Seconds later, my phone rang. I declined the call. As my phone rang again, I turned it off and headed for the subway and Bonnie’s dance studio on 91st Street.
Later, I’d deal with the fear, and my love life, and my maybe or maybe-not future with Holden.
But first, I was going to dance it out.
Twenty-Four
Holden
“I’m going to kill you.”
Eric looked up from his weight bench and his eyes went wide. He put down the weights he’d been lifting as he saw me coming toward him.
I grabbed him by the shirt, making him emit a strangled sound of terror, and lifted him off the bench.
“What the fuck!” he yelled.
“Mina won’t even talk to me!” I yelled back.
He tried to knee me in the balls, but I dodged him while keeping my grip and not letting him go. Two big hands grabbed mine and squeezed my wrists.
“Let him go,” Grim said.
I let Eric go and he dropped onto the bench like his knees didn’t work. Then he scrambled back. “What the hell did I do?”
“You duped me into that stupid double date,” I said.
Eric smoothed his T-shirt, then stood up and grabbed for his uniform shirt. One of the other guys on shift popped his head in from the kitchen. “What’s going on, man? I’m trying to make a sandwich between calls over here.”
“It’s under control,” Grim said. Then he looked at me. “What double date?”
“His first date with Rachel,” I said. “She wouldn’t go out with him alone, so she brought her cousin. Eric brought me. He told me it was a guys’ night out.”
“Ah, yeah,” Grim said, remembering. “The one I wasn’t invited to.”
“So what?” Eric said, frowning while keeping his distance from me.
“So, Rachel’s cousin is nuts,” I said. “She keeps asking me out and won’t take no for an answer. She got my number somehow and keeps calling and texting me.”
“Aw, all the girls like Holden,” Grim said. “Poor you.”
I glared at him, and when he saw the look on my face he backed off. “It turns out Rachel’s cousin, Helen, is Mina’s boss. She took a selfie of the two of us that night. And apparently she has it on her computer desktop at work, and she told Mina we’re dating.”
Both guys went still, taking this in.
“Hold up,” Grim said.
“Wait, what?” This was Eric. “Crazy Helen is Mina’s boss?”
I turned my glare back to him. “You call her Crazy Helen?”
Eric looked sheepish. “Rachel calls her that, yeah. Not to her face, though. Only behind her back. She isn’t really crazy. She’s just a bit… weird.”
I put my hands over my eyes and groaned. “That’s just fucking great. Well, thanks to you setting me up with Crazy Helen—which I didn’t ask you to—Mina thinks I’m cheating on her and she won’t answer my fucking calls.”
Grim whistled. “Man, that is a wild bit of bad luck. Like, the universe is out to get you kind of bad luck.”
“It isn’t bad luck.” I pointed at Eric. “It’s this dipshit.”
“Also true,” Grim said. He held up his hands, the voice of calm and reason. “Okay, okay. This is a crazy fucked-up situation. If Mina won’t talk to you, just go to her apartment. Do the boom box thing if you have to. Clear this up, man.”
“I tried that, but she wasn’t home. I also tried calling her office, and apparently she quit. She’s gone. No one knows where she is. I’ve texted her a dozen times, and she only sent me one answer: I don’t want to talk to you right now. That’s it.”
“But what does that mean?” Eric had buttoned his uniform shirt now and was tucking it in. “Does that mean she’ll want to talk to you later? Or that she’ll never want to talk to you again?”
“It could be either,” Grim said.
Eric shook his head. “Women are so hard to read.”
“Hey.” I waved my hand. “I have a fucking problem over here. You broke up my relationship with the woman I love.”
Grim crossed his arms and shook his head at Eric, taking my side. “He’s right, man. If Mina was just some girl, this would be kind of funny. But we both know she’s not. She’s the one from prom night.”
Eric groaned. “I know. And I like her.”
“Me, too,” Grim said. “That chick is solid, and your stupid stunt has hurt her feelings. Maybe you should go over there with a boom box. Make her understand.”
“I can’t do that,” Eric argued. “Rachel and I are exclusive. It’s going good. If I go to Mina’s with a boom box, then I look like a cheater. The boom box guy has to be Holden.”
“No one is doing anything with a boom box,” I broke in. I couldn’t believe I was having this idiotic conversation. I knew Mina; I knew that the situation was absurd on the surface, but underneath she was truly hurt if she thought I was lying to her and dating someone else. She wouldn’t find a boom box stunt charming or funny or cute. She wouldn’t want any kind of showy stunt, no matter how elaborate or Hollywood-like.
What she needed was to talk to me and hear the truth. But if it came from me, would she even believe me?
Would she believe any guy at all right now?
That gave me an idea.
“Okay,” I said. “Eric, you owe me. If you want to live to go on another date with Rachel, I know exactly what you have to do.”
“Anything,” Eric said. “Except getting beat up. I don’t want to do that. But anything else, I’ll do.”
Twenty-Five
Mina
I’d put the Smash the Patriarchy! T-shirt on again. In fact, since I didn’t have to go to work anymore, I was living in it. I wore it to the grocery store and to Duane Reade and to the corner bodega. I wore it to the coffee shop and watched the baristas give me plenty of personal space. It was awesome, and I didn’t care that everyone who saw me was a little bit afraid of me. In fact, I was never wearing any other shirt again.
I was now wearing the shirt at the local library, where I sat at a table across from Tess. Tess had pulled a book called What’s Wrong with Men? And How Can We Fix Them? from the shelf and was flipping through it.
She had been my companion for the past few days. We had gone to the movies and had tried jogging—we both hated it—and had baked awful fat-free cookies. She had been unusually quiet when I told her about what had happened with Holden, and that I needed to center myself before I talked to him again. She had also listened as I talked through my career options. Though Graham had been as good as his word, and I’d been given enough pay to last me a while. I owed him big.
“This book says men have toxic masculinity,” Tess said. “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds bad.”
“Holden doesn’t have toxic masculinity,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s hard to explain. Basically he’s kind and respectful and doesn’t feel the need to put women down in order to feel good about himself.”