Click by Tymber Dalton

into training with a whip,” he said.
    She giggled. “No, but it did distract you for a few minutes.”
    “Of course it did. It always does.”
     
    * * * *
     
    The next afternoon he was out in the backyard again. This time, it wasn’t just Leah watching him practice, but their friend Tony as well.
    “She’s right,” Tony said. “You’re tensing up on the backswing. You’re overthinking it.” He stepped in and reached for the whip.
    Seth thought Tony was going to take the whip, but instead he grabbed Seth’s hand around the whip and drew his arm back. “See? Like that. You’re coming too far past your centerline on the backswing and throwing it at an angle. Try it underhanded first a few times and get your confidence back.”
    He did, nearly nailing himself in the nuts on the backswing.
    Leah giggled. “You’re too tense.”
    “Someone’s cruising for a week’s worth of tease and denial,” Seth shot back.
    “Did you think about using a shorter one to practice with?” Tony asked.
    “This is only a six-footer.”
    “You might want to get your confidence back with a three-footer,” Tony said. “Once you’re consistent with a target, step up again.”
    “You guys make this shit look easy and it’s not.”
    He remembered the first time Kaden and Leah had worked with him with the whips.
    They’d both made it look ridiculously easy. Which was kind of the point, because it took a hella lot of practice to get to the point where it did look easy and not like a drunk idiot was throwing it.
    “I’ve seen you make it look easy, too,” Tony told him. “What’s so different now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I do,” Leah said.
    The men turned to her.
    “It’s been a while since we’ve taught one of these classes,” she said. “The other day, he was watching videos of Kaden practicing. Now he’s feeling like he’s not up to snuff.”
    Seth’s face heated, but he didn’t respond.
    Tony stared at him. “Well?”
    “Hey, Kaden was a lot better at this shit than I am. He was a lot better at most things, if you didn’t notice.”
    Leah stood and walked over to him, silencing him with a kiss. “No one expects you to be Kaden except you,” she softly said. “Least of all him. He told you to find your own way. Stop picturing Kaden in your head every time you throw that whip and start focusing on what the whip actually feels like in your hand.”
    He really didn’t want to admit she was right.
    But she was right.
    Too bad it took that damn long to click in his brain, and that it took her to point it out to him.
    She pointed at the target.
    Seth turned. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and tried to picture what it felt like once he’d started getting the hang of throwing a whip.
    Yes, he had been trying to imitate Kaden in the videos, now that he thought about it. He’d tried to imitate his friend’s form, even though his friend had been built differently than him and had been an expert with a whip for years.
    Opening his eyes, he focused on the feel of the whip, the plaited leather, the shot-weighted handle, the length of it. He held out his left hand, pointing it at the target the way he used to do when he was first learning, but it felt right even if it was technically a step back.
    This time, when he threw, he did it gently, easily. Carefully. Maybe not the best throw, or the snazziest one, but the napkin danced a little on the clothespin as the popper made contact with it.
    “There you go!” Leah said, slapping him on the back. “Do that . And keep doing that .”
    She and Tony stepped out of the way while he tried again. And again.
    And again.
    An hour later, both his arms were sore, but he was finally thinking maybe he’d gotten his mojo back.
    “Better?” Tony asked him..
    “Yeah. Thanks for coming by.”
    “Hey, no problem. Shay’s up in Bradenton covering an elementary school art festival or something. I really didn’t feel like going, so you gave me a perfect excuse to