Looking For Trouble

Chapter 13: Favourites

CHAPTER 13

Arya Crawford

Skittles, Nutella, Carter Reynolds.

These are a few of my favourite things. Note: this list contains two truths and one lie.

__________

My phone sounded with notifications from Megan and Zoya on our groupchat informing me that they had both posted pictures and videos on their respective Instagram stories.

I thanked my friends on the groupchat and pulled up their Instagram stories to see what they had posted.

Megan had posted a video of the group drills and then a picture of her and Carter throwing a thumbs up at the camera after training, tagging Elite and providing brief details about Carter's MMA class.

Zoya, on the other hand, had chosen to post a video of Carter sparring with one of the guys in the class during individual training, also tagging Elite and adding details about the class at the bottom. But her next post on her story was a boomerang of a sweaty Carter drenching himself in ice-cold water from his raised water-bottle, post training. She had tagged Carter in this one personally and had captioned it 'when the instructor is so hot you have to remind yourself you're here to kick some ass not get some ass.'

After that first time, I had started going to Carter's MMA class every Friday. It was a slow (and painful) journey away from being a couch potato but I had learned to like it because for the first time ever, I believed I could defend myself in a fight. I'd still get my ass kicked and there's no way I would win but I felt more confident knowing that I could at least attempt to defend myself and inflict some damage in return.

During the individual training part of the two hour sessions, I had started asking Carter to teach me what to do in specific situations. Like if someone grabbed my hair from behind or if someone had me pinned to the floor. It had been extremely difficult to verbalize the scenarios knowing that they would trigger me to imagine being in that situation again or to actually re-enact it to learn how to get out of it. But Carter had been so encouraging in even his silence that I had felt safe enough to ask the questions. And my questions had garnered questions from the other two women in the class as well, allowing for all three of us to benefit from learning how to defend ourselves in specific situations.

And he had been a great teacher. He had taken the time to go through each step as slowly and as carefully as possible, and had even offered to play the role of the 'victim' in an attack scenario to showcase how to escape so that none of us women would have to put ourselves in that position even hypothetically.

So, when I found out that Carter was paid by commission depending on how many people joined his MMA class, I felt terrible that he was teaching me for free. Arguing with him about letting me pay had been futile. So, I did the only other thing I could think of. I called in Megan and Zoya to help spread the word about his classes so that more people would join.

Both Megan and Zoya were social butterflies, meaning if they posted about Carter's classes, at least some people were bound to sign up for them. I had already posted about it on my Instagram story but my measly 273 followers had nothing on Megan's 1624 followers, and Zoya's 2065 followers.

So, the two of them had tagged along last Friday to get some action shots for the gram. Carter had been reluctant at first but had conceded eventually.

"Don't tell Megan but out of all of your friends, Zoya is my favourite."

I looked up from my phone screen at Carter's comment. He had leaned over my shoulder to see Zoya's Instagram story.