘little rake’ the day he had been born. This because of a supposed curse on the first-born males on his father’s side to be unreformable rakes.

If it hadn’t been for the fact Lux and Scott had both moved to Manhattan in the fall, he might not have ever hit her radar. It wasn’t like she was a royal enthusiast or a reader of Naked Runway. Those were two things she had no desire to spend her free time pursuing.

But she did know of his move to the city because his arrival had caused quite the splash across many headlines. Including Psychology Today.

RUN AWAY PRINCE or PRINCE ENJOYING YEAR AbrOAD?

THE PRINCE OF MANHATTAN TAKES JOB AT NAKED RUNWAY AS AN ADVICE COLUMNIST

“For those of you new to the city, Scott Landshire is a contributor for Naked Runway. Once a month, he updates his readers on the single life from a male perspective. My regular listeners are familiar with my opinion of the man.” On more than one broadcast, she’d delved into why his column did a disservice to women. “His words of wisdom often linger at the corner of criminal negligence and reckless absurdity.

“My opinion of Manhattan’s rake-about-town first formed when I had the not-so-decided pleasure of witnessing the prince in action soon after I arrived in the city. I had been standing outside of a club waiting to be admitted when he arrived in a limousine. Once he’d exited, he proceeded to make his way along the line of those of us waiting and made a production of choosing ten ladies to jump the line and enter with him.” None of his choices had included ordinary women like Lux. “In that moment, I lost all respect for him. A gentleman would have gone to the back of the line and waited his turn.” Or at the very least, given his coat away to any one of the ladies in line wearing nothing meant to keep them warm.

He was exactly the type of man who’d made Mother into Mother. A woman who believed the sum of a woman’s worth was all external. And, if the headlines about him were true, he was exactly like Lux’s father. A man who thought women were disposable.

“I’ve decided to give Scott a second glance.” She’d put it out into the universe. There would be no backing out now. “Not the man himself, but instead, his column.” Well, maybe a little backing out. “In other words, I’ll give his advice a second glance, even though I strongly believe his monthly ruminations are about as useful as a chocolate teapot sold as functionable. Next week, I will report back on the positives I uncover.”

She took a sip of coffee and clicked open a different tab on her computer screen. An image of Scott’s first column appeared.

RAKEish: A GUIDE TO HOOKING A MODERN-DAY RAKE.

What woman in their right mind wanted to hook a rake?

Sure, in historical romance novels, a high-society playboy with a propensity for scandal—or as Scott defined himself, a high-class charmer with a wild side—could be molded into husband material, but life wasn’t a romance book.

“To be fair to Mr. Landshire, his column has glowing reviews. Naked Runway’s readership has exploded ever since his first article.”

The month she’d first unleashed her opinions, she had mocked his suggestions for pickup lines that would work on a rake—these for the women who had to do the heavy lifting to get a man’s attention. You know, the ones not pretty enough, fashionable enough, sparkly enough to get noticed the moment they entered a room.

Last week, Lux had gone on a tirade about his advice to women to allow themselves to be hypnotized to better attract a guy. This after attending a show at a comedy club where a hypnotist had been the main attraction. A hypnotist with a raunchy act.

Her watch vibrated. She glanced at it and saw she had an incoming message from Mother. Ugh. Whatever it said, it wouldn’t be nice. She took a cleansing breath and exhaled.

“I truly look forward to unearthing a nugget of good advice in one of his columns. Perhaps even his one on hypnosis,” she said into the mic. “Not that I will change my mind about his stance on the subject. Truly, if a guy can’t appreciate me for who I am, there’s no way I’ll agree to be hypnotized to make myself more appealing.” Hypnosis was a tool to be used for good, not for laughs. And certainly not to get a man. “Though I’ll peek a second time at Landshire’s column in the spirit of today’s topic—Once Upon a Second Glance—I’ll never use hypnosis for romance.” What was sad, some might. “But I will look for something good.”

“If you’re a fan of RAKEish, give me a call and let me know which of his tips you’ve found success with. But first, it’s time for this week’s sponsored ad.”

She pushed the button to play a fifteen-second advertisement for tomorrow night’s trivia fundraiser and picked up her phone to read Mother’s message:

Why the fuck did you go and tell the whole world you’re a dud at dating? Did you learn nothing from me? The one thing men want less than a plain Jane is a dull Jane. You’ve gone and made yourself both Janes.—Mom

Pain’s grubby fist twisted her heart, causing her to grimace. By now, she should be immune to Mother’s bluntness. According to the dating statistics, it would appear Mother had been right all along about the lovability of plain Janes. Sure, Lux didn’t need a man to be happy, but she sort of wanted one.

A good one, that is.

Not a damn rake.