Offering His Arm

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

The green button flashed at Sarai, daring her to click it and show all of her imperfections to Reed. Sarai had used many dating apps over the last couple of years. This was usually the time that she typically closed her laptop and ran.

Well, not physically run. More metaphorically. Because Sarai Austin was in no shape to run. At least not any longer.

Just three years ago she’d strutted her stuff on some of the hottest runways in the world. Now, she rarely left the house or got out of her pajamas. Her life was spent entirely online, from keeping up with her various makeover blogs, to chiming in on fandoms, to socializing on various platforms with virtual friends. She’d gone to college online, earning a degree in web design, which came in handy with her current line of work.

She’d even had a couple of virtual boyfriends. Sarai was always careful to choose men who lived far enough away from her that it would make a weekend getaway cost-prohibitive. Her last relationship was with a guy in Russia. But he’d gotten tired of their chat room talks and unfriended her. The guy after that, he’d lived in Australia. When he’d wanted to FaceTime her, she’d ended the relationship.

What other choice did she have? She wasn’t about to turn on the live feed so that they could see that her profile picture was three years old and thirty pounds lighter than she was in the present day. No, she didn’t need that kind of rejection. She’d had enough from the modeling world.

So why was her finger hovered over the accept button to engage her video camera with Reed?

Because she looked forward to their chats every night. Because he made her laugh, genuinely laugh. And he made her think, and stretch her mind when she went toe to toe with him in one of their debates.

Also because he had no idea what she looked like, neither in the past nor in the present.

Sarai had made her way around nearly every dating app out there. They all required a photograph as part of the profile. But not this one.

Instead, it engaged its users on a final exam about their life, asking questions about every facet of their being then matching potential couples based on an algorithm. Most of the guys Sarai had been matched with had been slightly over fifty percent. But she and Reed were a near perfect match at ninety-eight percent.

Maybe … Just, maybe?

The computer screen blinked. The dark square that had been black filled with the face of a man. A handsome man. Sarai leaned in and wiped her monitor just to make sure all that perfection was real.

There were no wayward smudges on her lens. Reed Cannon was the stuff of a girl’s dreams. He was handsome with his sandy blond hair and evenly tanned skin. His intelligent, dark eyes pierced her through the colored monitor. His lips were stretched in a cupid’s bow that aimed straight for her heart. He looked like a young Luke Skywalker. All he needed was the lightsaber.

And he wanted to date her. So there had to be something wrong with him. She just couldn’t figure it out.

Then she saw it; his prosthetic arm. He thought that would deter a woman? If anything it clenched the comparison to the young Jedi in her mind. What fan of the Star Wars franchise wouldn’t find the loss of a limb in combat just a little hot?

“Sarai? Are you there?”

“Just a second.”

Sarai took a deep breath. She could do this. She wanted to do this. She wanted to continue her conversations with Reed. And if they had to happen on screen, then so be it. She reached to click the mouse.

But before she did, she readjusted the camera to ensure that it only showed her from the shoulders up. All the weight she’d gained was in her belly and hips. She had a good collarbone. And the angles of her face were still attractive.

She’d made up her face, of course. What woman didn’t immediately put on makeup after rolling out of bed in the morning whether they were receiving company or not? She wasn’t a complete sloth.

She’d penciled in a smoky eye to accentuate the lift of her lids. She’d learned to kohl her eyes back in middle school under the tutelage of her Persian mother. As always, Sarai added some golden sparkles to bring out the hazel flecks in her green eyes.

Her lips were Autumn Red, a shade that highlighted the hints of red in her skin coloring. She’d kept her blonde hair up in an intricate knot that looked effortless, but she’d taken forty-five minutes to sculpt it. Her blonde tresses and green eyes were the only physical traits she’d gotten from her dad’s side of the family. Everything else spoke to her Middle Eastern roots. All bundled up together, it made her look unique.

Well, it made her face look unique.

Checking once again to be sure that the virtual connection between her and Reed was disconnected, Sarai stood. She readjusted her shirt. The scoop neck flattered her collarbone making her look slimmer, but when she stood the shirt rode up exposing the rolls of her belly.

Her flesh wasn’t on display. She’d double-Spanxed herself into the top. But that hadn’t stopped the bubbles of her belly from rising up beyond the spandex. And the double-Spanx always made laughing, and talking, and breathing tricky. But beauty was pain, right?

Looking into the monitor, Sarai saw herself framed for the view. From the neck up, she had no trouble admitting she was a beauty. Once upon a time, her face had gotten her booked into the high end of fashion. It was just the rest of her that was a fat mess.

Her boobs, which had always been large, now had an equal amount of flesh under her armpits. Her arms now had an extra layer of fat that wiggled when she raised them. Her belly jiggled when she walked as if she were doing some belly dance from her ancestral homeland. And don’t get her started on her thighs. She was sure Thor trembled when she walked.

Sarai took a deep breath. In her mind, she took those negatives statements and picked them apart. She was not the number on the scale. She was not solely what she saw reflected back in the mirror. The positivity technique she’d practiced in therapy helped to calm her nerves. But it didn’t change her mind. Therapy had helped her cope, but it hadn’t cured her. She would never be truly cured.

“Sarai? Has our connection gone bad?”

Sarai closed her eyes. She didn’t want the connection she had with this man to break. But to keep it intact, she’d have to reach out and grab the other end of the knot.

Sarai clicked the button.

On the other end of the connection, Reed blinked a couple of times. Sarai chewed her lip as she waited for his verdict. Were her arms in the shot? Could he see the flab? Oh no, she hadn’t contoured her cheekbones to perfection. Surely she looked like a chipmunk with a*****e of winter’s nuts in her jowls.

“Wow,” Reed whispered.

Sarai’s hand shot to her cheek. Was it that bad? What had she been thinking? She reached for the mouse to turn off the camera. The fat wobbled at the backside of her bicep as she did so.

“You’re beautiful.” Reed’s smile stretched across his face. His dark eyes were crystal clear as he gazed at his screen. He didn’t look disgusted. He looked pleased.

Maybe the camera subtracted a few pounds? There was the whole compression thing that happened as information traveled across the ether. He’d called her beautiful. It was nice to hear. But still, Sarai had a hard time believing it was the truth.

“You’re beautiful,” she parroted. Those words she believed. Reed could’ve easily broken into the modeling world with his looks.

“Not without all my parts.” He held up his prosthetic arm.

“Nonsense.” Sarai barely gave it a glance. She was more intent on the light in his eyes as he looked at her in the monitor. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t mind her own reflection. “Put on a black glove, put a lightsaber in it, and I’ll probably swoon.”

Reed threw his head back and laughed. Sarai had loved eliciting laughter from him over the voice calls. Watching it happen in real time and in color was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. Suddenly, she couldn’t remember why she’d waited so long to get to this step? If this was the sight she’d see at the top of the mountain, then she’d happily climb to get here.

“I know the protocol says to have four video chats before meeting in person,” said Reed. “But I’d love to take you out to dinner.”

Sarai felt herself falling off the high mountain at the mere thought. Dinner and date; two of the most feared words in her vocabulary. Reed wanted to not only see her in the flesh, he also wanted to watch her feed the excess amount of flesh on her person.

No, this wouldn’t do.

Her hand reached for the disconnect button. Her index finger pointed at the END button on the screen. But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to lose the sight of his face. Or the twinkle in his eye as he looked at her. But neither could she see him in person the way she was.

“Come out with me, Sarai.”

“I can’t.”

Reed’s face fell. The light in his eyes dimmed. “Why not?”

“Because …” Sarai looked out the window at the Montana skyline. One of the compatibility points was proximity. She knew Reed lived in the same state as her. He was only thirty minutes away. “Because I’m headed out of town. Out of the country, actually. I’ll be in Paris for a couple of weeks doing makeup for my friend’s photo shoot.”

“A couple of weeks?” He looked devastated.

“But maybe we can see each other when I get back? That is if you’re still interested.”

“If I’m still interested?” He raised a brow and then leaned into the camera. “Would a Weeping Angel mute a Silent?”

Surprised laughter spilled out of Sarai. “Wait, we haven’t come to an agreement on that.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to keep debating it and settle it when we meet in person.”

Reed’s grin was contagious. Sarai found herself matching it, no longer concerned if her cheeks were puffing out. She had a plan.

There were plenty of weight loss programs that touted drastic changes in just thirty days. She’d start one tomorrow, and then, next month, she’d settle this fictional argument in real life with this man straight out of her dreams.