Upon closer inspection, yes, yes, they were.
“Hey, Heather,” Becca nodded to the woman giving a tip on how to pipe veins.
That was weird. Not the craziest thing he’d ever seen. But definitely odd.
“You know her?” he whispered.
Becca nodded. “That’s Heather.”
“I feel like there’s a story here.” He studied her piping technique, impressed with the realistic nature of her work.
Becca gripped his arm. “That’s a story for another time.”
One would think that penis-shaped cookies would be the oddest thing about the event.
However.
Usher’s songClimaxplayed softly in the background and, off to one side, an elderly woman gave instructions to a few others on how to perform a lap dance. He wasn’t making this up, though he wished he was.
A bald gentleman in plaid lounge pants had a smile wider than the Mile High City, while the Playboy bunnies, circa 1958, practiced their moves.
He used the termmovesloosely. They were more like small jerky movements and an occasional attempt at a twerk.
Everything turned sideways, including his stomach.
What the fuck?
Becca turned to him, eyebrows raised high on her forehead.
None of those people eating cake and participating in arts and crafts seemed to care that there were dick cookies or a lap dance lesson happening in the room.
“I just wanted cake,” he said, unable to remove his eyes from the scene. “They said there would be cake.”
Bright spot of the situation: the trainees were all fully clothed. Thank fuck.
Becca squeezed his hand. “Maybe we should…” She tilted her head to the door they entered. “Hit up a bakery instead.”
Then she squinted at something to their left. Her expression turned quizzical.
“Tanner?” Becca asked.
Linx glanced in the direction she stared.
Yup. There stood Tanner, having an energetic talk with a group of elderly women. He seemed to be totally at ease in their company. Raising his red Solo cup to his lips, he nodded along with the senior hanging on his right arm.
Huh. Interesting. Not that Tanner’s presence was a surprise, but his fraternization with women wasn’t expected. From what Linx had seen, all women seemed to elicit the same reaction from Tanner—red cheeks, inability to speak a coherent sentence. All that.
Not this group.
At Becca’s call, Tanner glanced up from the group of women. His face immediately turned pink. He tried to cover it, that much was clear, but would have to get a handle on that if this was his standard reaction around beautiful women. He waved to her, but even his wave was awkward. As though he stopped halfway through to consider whether he should do that or something else.
“What do you call it when you make someone do something to make it not bad for them anymore? Isn’t that part of therapy?” Linx asked. He swore he’d seen something like that on a television show. Maybe it was a movie?
Becca looked at him like she didn’t understand what he was talking about.
“When someone is afraid of spiders, you make them sit in a room with a bunch of spiders? Isn’t that a thing?” He was certain that was a thing. It had to be a thing.
She scrunched up her nose, adorably. “Desensitization?”
