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53- Raeanne
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FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 53.1
CunningHam: No painting. Just a glass of wine and a conversation. Maybe a dance if it goes well.I thought about that, and did my best to smush down the strange little glow of excitement that lit inside me when I thought about sitting with this stranger and having a glass of wine. I hadn’t been on a date in… well, a long time. Here and there, but I hadn’t given guys much thought since my college boyfriend Mason dumped me for choosing dance over him. Like there was a choice, really.OnYourToes: Okay. I’m free tonight.CunningHam: Perfect! Six?OnYourToes: Fine. But I’m bringing pepper spray.CunningHam: I don’t know what pairs with that, but we’ll figure it out. See you then.That night I showered, put my hair up, and pulled on a pair of black leggings and a flowy tunic that I thought was flattering. After swiping on a bit of blush and mascara, I headed for the door, hoping I wasn’t making a huge mistake.I really did keep pepper spray in my purse. You just never knew.Merlot Madness w
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 54-Dalton
“We’re straight up gold together, Rae. Gold, I tell ya.”I paced across my apartment, nearly levitating right out of my shoes. I just got home from West Wines, parked myself on the couch, and opened up the app to see how people were responding to our new video. The number of followers and comments made me jump to my feet. It was happening. I could feel the momentum every marketer yearns for when they start putting content out. Sometimes all you got was crickets. Other times, you struck gold.“Yeah?” Rae responded, sounding less excited than I would expect.Quickly swiping over to her account, I saw all her numbers inflated too. Why wasn’t she more happy about this obvious success?“Have you gotten any new customers?”“You mean students?” came her dry response.Dang, this girl was a stickler and even though I thought she was due to loosen up a bit, I had to admire her tenacity at putting me in my place.“Right, students. Any new ones?”She paused and I panicked. Maybe this wasn’t worki
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 54.1
I used the hour that Rae was teaching her class to come up with an idea for our next video. Scrolling through the hundreds of comments on the one from this morning, everyone loved our interaction. Comments like “so cute together!” or “omg, I ship them” or “is it just me or would these two make the cutest couple?” were surprisingly invasive, yet positive. As a marketer, I wanted to give the crowd more of what they wanted.What was that line in marketing? Sex sells? We weren’t going to give them that—though if it came down to it, let it be known I wasn’t firmly opposed to that idea—but we could give them romance. Dancing and wine were easy to tie together. In fact, I thought our next few videos could be like an evolution of two people meeting and dating. The one this morning was like us meeting online. This next one at the winery could be our first date. Maybe tomorrow we could go to her studio and show us taking dancing lessons together. We’d wine and dance our audience into loving us.
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 55- Raeanne
I had a full schedule the day after our latest TikTok went live, and through my back to back classes, I forced myself to ignore my phone.Although that was actually impossible.I used it to play music for class, and every time I stepped over to the podium to stop a song or pull up the next, I saw the notifications on my screen. By the time my last class of the day was over, I’d missed six calls and TikTok had sent me more notifications than I would have thought was even possible.I also had a text from Dalton.Goofy Wine Guy: VIRAL, BABY!He’d sent the message an hour earlier, while I’d been deep in the turmoil that was adult ballet—a complicated class because the students came from a wide range of backgrounds and ability levels, and also brought a wide range of ego through the door in a way the younger students never did. Tonight there’d been two new women and my first-ever male adult student trying out the class, and I’d felt a ton of pressure to offer just the right mix of challeng
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 56- Dalton
I could think of fifty things I wanted to do now and not one of them was something I could say out loud. What I’d just witnessed had completely turned things on their head. Of course, I’d known Rae was beautiful, but now that I’d seen her dance—really dance, I was mesmerized. Maybe even a little intimidated. What a jerk I was for thinking I could swing in here with my amateur moves and share the screen with her in a meaningful way.My shirt collar felt too tight to take a decent breath. “I thought we could do another video, here at your studio, but maybe I should just record you dancing to that last song.”I may have imagined it, but her cheeks were a little redder than the exertion called for. “No way! We’re in this together, buddy.”My left eyelid twitched. Buddy. Everything in me rebelled at her tossing that word at me. It hit me like the beat dropping in that shuffle dance tutorial that had been viral for so long it was no longer a trend but a mainstay of TikTok...I liked this gir
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 57- Raeanne
I agreed to go out on a date with Dalton. And like everything else in my life, I began overanalyzing the decision the second the words were out.Did I really need to be distracting myself with this… whatever this was, when my business and my life in general were teeter-tottering on the edge of a cliff like that balloon house in Up?The high from the kiss lasted a while. Like a few days, actually. But lingering behind the tense and giddy infatuation I felt was worry. My time with Dalton at the studio had come so immediately after the devastating conversation with my father, and in some weird way they were mixing together in my head, in my heart.For so long I’d thought my daddy supported me totally. Hadn’t he been at every single performance I’d ever done? Hadn’t he been the father with the biggest bouquet and the matching smile? When had things changed? He had not been pleased when I’d gone to the local community college for my associate’s so I could keep the studio running while I st
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 57.1
Dalton’s words hung around us for a bit, his usually entertaining persona replaced by something darker for a few minutes. And then he grinned at me. “Where are my manners?” he asked. “I haven’t given you the tour!”I laughed. I could see the whole car from where I sat, though the front was quite a distance away.“Maybe we should record it?” he asked.“TikTok first date?” I asked.“Well, we did that, but the fans clearly want more.”The video we’d posted of our dancing date had gone insane. The studio phone had been ringing nonstop and I had actually added a class and was beginning to consider hiring someone to run the competition team I needed to build.“They do,” I agreed, getting more comfortable with being on camera this way.Dalton set up his phone in the corner of the car, and then we toured the back of the limo, scooting around on our knees and trying out all the seats. Dalton showed me all the buttons, let me play with the radio, offered me water in a fancy crystal glass, and f
FALLING IN LOVE WHEN YOU'RE TEXTING 58- Dalton
A loud whooping sound greeted us as I opened the door of the Cunning Ham winery. A chill went up my spine and I almost hauled Rae over my shoulder and sprinted back to the limo. The wild animal call could only mean one thing: Robin was here.I loved my soon-to-be-sister-in-law El to the point of agreeing to give a best man’s speech at their upcoming wedding to bring some levity to the inevitable cryfest, but her mother? That woman was on another level of crazy that made me want to tuck tail and hide. As it was, her voice stopped me in my tracks for a moment.“What is it?” Rae muttered out the side of her mouth as I put my hand on her back and stiffened my spine.“Good question. I sometimes wonder if she’s an it more than a who, myself,” I muttered back.“Huh?” Rae scrunched up her elegant nose and before I could explain the nuances of Robin’s crazy, Mom saw us.“Dalton!” she cried, hustling around the bar to come over. “It’s so nice to see you unexpectedly.” She ran straight into my c
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