Learning the Ropes Read Free

She thought she had felt the zing once, but it had turned out only to be a fling. Maybe she was zing-proof.
    Rory shook herself out of her musings and realized that all of her friends were finished and laughing over their answers. Her page was still mostly blank and no amount of time was going to change that. Rory quickly circled the rest of the answers in a random pattern and put her pen down to signal she was done.
    Mac smiled at her. “Okay, everyone pass their papers to the left for the person next to you to grade. I’ll call out the answers from the key.” She waved a sealed envelope in front of them. “Just so everyone can be sure I didn’t cheat.”
    Rory reluctantly passed her quiz to the left and took Brianna’s to grade. She skimmed the other woman’s paper and felt her heart sink as she realized that most of their answers differed. She lightened up considerably as Mac began to read out the correct answers, though. Although Brianna hadn’t done terribly, her quiz certainly didn’t qualify her to be a vixen. Maybe she wouldn’t be the lowest score after all.
    She should have known better. Celeste handed back her quiz with a big fat F written at the top. Rory supposed it was her luck that Celeste had been in possession of the only red pen in the bunch. “An F? Are you sure that’s necessary? I was under the impression this wasn’t a letter-graded test.”
    Mac laughed and proudly displayed her mostly correct paper. “I bet this is the first time you’ve ever failed a test, isn’t it, Rory?”
    “I did not fail!”
    “I know I teach physical education, but we give participation grades and, to the best of my memory, an F is a fail,” Brianna piped up.
    “Hmm,” Celeste pondered with a finger tapping her lips in mock concentration, “Bree, if you had to give Rory a participation grade for quiz-like activities, what do you think it would be?”
    “Probably, ‘Works well individually but needs to learn to play with others.’”
    Even Rory had to laugh at that one while rolling her eyes.
    “Honestly, Rory, you got all of the technical questions right, but none of the fun experienced-based stuff,” Celeste pointed out.
    Rory tried to bluff her way out of talking about it. “I wasn’t trying to answer for myself. I thought the purpose was to answer the way most people would answer, to get it right.”
    Mac shook her head in dismay. “No, the point was to take the quiz and see how many right answers you would get. So that you can know if you’re playing it too safe or if you need to take a walk on the wild side.”
    Rory stabbed her finger at question number eight. “I don’t think that not knowing a position called ‘deep stick’ is a sign of playing it safe. I think it’s a sign of being an average person.”
    “Everyone else got it right,” Brianna pointed out mildly.
    “Well, everyone else is a good guesser. I’m a scientist. Based on facts, remember? I try to make educated guesses or nothing at all. What you see here is just a by-product of not having enough time or experimental data.” Rory folded her arms over her chest defensively and leaned back in her seat. She just knew that they were going to have something to say about that. Even she could see that it was a weak excuse at best. Wasn’t experimental data the whole point?
    Celeste slowly grinned at her. “Well, then, according to you, all you need is someone to help you gather some data.” She tapped her finger to her lips and pretended to get lost in thought. “Let’s see…who would be willing to help you learn more about kinky sex?” She brightened and snapped her fingers. “I know—any guy on the face of the Earth!”
    Rory rolled her eyes as the other women laughed. “The problem isn’t finding an available guy. The problem is finding an available guy who wants me and whom I want in return. I don’t need every guy on the face of the Earth. Just one good one.”
    Mac stopped laughing and her eyes softened. “I