“When you walk away today,” he continued, “you’re going to have the skills to protect yourself out there. Now, let’s get into a stance. Everybody on your feet.”
For the next half hour or so, Tal walked us through basic Krav Maga techniques: jabs, kicks, blocks, that sort of thing. When he was done, he asked for a volunteer to help him demonstrate how to put it all together.
Eager to kick some ass, Lia threw her hand up in the air.
“You.” He pointed to her. “Come here, join me.”
She leaped to her feet, practically giggling.
Tal grabbed a target pad from the corner of the room and held it up in front of him. “Okay, to start, let’s try some downward hammer fists. Go!”
Lia pummeled the pad with both hands.
“Get up on your toe,” Tal said. She struck again. “Follow through. You’re not following through.” His voice was hostile, and I knew why. He was trying to agitate her. To get her to fight with every ounce of her strength.
But I don’t think Tal quite understood what he was dealing with.
“Is that all you got?” He taunted her while she continued to strike, harder and faster. Her cheeks grew bright pink, her breath became raspy. “Come on! Give me more! Pretend I’m that guy on the subway.” She hit him again. “That’s how you hit a predator? That’s nothing! Okay, then pretend I’m your boyfriend, and you just caught me in bed with another woman.”
Lia’s eyes caught fire. She laid into the target pad with such force that Tal had to jump back.
“That was a good one, finally,” he said. “I feel sorry for your boyfriend right now.”
Wrong thing to say, Tal.
In a flash, she ripped the target pad from his hands and tossed it across the room, then lunged at him, limbs flailing. Tal’s eyes went wide with surprise. For someone who was supposed to have catlike reflexes, he’d been caught off guard pretty easily.
It didn’t take him long to subdue her, though. He wrapped her in a bear hug, pinning her arms to her side and catching her legs between his ankles. She cried, “Let me go, you piece of shit!” and then a burly guy emerged from the back office.
“Tal, what’s going on?” he called.
“I got a hellcat on my hands, Robbie!”
“Don’t call me a hellcat!” she screamed, and jerked her head back so violently that the two of them collapsed to the mat in a heap.
The room erupted in a collective gasp and Tal began to moan. I rushed over to Lia. “Are you okay?”
She panted, dazed. “I...I don’t know what happened.”
“Should we call an ambulance?” one woman asked.
“No,” another woman replied. “Just stick a tampon up there—he’ll be fine.”
I turned around to see Tal looking out of sorts, blood rushing from one of his nostrils. Robbie stood over him, unconcerned. “You’ll be fine, man.” He pointed to Lia. “But you? Gotta go.”
Twenty minutes later, we were hunched over the bar at El Cantinero, downing flautas and margaritas with impressive speed.
“I’m really sorry about that,” Lia said.
“Don’t be. Tal had it coming. I mean, ‘hellcat’? Really?”
She laughed and licked salt from the rim of her glass. “Men are ridiculous.”
“Yeah.” I fiddled with a flauta. “Although, I’ve been behaving pretty ridiculously myself.”
“Is this about what I said last night? Because I didn’t mean any of it, really. I’m so sorry I said all those terrible things to you.”
“No. There’s something else.”
And then I admitted to my Twitter exchange with JBoogie.
“Whoa.” I couldn’t tell if Lia was impressed or terrified.
“It’s shady, I know.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely shady. But, really, what do I know? Look at the mess I’m in. I should’ve been more like you. Maybe if I’d Google stalked Jay early on in our relationship, I could’ve avoided all this drama.”
“So, do you think this means I shouldn’t trust Alex?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Honestly, Mel, I have no idea.”
Lia downed the rest of her margarita and hopped off her barstool to go to the bathroom. In her absence, I pulled out my phone. Without even thinking, I loaded my browser and went directly to Alex’s JerkAlert profile. It was almost a reflex now, checking to see if any new reviews had been posted while I’d been busy living in the real world.
Turned out, there hadn’t been.
So maybe things would be different this time. Maybe Alex was telling me the truth. Maybe he’d meant it when he told me he was in this a hundred percent.
Maybe all I could do was cross my fingers and hope everything worked out.
21
The next morning, I woke up feeling rested, refreshed, and ready to approach this whole Alex situation with a new attitude.
First, I would stop being so shady. I unfollowed JBoogie on Twitter and made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t check Alex’s JerkAlert profile ever again.
Second, I would stop being so paranoid. Sure, Alex checked his phone a lot, but that didn’t mean he was screwing around with other women. He was launching a start-up, for crying out loud. Of course he was distracted.
Finally, I would start being direct. No more pointless speculating; no more Google stalking exes. Whenever something was bothering me, whenever I had a question or concern, I’d come right out and ask him about it.
Also, I’d fess up about JerkAlert.
Eventually.
Excited to start implementing my new strategy right away, I dropped by Alex’s cubicle to invite him to lunch. He wasn’t there, so I wound up eating my peanut butter sandwich alone at my desk. Later on, I swung by again, but he was still MIA. He never signed into Slack, either. Thinking maybe he’d called in sick, I texted with a quick, Hey, everything okay? No response.
Was I about to be ghosted?
A little after five o’clock, I shut down my computer. Time to go home and face the weekend. Alone. With no plans. One final burst of naive hope inspired me to take the long way out, though, and I was glad I did. Because I finally found Alex, hunched over his laptop, looking totally defeated.
“Hey,” I said. He startled at the sound of my voice, gaping at me as if I was the last person on earth he’d expected to see. “Everything all right?”