"Len has training on Mondays," Meryl supplied. "And Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Not, for some reason, on the weekend though."
"They have classes on the weekends," I supplied.
"Aw, Lenny, you don't want to join a class?" Meryl teased, dark eyes twinkling. "You're such a people-person!"
I snorted at that, turning to load up the cabinet with the death sticks.
"Training, huh?" Ben asked, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. "Careful with that, you don't want to get too bulky, Len. Men like a little softness."
"Right," I agreed, lips twitching. "That's my mission in life, pleasing men. They can kiss my well-toned ass."
Let them think I was training to look a certain way. And while there was definitely a bit more muscle visible in my arms, abs, and back - maybe even my ass - appearances weren't why I was killing myself in the new fancy, expensive as fuck gym slash martial arts place in the slightly better industrial part of town.
No one needed to know the real reason I was sweating through my clothes, dripping, dry heaving into the carefully placed garbage cans after learning during my first training session that if I was going to train so hard, I needed to do it on an empty stomach.
Maybe I would get bulky. But it had been almost six months, and that had yet to happen. I guess I had gotten my mother's genes, tall and slim, no matter what I ate, muscles only a hint under the surface, soft things like tits, ass, and hips only attainable through plastic surgery. Of which she has had a lot done, and I have a deep-rooted hatred of. Likely because of her. Like everything else in my life.
"Just saying," Ben went on, shrugging off my comment.
"What are you saying?" I asked, slitting the bottom of the empty box, and flattening it out on the counter, knowing Meryl was going to be back with another in just a minute.
"You know, Len."
"No, I don't, Ben. Spell it out."
"It's just... you're a good-looking woman, Lenny. Might be hard to remember when you open that mouth of yours, but it's true. You're gorgeous. You could have any man. It's a damn waste that you don't."
"Right. Because my only worth in life is to be arm-candy and a wet pussy, right? To please a man?" I winced slightly when his head jerked back at the bite in my words. I pushed it, I knew that. I pushed people. That was my thing. I pushed the limits of their comfort zones because I got kicks out of it. And I pushed to see them stagger when they pissed me off. And, perhaps most of all, I pushed just to see if I could push them away.
By my records, I could push everyone but one person away.
But I wasn't so fucked in the head that I didn't know that my behavior wasn't exactly normal, or at all warranted at times.
Like now.
Ben was older, of a different generation. His people didn't see anything wrong with thinking of a woman as an accessory or, worse yet, a built-in house cleaner, baby-raiser, and bed-rocker.
I might not have been a fan of the idea that just because someone was old it excused their sexism - or racism, or homophobia - but Ben definitely had a better argument - his entire lifelong programming - to fall back on than younger men.
I didn't have to be such a damn bitch all the time.
"I'm just not interested, Ben," I said with a shrug. "Men come with their own set of problems. Problems I don't need right now."
"My daughter is going through a divorce from some mean drunk."
"Case and point," I agreed, even if I was rolling my eyes at him inside my head seeing as Ben was a heavy drunk and his daughter clearly had daddy-issues if she wound up with a man who had her father's problems with chasing the bottoms of bottles.
"Just don't like the idea of you in this neighborhood with no one to protect you is all."
I flipped the switchblade in my hand, rose my other hand, pointed, then raised the hand with the blade, and let it soar, slicing through the air with a swooshing noise before there was the satisfying thud of it landing true just outside the bullseye on the dart target.
"I think I can handle myself, Ben," I told him as he took off his hat, and ran a hand over the top of his full head of gray hair, clearly impressed seeing as he almost always hit the wall, not the target at all, let alone getting near the bullseye from clear across the room.
I would love to claim that that aim was thanks to my new training schedule, but the fact of the matter is, that was simply just from hours and hours of boredom at the store with nothing else to do but throw arrows at the dart board. I'd clocked thousands of hours on that board. Even drunk, I could usually wipe the floor with anyone who wanted to put their money up against a 'sweet piece of ass' as the last guy called me before I cleared a hundred bucks out of his wallet, buying me another two weeks at the gym.