Muay Thai For Monogamists: Muay Thai For..., #1

By Genevieve Flint

Two men, one midnight Muay Thai class, one big decision...
Emily Henry meets Louise Rennison and Sophie Kinsella in this romantic comedy about 28-year-old Eliana, who joins a midnight Muay Thai class in the hope that she meets a hottie and can finally forget her idiot boss.

"Genevieve Flint's writing is smart, funny and moving!" Bath Writing Judging Panel
"The kind of smart, funny female protagonist that the industry is currently missing." Top Literary Agent

Eliana is tired of sleeping with her (recently divorced) boss and thinks her identity capital is in DIRE need of improvement, stat. She also likes to say 'stat'. When she joins a midnight Muay Thai class - hoping to get herself out of the pit of misery-de-vivre and find some joy again (and maybe some single hotties), she meets an unusual new medley of friends.

There's sexy Dave, the polyamorist wandmaker, JT, the trainee police officer, and Rita, the eccentric grandmother of the group. And when she takes a liking to Dave just a little bit too much, she has to start asking herself some serious questions. Like can she really date a polyamorous wandmaker from Glastonbury?! Wouldn't it be easier to just keep sleeping with her sorry excuse for a boss?
Can she really join her new friends at a polyamorous event in Cornwall, or will she - ooer - slip up?!

A cosy friendship story with romance, uncomfortable thongs and Cornish menage-a-many...

NOTE: Even though this is the start in a series, the book has a satisfactory ending and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Grown-up fans of Louise Rennison would LOVE this book, as well as fans of The Spanish Love Deception, Love, Theoretically, Mhairi McFarlane, Carly Fortune and Emily Henry!

A heart-swelling, laugh-out-loud romance, with just the right amount of bonkers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Genevieve Flint
• Release date: Oct 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223095200

Book preview

Muay Thai For Monogamists

Genevieve Flint

Copyright © 2023 Genevieve Flint

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 9798864144091

ISBN-10: 1477123456

Cover art by: Olya Gri

Thank you for reading <3

For my Papa, Donovan, who is nuttier than a peanut butter butty, but who is also the bee's knees.

If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one.

Dolly Parton

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Thank you for reading...

A Playlist to listen to while reading the book.

Chapter One

LESSON ONE

Ipull my thong out from between my cheeks. It was a mistake to wear it tonight; I don’t usually wear thongs, but I wanted my derrière to look nice in case there were any single men.

No luck so far.

I take a sip from my water bottle, even though I already need a wee. To be honest, going anywhere at midnight scares me a hoot. The idea of having to talk to strangers scares me a hoot. Not knowing what to wear scared me a hoot. I need a fear-piss rather than a real-piss, and I need to get rid of these bloody owls.

Even though I’d been attractively petrified earlier, in a Kate Winslet sort-of way, I’m living by a new phrase: ‘Action Breeds Action’. It means that the more you do, the more you’ll receive, I think. I’ve also been working on my ‘Identity Capital’; the idea that we need to enhance our identities with more than just work, to increase our ‘worth’.

I’d written it in my planner this morning: ‘Identity Capital’. Right under ‘Buy Diet Coke’ and ‘Stop sleeping with my boss’.

The Muay Thai venue seems to be a former gymnastics hall: linoleum echoes yellow shadows up at a ragged ceiling; swinging bars look like torture equipment; an army of pommel horses are pushed to one side, waiting for reformation. It smells like old sweat and, oddly, chlorine, as if we’re all about to drown. Two windows present a picture of streetlamps, telephone wires and full July trees, their leaves a cluster of charcoal under a murky, hiding moon.

There are two of us keen martial arts students here so far. The instructor, a Balinese woman with an anchor tattooed on her bicep, has gone off to find the waivers, and so I am left with the other student - a decrepit lady who is sitting on a chair and fumbling in her handbag. This is hardly the hottie that I was hoping to meet.

What’s your name, dear? she calls, her voice echoing around the walls.

I imagine Tony seeing me now; how he would laugh. The whole ‘Identity Capital’ thing actually is working though. When I was in his office earlier and I told him I had a midnight Muay Thai class, he initially looked at me as if I were a Woman of Mystery.

Eliana, but people call me El, I say, sauntering over to the ginormous handbag and the little woman behind it. You?

Mind you, even if I am a Woman of Mystery, he is a Man of Recent Divorce, and also a Man of The Commitment Phobic Variety, and - MOST IMPORTANTLY - he is Trouble.

Eileen, she says, smiling up at me through the pair of glasses that she’s just retrieved. Oh blimey; am I really going to be punching and kicking this ancient lady? We might need an ambulance on standby – no wonder the instructor has just remembered the waivers.

Said instructor returns, just as a tall boy with a wide forehead and spotty chin scuttles through the entrance door. We’re on the second storey of a huge brown building in a forgotten part of Putney. The street is chewed right through and I had to battle weeds just to get in. A CCTV camera blinked red at me from the entrance, but apart from that the whole road has a decrepit air, as if they’d positioned this tall, crumbling building in the middle of a graveyard.

Hello, lovely people, the instructor says in a soft accent, before rootling around in her bag and ignoring us all.

Very peaceful around here, isn’t it? Eileen says to me, as the boy dithers near the doorway. I can’t blame him.

Like Night of the Living Dead, I confirm. The instructor looks up and smiles. Her eyes are surprisingly twinkly, as if she sees something in me that I’m yet to discover for myself. I hope so; I could do with some divine intervention.

Midnight is my favourite time, she says in her soft Balinese accent. She retrieves a speaker from her bag and then hands waiver forms to me and Eileen. Are you coming in? she calls to the boy, who looks to be doing breathing exercises. I flash him a sympathetic smile, and it seems to propel his feet forward. He nearly trips over one of them; he has the walk of someone who is wearing shoes that are far too big. His clothes definitely are too large – he’s wearing all black, and it flaps around him like a Dementor.

Steel toecaps, he grunts, by way of introduction. His ears are flaming red.

How old are you, boy? Eileen asks, while I wonder whether he’s legally allowed to start kicking me with steel toecaps on. How effective are these waiver things?

Eighteen. He sticks his chin out. I’m going to be in the police.

That’s wonderful. Our instructor beams.

And what’s your name? Eileen calls, even though he’s now standing right next to her.

JT.

What’s that? Jay Z? Eileen cocks her head to one side. I smile at her and take a sip of water while my bladder protests.

JT. The boy is even more mortified. He looks at me as if I might save him.

Cool name, I say. He blushes some more.

My real name’s James Taylor, but it’s just so fucking boring.

I feel my mouth fall open. Fair play; this kid has Attitude, and I’m always up for some Attitude. As a redhead, I get a bad rep in that department, but if you shaved my hair off then I would be just as C O O L, thank you very much.

And where do you live, JT of the interesting kind? I ask, feeling like I might laugh. JT’s face is a serious mass of shadows and pimples.

West of the park. He waves, vaguely. In a house share with eight other people.

Wow, that’s…

Really shit, he says. That’s why I’m here at this stupid ‘o clock time, they all stay up until 3 a.m. being loud and annoying and then sleep all day. Thought I might as well make the most of being up.

You know, I used to have a house share, Eileen says, wistfully.

Guys, I need you to sign these forms, the instructor chastises, waving a form in JT’s face.

We all lift our respective forms to our eyelines. The words have been printed slightly off-kilter, which minimises the effect of phrases such as ‘sudden death’ and ‘hospital costs’.

You accept zero responsibility if we, like, get killed or something? JT says, his tone dubious. I see his eyes flicker around the abandoned gymnasium; they fix on one of the swinging bars.

It’s an old gymnastics school, our instructor says, mistakenly thinking that JT is admiring the room’s proficiencies. She sounds proud, as if she gave birth to the pommel horses. That would make them pommel foals, I suppose.

Is this legally binding? I try to remember my Data Privacy training at work. The waiver in front of me seems like it’s been lifted straight from Google; she’s forgotten to put the name of her company and so it just says (ORGANISATION) throughout. I smile, thinking that Tony would probably have a fit if he read this; he likes to read contracts FOR FUN, as if that isn’t a major ick.

I actually have three defined icks, but I am interrupted from my thoughts by a booming voice, which is apologising for being late.

Sorry everyone, he calls, as he strides confidently through the glass doors. They lead out onto a landing, where a rusty mesh elevator can take you from the abandoned street right up to the rooftop.

I don’t look up; I sense from his voice that he is someone interesting. Far be it from me to show immediate interest in someone, just because they’re interesting.

∞∞∞

So first off, I’d like everyone to introduce themselves, the instructor says. We are standing in a circle; even Eileen is standing, although she looks as if she might faint. I’ll go first. My name’s Rita and I'm from Bali. I set up this midnight class because… I think that the atmosphere is different at night. I get the feeling that she’s lying, but I can’t think why.

Right, that’s me, she says. Any questions first of all?

Yes, says the new guy, and I’m not surprised. He seems like a talker. Why did you move here from Bali? It’s supposed to be lush there.

Rita smiles tightly, and the stars leave her eyes.

That’s… that’s another conversation for another day, alright?

Right, says New Guy, humbly. He shoots a look at me and I snap my mouth closed, like a snapping fish. I hadn’t realised that it had fallen open, just like how snapping fish don’t realise either (until they gobble down a minnow or a drifting canoe).

But this guy is genuinely Good Looking, in a weird, hippy kind of way. Shame about the clothes – colourful, something straight from Camden – and the hair – tangled and a bit mad – but his face – those cheekbones, those blue, blue eyes – almost makes up for the rest of it. He’s wearing a few colourful bracelets, which is either charming or weird, I’m not sure.

I wonder how old he might be. Thirty? Thirty-five? Neither is out of the question; Tony’s forty-two.

I guess I’d better go next, the hippy says, rubbing his eyebrow as if it’s a nervous tic. I automatically lift my hand to do the same, but JT coughs and the spell is broken. I’m Dave, or you can call me New Wave Dave if you want.

I stare at him, wondering if he’s joking. New Wave Dave? What kind of name is that?

I’ve moved to London from Glastonbury to help a mate out with a pub. In my spare time I make and sell wands. I live on my own, he looks at me, fleetingly, "and don’t have kids. Or any I know about, anyway, ha. I like to read historical novels and, since I work pub hours, this midnight thingamajig works really well for me.

Any questions?" he asks, which makes us all smile.

Yes, I say, lifting my hand and then quickly dropping it. You make wands?

Yep.

Do you think they’re, like… do you think they have magical powers?

The entirety of our potential future relationship depends on his answer to this question.

He laughs.

No, of course not. But I’m not telling anyone that, eh? Get up to two hundred quid per wand, you know.

Two hundred for a piece of wood? JT asks, aghast.

Let’s keep it moving, Rita interrupts, looking at JT.

I’m still staring at Dave. TWO-HUNDRED POUNDS for a stick? Man, am I in the wrong business. I could walk outside right now and find twenty ‘wands’. I wonder if my housemate Kate might buy one. Maybe I’ve finally found a good Christmas present for my fussy mother. ‘Don’t mix it up with all the other wands in your garden,’ I might tell her, as she unwraps her special wand.

Err, okay then, JT says, his ears turning flaming red again. I’m JT, or James Taylor really but that was-

Fucking boring, I interrupt, with a grin.

Exactly. He grins back. New Wave Dave looks at me as if I’ve just loudly sworn in Eileen’s face.

I, err, so I live with like, eight other people, and it’s awful…

Hey, is that your shopping I saw outside? Dave asks. We all look towards the doors. Now that he’s mentioned it, I can see the corner of an orange carrier through the dirty glass.

Yeah, I have to bring it with me everywhere or they’ll eat it. JT picks at a spot on his chin. It starts to bleed and we all pretend not to notice. So I’m just studying Public Services. It’s really boring.

Don’t say that, James, Eileen pipes up, looking at him fiercely. That’s a mighty fine goal, an officer of the law. Are your parents proud of you?

JT lets surprise bolt across his face for a moment, a deer in headlights, and then he pulls his wide features into something smoother. As if he has worked hard to reign in emotion, to the point that he has developed a shiny, robot face and an unemotional way of dealing with things.

I don’t really… we don’t talk, he says, shortly. But my sister’s proud. She lives in Wimbledon, she’s having a baby.

Oh, how lovely. Eileen’s voice is gentle as she looks at him over the top of her glasses.              

And what about you, Eileen? Rita says, hopping from one foot to the other in some form of warm-up. If she’s listening intently then she’s hiding it well. She looks to be annoyed that we’re taking so long on our introductions.

While Eileen talks, I can’t help but look at Dave. Despite the clothes and the hair and the weird name, there’s something magnetic about him. He’s confident; he stands tall. His lips are plump and pink and perfectly kissable. He gives the impression that he would be the sun in a pub full of people, around which they would all orbit.

And besides, Tony is probably shagging random women every night, making the most of his ‘recent’ (the divorce finalised a year ago) single status. And I could use a distraction. Plus, with my insomnia meaning that I never sleep, so I’m grumpy in the afternoon and early evening (I did a quiz and found out that I have a Wolf sleep cycle), I’m unlikely to meet anyone via normal, dating means.

Oh wow, at least we have a doctor here for any injuries, Dave says, and his face has become impressed.

Who’s a doctor?

I look around, but Eileen is still holding the room and the way that she smiles makes it clear that she is the doctor.

Well, I was a General Practitioner for thirty-five years, but then I went into psychotherapy. I thought, stupid me, that it would be easier; I was so exhausted from all of those balls and bum holes- I look around, surprised; JT lets out a howl of laughter, -so I was ready for something a bit more relaxing, but let me tell you, young man- she looks at JT sternly; he reigns in his smile -the human mind is a hell of a lot more complex than a couple of hundred bum holes, I’ll tell you that for free.

I bet, JT says, only it comes out as a choke because he’s trying not to laugh again.

Eileen, you are a hoot, Dave says, giving her a watery-eyed grin as if he’s suppressing his own laughter. To my surprise, Eileen twists her mouth into something coy, as if she’s embarrassed, and she pushes a grey curl over her ear as she looks down.

Well, it’s nice to keep busy. I haven’t been able to sleep since Bernard, my husband, passed away. She pauses for a second; we all look at our feet. "My late husband was obsessed with Thailand, always talking about it. Thai this and Thai that; we had all these plans to go to Koh Samui and drink coconuts, you know?

Anyway, he passed and then I saw this sign – Muay Thai for Insomniacs – and it was like a sign from him, saying I had to keep the Thailand dream alive. Plus, I can never sleep, so here I am.

Any questions?" We’re all shifting around like children and Dave is itching his eyebrow and JT keeps shooting glances at his shopping as if someone might break into the building and steal it. I don’t think Rita listened to a word that Eileen said.

All good, thank you so much for sharing, Rita says, and she briefly reaches out and squeezes Eileen’s forearm, as if in apology. So El, what about you?

Suddenly all attention turns to me; I feel a spotlight beam across my face. I swallow. Dave is looking at me intently, and his swimming-pool blue gaze makes my throat feel dry. I cough and hope they don’t think that I’m ill with a cold or contagious disease, or, if they do, I hope they feel sorry for me and bring me snacks.

Well, I’m Eliana; my mother’s grandfather was Italian so she’s obsessed with everything Italian-sounding, even though she’s never been there. I know I don’t look Italian, but my Dad comes from the Scottish variety of, err, people. I laugh; the sound is light and jarring. Dave smiles, encouragingly. I work for… I pause, not wanting to talk about work – about Tony – in a place where I can finally escape all of that drama. I work from home some of the time, I hastily amend, and I can never really sleep, so it’s also… fine that I’m here. And that’s about it. I smile.

Any questions?

Yeah, loads of them, JT says, looking as if he’s been scammed. Why do you want to learn Muay Thai, for one?

My question exactly, Dave says, accusingly. Even Rita is looking at me as though I’ve conned the introductory system.

Well, London is a dangerous place, I say, feeling my cheeks turn red. I shift in my gym leggings; it forces the itchy thong back to its original place. I can’t tell them about my ‘Identity Capital’ theory; it’s way too early for them to realise that I’m as dull as dishwater, which really is quite offensive to dishwater since it’s such a useful commodity.

Are you single? Dave asks, daringly.

Well... I swallow. I am sort of seeing someone, I guess… but he’s not a good… it’s not necessarily a good thing. I mean, he’s not a good guy. Or, like, he is but…

I trail off. I have nothing much to say, nothing much to add; he’s a manager at work, he’s a Prize Hunk and he umms and ahhs about whether he’s actually looking for anything serious, even though we’ve been doing the dirty for three months now.

My words spill a new feeling around the group; the shadows seem to intensify and everyone looks at each other. I can see Eileen crease her face into something like concern. Rita takes a deep breath in and stops shifting from one foot to the other.

And London’s a dangerous place, Eileen says, softly, as if she’s working on a long mathematical sum.

What do you do for work? Rita asks, her voice more gentle now. JT and Dave seem to be having some sort of unspoken conversation; Eileen is looking at me as if I’m a new patient of hers.

Oh, nothing interesting, I say, smiling tightly, feeling a zip run up my whole body, keeping everything locked neatly inside. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with where I work, but every piece of information is one step closer to them finding out about Tony and me.

And he wouldn’t like that.

Chapter Two

Rita starts the session off with a warm-up. We’re doing ‘plank walkouts’, which is another way of saying ‘an excuse for my thong to practically rip my body in half’. In the end, I excuse myself and find the toilet, which turns out to be a stained brown cubicle that hasn’t been cleaned since 1999.

I check my phone while I’m sitting on the faded excuse for a toilet seat. I imagine that it was once fresh and white, in its prime, a toilet to be proud of, used by all sorts of eager ballerinas. But it’s fallen to the dogs, used only by dodgy cash-in-hand midnight Muay Thai fighters now, or so it seems.

No messages from Tony. I check his Instagram; he has a new ‘story’ up. I don’t want to view it in case he put it up five minutes ago and he sees that I’m instantly looking at it and thinks that I have no life (even though I said I was going to midnight Muay Thai, perhaps he thinks that I am a Woman of Lies).

I don’t follow him, but it would be pretty obvious who ElianaHendrix123 is (I had a mild obsession with Jimi Hendrix for a few years; I suspect it had more to do with being interesting to boys and less to do with actually wanting to listen to All Along the Watchtower one-hundred-and-fifty times).

Tony doesn’t post much, and when he does it’s the usual droll tropes: what he’s eaten for lunch or his latest trip to watch some tennis game or other. He’s never posted about other women, and the pictures of him and his ex-wife stopped two years back (I have nearly ‘double tapped from way back’ a few times, as Mr Sheeran has warned us about, the useful little matchmaker that he is. Or perhaps he is simply a stalker of the online variety, in which case he’s certainly managed to shirk his unattractive compulsions and build a good career anyway). The ex-wife has a closed profile. Damn her.

Suddenly, I feel a desperate urge to see the story. What if Tony’s out there on a date? What if he’s sauntering around in one of his awful alligator belts with some saucy Minx from the fifth floor? What if she’s undoing the belt RIGHT THIS SECOND and he’s put up a story about it, because he thinks he’s a #lad, and it’ll make all the other #lads jealous, and I’m not even there to witness it?

Some saucy Minx from floor five wouldn’t do it in Tony’s office, of that I am sure; the place is a tip and, also, it’s prime Employee Red Flag behaviour. ‘We’re just giving you an official warning since we err, actually saw you banging one of senior management against the office window and it was a teeny bit of a Red Flag.’

I finish up on the disgusting toilet and dispose of my thong in the creaky metal bin. Hopefully, no one ever sees it, which seems somewhat unlikely given that the bin is clearly never emptied; if it is found, then I’ll deny it with every breath. I imagine that the group make me prove it – that Dave demands Pull down your leggings right now and prove that you didn’t dispose of your thong! The thought isn’t entirely unpleasant.

It's a lonely journey back into the mouth of the gymnasium, the lips rusty, the floor as slippery as a dragon’s tongue. Probably.

Hey, JT, I mutter, as the group huff in time to the music. Rita’s turned on the Bluetooth speaker; it’s small and blue and looks like it belongs in a shower. It turns Taylor Swift into a chipmunk, but it’s made the atmosphere of the gym more cheerful.

What’s up? JT huffs, as he stands up straight and looks ahead. Sweat is dripping into his eyes; it’s not a great start, given we’re only at the warm-up stage.

Can I, err, borrow your phone?

What, why? He looks at me, startled. At the same time, Rita has come over to