Grenouilles à la Meunière

Maddy had stopped in the lobby in front of the scorekeeping board. Nothing had changed; she was still second from the bottom. Her gaze fell upon the various bounties, none of which had been taken yet. This might have lifted Maddy’s spirits before, but now she could only feel the pull of the VP they offered. She was trying real hard to resist the pull of the game, and she wanted desperately for everyone to just treat each other right and get through this together.

Even so, she wasn’t made of stone, and her anxiety about making it to the end was weighing on her. She had 5 VP, and basic math suggested anyone not hovering around 20 by this point in the competition was behind and unlikely to make it to 100 by the end. Not to mention the longer she waited, the more first-time bonuses would be eaten up by other people.

Her date wasn’t until after the halfway mark either, which put her at a disadvantage. She clung to the bottom of her skirt as if it would provide some solace. She felt like the room was closing in around her, her chest was growing tight, then a hand landed on her shoulder, causing her to jump up and squeal loudly.

The chef hopped away from the hand and nearly collided with the scoreboard as she turned around to see Mira standing there, her hand still outstretched. “Are you ok, Madeline? You were breathing heavily.”

Maddy’s hand rose to her chest, and she closed her eyes and exhaled, “Sorry, I just…I guess I was getting a little overwhelmed.”

The Bengali woman’s eyes darted to the scoreboard before returning to Maddy’s slouched figure, “I could hazard a guess as to why, but I don’t want to make assumptions. Do you mind talking with me for a bit? Perhaps I could help?”

Taking a moment to breathe, Maddy straightened up and looked up at Mira before averting her eyes, “I wouldn’t mind some help, but…” She didn’t want to say it, but she was still wary of Mira. Throughout all of this, the woman had remained so composed and taken everything in stride, and while gradually Maddy was warming up to the idea that Maya and Mira didn’t mean explicit harm, it was hard to ignore their willingness to do what they had to do to get ahead.

Turning slightly, Mira crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re concerned I might lead you astray in order to get ahead?”

Maddy couldn’t make eye contact with the other woman and just responded with a small nod of her head.

“Reasonable, but consider if that was my goal, it would be simpler to just leave you alone. In an anxious state, you are unlikely to recover from your current predicament. Also, consider that in this game, helping you does not necessarily harm me. We are all competing for a man’s affections, but bolstering your relationship doesn’t necessarily hinder mine…unless you plan to poison his mind against polygamy.” Mira’s sharp gaze looked down on Maddy.

Maddy flinched; she hadn’t put much thought into what she wanted a relationship with Caleb to look like. Admittedly, it did not feature seven other women being involved, but she hadn’t even considered trying to get him to look at only her in these circumstances. It’s not like it would work that way even outside of it. She looked at Maya, “No, I don’t have any plans for anything like that…I just want him to like me, that’s it.”

Nodding Mira began to walk past Maddy towards the exit, turning back, she grinned, “Do you like coffee or tea, Madeline?”

Maddy turned and scrambled to catch up with the Bengali woman, “Um, well, I like both, but I prefer Coffee with just a bit of milk.”

Mira pushed open the front door and held it open for Maddy as they began to walk towards the docks together, “I can appreciate that, I drink black espresso mostly, but I can understand wanting to lengthen the flavours with milk. Though I can’t abide covering it up with sugar.” She continued walking, “There’s a cafe on the island run by a faun with a fake mustache, their espresso is fantastic, if you care to join me we can come up with a battle plan to help alleviate some of your anxieties.”

Hesitating for a moment, Maddy swallowed down her anxieties and chased after Mira, “Plan sounds good.”

Getting dressed in her room, Maya felt her anxiety building as she slid into some white yoga pants. It only occurred to her now how much control she was handing over to Caleb for this date. Not to mention, he wanted to meet in the gym? She hated exercising; it was so boring. She ran on a treadmill every day only because it was supposed to be good for her and because she could watch videos online on the TV while she did it. This only made her realize that she hadn’t engaged in that routine since coming here, and her anxieties spiked higher.

Lucian had said time wasn’t going to move, but what if that was a lie? How many YouTube videos by her favourite creators would she have missed out on? She tucked her feet into some sneakers. This whole island threw her off balance. Her routine had been so…structured: wake up, skip breakfast, go to the location of whatever game she was participating in, gamble, come home, work out, eat, sleep. Now she was eating breakfast? What was happening? She secured her sports bra and threw on a tank top.

She judged her appearance in the mirror, running her hands through her hair to straighten it out. Her mom would always tell her that she got her good looks from her father, Maya wouldn’t know she had never met the man. Also, while she could understand the appeal of a well-put-together outfit, what made a person attractive? According to her mom, she was attractive, but if she got it from her father, did that make her mother unattractive? Was Caleb attractive? He was well built after his transformation, but shaving had made him more appealing to Maya than the muscles had.

Maya hadn’t had an abundance of crushes in her life, and if you asked her why she had been attracted to them, her answers would be that they did well in school and seemed kind. She didn’t understand why other girls would talk about hair or faces. What was so special about a face that matched the golden ratio? Was attractiveness linked to math? No, because if it was, Maya was confident she could solve it.

She put her hands on her hips, pushing out her rear end. It also apparently had something to do with butts and chests. Big chests were better? But so were big butts, or wait maybe it was the shape that mattered more. Maya had heard the expression of a heart-shaped ass. Which irritated her because it didn’t mean vaguely ovalish like a heart, it was that fake heart people used on Valentine's.

Speaking of which, why do people celebrate love on Valentine’s Day? The closest Maya could understand was that it was linked to St. Valentine performing marriage ceremonies in defiance of Roman authority. But this seemed less to do with love and more with protecting Christian citizens from conscription to fight in the Roman army. So why wasn’t Valentine’s Day a celebration of defying the draft? Maya shook her head and looked at the clock, realizing that she had been standing in front of the mirror for a good ten minutes without moving.

“Shit,” She cursed under her breath and rushed to the door. She had lost track of time, another thing she had been mocked for in her youth. It wasn’t her fault, though! The thoughts came so fast they felt like they took less time than they did. She hurried down the steps, nearly crashing into Stella on her way down.

“Woah, girl! Watch it there! Aren’t you supposed to be on your date right now?” Stella leaned against the banister as she called after Maya, who stopped to run in place.

“That’s where I’m going now!” She started to move when Stella called back to her, making her freeze again.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! Oh, and remember protection!” The imp teased

Maya’s reaction was flat and unamused, “I don’t know what we are doing, and I have obtained a variety of condoms just in case.”

The purple-haired woman ignored the cat calls and wolf whistles of the imp, pushing forward to the gym. On opening the doors, she saw Caleb laying out a mat on the ground. He was dressed oddly. He was wearing grey sweatpants, but on top it looked like a cross between a white jacket and a unitard with long sleeves. He was also wearing white gloves along with it. He was also not wearing his glasses. He noticed her as at the mat hit the ground and waved her over

Maya stepped forward cautiously and looked at his face with narrowed eyes. “You’re not wearing your glasses.”

Caleb subconsciously reached up to wherethe lens would be before cracking a smile, “Oh yeah, I’m actually farsighted, I only need them for seeing details up close, so when I do activities where they’re more likely to get in the way, I take them off.” He regarded her confused expression carefully, “Is…that a problem?”

“It’s different, I don’t know if I like it right now.” Maya said bluntly, “I know the you with the glasses.”

“I mean, still the same guy, just can’t see right in front of me.” Caleb chuckled.

“Hmmm,” Maya hummed appraisingly and then looked away at the mat and the various other supplies around them that she didn’t recognize, “What are we doing then?”

Caleb swallowed, trying to recover from the glasses conversation, “Well, I thought I might teach you how to fence, a little. Obviously you’re not gonna become a fencer in one afternoon, but I thought that most people like the idea of fighting with swords so…”

Looking around, Maya now recognized that what she had thought was a pile of scrap metal was actually a collection of thin metal blades attached to hilts. She knew nothing about fencing, but she walked over and picked up one of the blades and pointed it at Caleb, and then put on her best Spanish Accent, “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Caleb pumped his fist. “Fan of the Princess Bride?”

Rather than answer the question, Maya swung the blade and continued, “You seem a decent fellow... I hate to kill you.”

Caleb smirked and put his hand on the grip of Maya’s blade and took it from her grasp, “You seem a decent fellow... I hate to die.” He lowered the blade down, “Before we can get into the meat of it, though, we have to warm up and stretch. It’s very important. Then we can outfit you and get you some gear, and we’ll cover the basics”

Maya sighed and rolled her eyes at the thought of warming up and stretching, “Do we have to?”

Giving her a sideways smile, Caleb nodded, “C’mon, we’ll make it quick. Fencing is a lot of repetitive action so you risk spraining a muscle if not properly warmed up. We’ll just take a couple of laps around the gym and then come back for stretches. Just enough to get the blood pumping.”

As irritated as it made her to have to do something as boring as running, Maya was admittedly very intrigued by how to use the blades like in her Mom’s favourite movie. So she joined Caleb on the track without a fight.

“Start slow and then once you feel your muscles working, feel free to speed up.” Caleb explained as they got to the starting line.

Maya shot him a look, “I got it, I actually do a lot of running back home.”

Caleb shrugged, “Hey, I didn’t know, I just want you to enjoy this, and if you hurt yourself, that would kind of ruin the experience.”

“That…makes sense, thank you, I suppose.” Maya turned away from Caleb and started on a mild jog to begin to get her blood flowing before speeding up. She tried to ignore the fact that Caleb had launched out in front of her despite starting later than her. Her competitive nature really wanted to try and catch up, but she tried to remind herself it wasn’t a race.

When they both had worked up a thin sheen of sweat, they went over to the mat and Caleb guided Maya through some basic stretches that he had learned while fencing in college. If Maya was self-conscious about him occasionally guiding her stretches by touching her, she didn’t show it. Meanwhile, Caleb could feel the proximately with her affecting him, and if he hadn’t been wearing a cup, he had no doubt it would be on prominent display.

Once Caleb was satisfied that they were both limber enough to start without receiving injury, he started to get Maya outfitted. Gloves, a chest guard, and a fencing vest. Eventually, he handed her a foil and watched as she studied it in her hands, now seeming unsure of what to do. She lowered the blade and looked over to Caleb, “Now what?”

Caleb went over and grabbed two masks and rolled one over to Maya, “Well, now we get to learn the basics and then you can start taking swings at me, how’s that sound?”

Maya put on the mask, noting how the mesh was actually easily seen through while wearing it. She lifted the blade. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get hurt?”

Caleb shrugged, “Well, the likelihood is pretty low, see?” He walked behind Maya and put his gloved hand on the tip of the blade. “Flat end, you might bruise me, but other than that, it would be hard to hurt me while we’re wearing the proper gear.” He tapped the blunt end, “If this were an electric setup up it would have a button to register points, but we’re not going to be too worried about scoring points here, just teaching and having a little fun.”

He slid his hand down and ran his hand over Maya’s, causing her face to turn red behind the mask as he adjusted her fingers. His head was leaning against her shoulder as his body encompassed her own, “Yeah, I know the instinct is to hold it like a baseball bat, but really the two fingers that matter are your thumb and pointer, you’re gonna control where the blade points with them and your wrist with tiny motions. The other three fingers just stabilize your grip. More like a paintbrush than anything else, got it?”

Maya was frozen, and it took a second for her brain’s queue to start loading words again, “Right! Like a paintbrush mmhmm, yeah got it.”

Caleb then put his hands on Maya’s hips and subtly shifted her weight, “The posture here is you want your dominant foot pointing forward so when you do a lunge with your foil...” He lunged forward with his arm out in demonstration before returning to his position, “Your foil goes in the direction it’s pointing.” He tapped her other foot with his as he used her hips to turn her, “Your other foot should be at the side, so that way your resting position leaves the smallest target area for your opponent. In foil, your target area for scoring is the torso only, so you want that to the side as much as possible.”

Maya wasn’t sure what it was, the fact that it felt like Caleb was controlling her body with her hands, the closeness between the two of them, or just the gentleness with the way he was speaking, but something about all of that was culminating in making it very hard to listen to what he was saying. Still, she nodded as her brain caught up, hoping the assurance would cause him to back off.

Caleb separated from her and walked opposite her, picking up his own foil and raising it, then settling into his own ready posture. “We won’t worry too much about the structure of play right now, just get used to using the foil for now. Come at me.” His posture shifted slightly, and suddenly Maya had the impression of a large jungle cat ready to pounce.

She looked down at her foil and swallowed, trying to think about what Caleb had instructed her. She corrected her posture and then thrust forward.