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“This ends in another ten or fifteen minutes. Want to grab something to eat after?”
He nodded. “I know a great Chicago-style pizza place around the block.”
She closed her eyes and moaned deep in her throat. “Mmm, pizza. We’re there.”
Luke wished she hadn’t done that. Now he had to stand in the middle of the sex and intimacy section with a growing hard-on and no relief in sight.
THE CUMULATIVE EFFECT of all the craziness in her life was slowly driving Jane batty. When she couldn’t even enjoy a double pepperoni thick-crust pizza, she knew she was in serious trouble.
Luke watched her poking at her slice of pizza with a fork.
“You don’t like it?”
“I love it. I’m just a little sick to my stomach after dealing with that guy at the bookstore.”
“Forget about him.”
Luke had brought her to yet another heavenly dive, a place that knew how to make great food with a minimum of pretension. There were settled in a dimly lit booth, across from each other, and nearby a jukebox played an old Commodores hit. At any other time in her life, Jane would have considered this the perfect date. Hot guy, great pizza, perfect atmosphere. She had her dream career—was even enjoying great success at it—and she was in the prime of her life. Not only that, but she’d just had the most incredible sex imaginable yesterday.
So why did everything feel out of control? The answers were many and obvious, and she wasn’t going to replay them in her head again.
It was bad enough having to endure all those conversations at the bookstore earlier, exposing herself as a blatant hypocrite in front of Luke. He’d been polite enough so far not to point out that she’d just done with him the exact opposite of what she’d been advising other women to do. Jane swallowed her guilt and decided she’d allow herself a night not to think about it. Tomorrow was another day—and tomorrow she’d pick up where she left off obsessing about the validity of her sex philosophy.
Tonight, she feared she had more immediate worries. Like the creeps who thought she needed to be taught a lesson in bed.
Luke polished off his third slice of pizza and leaned toward her.
“Hey, zombie woman? Care to share your thoughts?”
“Oh, you know—the usual. Stalkers, deviants, my general lack of safety in the world right now.”
“I’m glad you’re taking the threats seriously, but don’t let it ruin your life. That’s why you’ve got me—to show you how to deal with it all.”
“You mean I can’t just snap my fingers and make them go away?” Jane forced herself to take a bite of pizza, and for a brief moment the taste allowed her to relax.
And then the moment passed.
“You need to be on guard all the time. Are you familiar with the concept of situational awareness?”
“Um, I think so?”
“You displayed an amazing lack of it while jogging the other day.”
“That was a special circumstance—I was brainstorming.”
“But anyone who wants to harm you will look for times like that when you’re vulnerable, and that’s when they’ll strike.”
Yep, there went her momentary sense of relaxation.
“So should I attach rearview mirrors to my head to make sure no more crazy men follow me on my jogs?”
His expression told her he wasn’t finding her jokes all that amusing. “Situational awareness is a state of mind you can develop. It means keeping a low-level sense of guardedness at all times, looking for potential threats wherever you go, keeping in mind how you might get out of any bad situation that could occur at a given place.”
“I’m a writer, not a CIA operative.” Though at times like this, CIA operative didn’t sound like such a bad job.
Luke gave her a look of forced patience. “When you go to the grocery store, how do you decide where to park?”
“I find the closest spot.”
“How about when it’s dark?”
“I find the darkest, most out-of-the-way spot available, preferably situated between a spooky van and a Dumpster.”
“Very funny. Do you actually think about safety when you’re in a dark parking lot?”
“Of course I do. What woman doesn’t?” Jane asked before she took another bite of pizza. It was getting better, the more she allowed Luke to distract her. In a few minutes she might even have a real appetite worked up again—maybe even for something besides Luke.
“We’ll need to work on some basic self-defense techniques this week. Just to make sure we’ve got all the bases covered. And I’d like to practice some more sophisticated techniques with you, too, things we hope you won’t ever have to use.”
