“One of us,” Mike chanted. “One of us.”
“They’re a poly triad,” Eliza said.
Grant, Darryl, and Susie had been a year behind her in high school. “I’m friends with them on Facebook, but I haven’t seen them in decades.”
They’d reconnected via a Facebook group for alumni. Skye hadn’t been able to go to her twentieth reunion, thanks to Cheapo McCheatingstein not wanting to pay for it, but in her class there would have been few people she would have really been interested in seeing again, anyway.
Maybe Axel.
No, definitely Axel.
And that was about it.
Eliza sat on Skye’s far side, Rusty next to her. “You know,” Skye said, “no offense, Rusty, but I never pictured you as a Dom.”
Eliza snorted. “Then you’re still on track.”
Rusty rolled his eyes, “Gee, thanks, Ma’am.”
Without even looking back at him, Eliza’s hand shot up, grabbed his earlobe, and pulled in him close. “What was that, barbarian?”
He swallowed. “Sorry, Ma’am.”
Skye nodded. “Now I see what you mean.” And it totally made sense.
Skye was going to ask about Axel when Darryl, Grant, and Susie walked in.
Susie was either pregnant, or Skye was going to stay away from a very obvious potential topic of conversation.
Eliza leaned in. “Yes, she’s pregnant with their baby.”
Whew. Another round of reunions took place, the triad settling at their table and filling it up.
“Hey, can we work Skye into our game?” Rusty asked Grant, who turned out to be in charge of their triad.
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t have any books or dice or anything.”
“That’s okay,” Darryl said. “We’ve got you covered.”
She was once again going to ask about Axel when the dinner was called to order. Ross introduced himself and Loren and gave a brief talk about the munch, the local lifestyle scene and events, and Venture, the BDSM club in the area. Before they started the introductions, he called for announcements.
On the far side of the room, a woman’s hand shot up.
“Cali?”
She stood. “Many of you know we’ve been helping out at the club. We’re always looking for more volunteers. One of the perks is you get free entry to the regular club play sessions in exchange for working. So anyone who wants to get added, let me know. We’re holding a volunteer meeting tomorrow night at eight to go over stuff.”
Skye held up her hand, as did three other people.
Cali was closest to Skye, and as the introductions kicked off, going table by table, Cali swooped in with a smile and her phone in hand to take down Skye’s information.
“We vouch for her,” Eliza said. “We’ve known her for twenty-plus years, although we didn’t realize she was kinky.”
“Since I know her parents, and helped her get her job, I’ll vouch for her, too,” Jenny said.
Darryl raised his hand. “Add the three of us to the vouching list.”
Cali grinned. “You realize I’m going to chain you to the front desk and not let you leave, right?”
Skye laughed. “But what if I like that?”
“Oooh, you are sooo going to fit right in. Tomorrow night, eight, at Venture. You know the address?”
“I’ll get it off the website.”
Cali texted her. “That’s my cell. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know. And let me know what your FetLife name is and I’ll friend you there.”
“Thanks.”
As Cali moved on to her next victim, everyone else at the table whipped out their cell phones. “What’s your cell number, honey,” Eliza asked.
She gave it out, her phone silently buzzing with a flurry of new messages from everyone texting her their numbers.
“Tuesday at seven,” Grant said. “I texted you our address. Feel free to bring a snack or something if you want.”
“Or sushi to bribe the DM,” Darryl joked.
“It won’t be a problem?” she asked.
“Nah. We’re always sliding strays in, even for a game or two. My son, Kyle, sometimes he has a friend over. Working you in as a full-time PC won’t be a problem.”
Before Skye could ask more about the game and other players, it was their table’s turn to give their introductions.
It was only on her way home later that she realized she’d forgotten to ask about Axel.
Crap.
Oh, well. Maybe she should send him a message on Facebook to see how he was doing. She’d love to see him sometime, if he was local.
Or…
Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to go down that “what might have been” road. Leave it relegated to the closet from the past. Besides, if he was married, his wife might not like the idea of a recently divorced high-school girlfriend popping up out of nowhere, innocent or not. If their positions were reversed, Skye would definitely assume fuckery was afoot.
Especially since she’d been on the receiving end of Dingus Dumbassery using the “just an old friend from high school” excuse on her for one of his cheats.
Between renewing her old friendships, getting involved with D&D again, and now a secured volunteer position at the club, her social life was hopefully going to explode in good ways.
She needed to focus on her future, and she damn well knew it.
Chapter Five
Monday morning, Axel arrived at work to find their office’s server system had died over the weekend, and no one had discovered it until their office manager had arrived ten minutes ahead of Axel and couldn’t boot her computer.
They were all on workstations slaved to the server.
And it contained all their current projects.
Including the one he was in the process of finishing that morning so he could get the drafts printed ahead of the scheduled client meeting tomorrow morning.
Shit.
He was an engineer, not an IT guy. You wanted load bearing capability calculated? The mass or volume of an object? Needed to work on a bridge’s structure or a building’s ability to flex in high winds?
He was totally your guy.
Your computer stopped working?
If turning it off and on again didn’t help, he was stuck.
He did actually try turning it off and back on, since their IT guy was still on his way in, but that, unfortunately, didn’t help the problem.
Since he couldn’t do any work until that was fixed, he trudged out to his car, grabbed his bag of D&D stuff, and carried it inside. Right now, he was approximately three sessions ahead of the party in terms of planning, but he hadn’t yet drawn detailed terrain maps, just some rough sketches. He had the blank grid paper with him.
So he spread out over the drafting table in his office and got to work with that. As he did, he thumbed through Facebook on his phone. Rusty, Eliza, Darryl, Grant, and Susie had suddenly been posting a lot of comments on things Skye Bauer posted…
Wait, what?
He thumbed back, spotting it immediately. She’d changed her name. She had been married with a different last name.
He scrolled through her timeline and found a post from last Wednesday, where it looked like she was living in Sarasota again.
He checked out her profile pic, a selfie that was tagged as having been taken at sunset over on Venice Beach on Saturday evening.
Her long, curly red hair blew loose around her face. He couldn’t see her eyes because of her sunglasses, but her smile still touched something deep inside him the way it had back in high school.
She was still pretty. Instead of her looks fading, she’d matured, turned into a natural beauty who fortunately seemed not to have turned to Botox or lip injections.
They’d had good times. Innocent times compared to some kids, when he looked back in retrospect.
They’d been sooo freaking young back then.
About the age our kids maybe would have been if we’d stayed to
gether and got married.
He hadn’t held the breakup against her, either. He’d quickly moved on to someone else, and they had enough friends in common it was easier to stay friends than trying to split up the group. Especially since they gamed together.
Then college hit and, for a while, everyone sort of scattered, most of the group coming back as they entered the real world and became “adults.”
Last he’d heard, she’d gotten married and moved to Pennsylvania after college. The pictures he’d seen her post from time to time looked like she was happy, had a handsome guy.
Meanwhile, he’d met Linda and married her…
Back to square one.
He’d learned over the years that “what might have been” lines of thinking only led to heartache and wasted energy.
Better to focus on the here and now.
Except he didn’t miss that Skye no longer had any pictures of her husband on her profile.
At all.
I’d love to see her sometime.
Perhaps that stove was best left untouched, though.
He’d ask Rusty and the gang about her on Tuesday. Maybe he could subtly work in a comment or two.
Very subtly. Rolling a natural twenty for gather information kind of subtle. Otherwise, Rusty, Grant, and the others would be playfully busting his balls about it, and he didn’t need that kind of embarrassment in his life.
He’d already had enough of that with Linda and the divorce.
At one point, he actually visited Skye’s profile again and his thumb hovered over the button to send her a message. Just one line.
Would love to see you sometime.
Yet…he chickened out. If she was involved with someone, that’d sting like fuck, and he was no masochist. A sadist, maybe, considering how he enjoyed torturing his friends during D&D, but definitely not a masochist.
The server was finally brought back online that afternoon, but that meant he’d be working until late in the night to finish the project and print the plans. He ran out at six to grab a sub for dinner. By the time he finally returned home a little after midnight, he was mentally wrung out and felt exhausted, drained.
But the plans were printed and sitting on the drafting table in his office, ready to go.
Tomorrow night, at least, he could unwind, relax during gaming. His weekly escape valve, even if Rusty did sometimes have a sadistic knack for jamming a spork in Axel’s chill.
* * * *
Tuesday, Axel left work realizing his plan to go home to eat before heading to Grant and Darryl’s wouldn’t work.
He had meant to go grocery shopping Monday after work, but hadn’t made it.
Shit.
Okay, Subway, it is.
Also meant he wouldn’t be able to change into shorts and a T-shirt, but this kind of development was why he carried his D&D stuff with him. He knew eating fast food wasn’t good for him, that too much take-out would catch up with his waistline if he wasn’t careful. Still, he was starting to wonder if there was even a point to worrying about his weight. He was six seven and blessed with a rather slender frame, so genetics worked on his side in that respect, but he was starting to edge up a little on the bathroom scale.
Salad.
He swung through a Publix instead and grabbed one of their pre-made salads and a small fresh fruit bowl for dinner. He would end up arriving at Grant and Darryl’s somewhat early, but he knew they’d be home and not mind if he did.
The D&D gang didn’t have to knock on Tuesday nights. They left the door unlocked and told everyone to come on in. Still, when he opened the front door, he called out.
“It’s me.”
“Hey, me,” Susie called from the kitchen. “We’re in here.”
He dropped his stuff by the hallway and took his food back toward the kitchen. It looked like they’d just sat down to eat.
Axel held up his bags. “Mind if I join you?”
“Sure.” Darryl got him a glass of iced tea. “Running late from work, huh?”
“No, yesterday at work was a clusterf—eh, a mess.” At the last second, he’d remembered Kyle sitting there. Yes, the kid was old enough to hear swearing, and sometimes the occasional F-bomb dropped during one of their games. Still, Axel tried to keep his own mouth PG-13 around the kid.
He explained the server issues. “But at least I got the maps finished. So, yay that.”
“Hope you don’t mind we potentially picked up a new permanent party member Sunday night,” Grant said.
“Who?”
He grinned. “It’s a surprise.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see.”
“Okay, whatever. I’ve got a couple of NPCs they can choose from, if they want. Or we’re still early enough in this campaign we can help them roll up a new character and work them in.”
“So what’d you do this weekend?” Darryl asked.
Axel shrugged. “Cleaned the house. Washed my car. Yard work.” He circled a finger in the air. “You know me, I’m a regular party animal.”
* * * *
Skye nervously stopped by a Publix on her way to Grant and Darryl’s. She wanted to make a good impression on anyone else there tonight.
She picked up two different kinds of cookies to share, as well as a six-pack of Angry Orchard for herself. She’d maybe drink two of the hard ciders there, then could bring the rest home, where she’d have to engage in a Thunderdome death match against her dad to keep him from drinking them. They were his favorite, and her mom wouldn’t buy them for him.
Well, Skye could pretend she hadn’t bought them to share with him.
That would mean her mom wouldn’t get mad at her for leaving them around.
Not that her dad was a lush or anything, but her mom had been harping at him about his blood pressure and had made him cut down to one glass of wine on Saturday nights.
Tonight, Skye was looking forward to relaxing with her old friends and making new ones. In some ways, it was still hard for her to get a mental grip on the dynamic Grant’s triad now had. In retrospect, she could totally see it. The three had been really close in high school, and yeah, Grant was a Dom, even back then. And she’d known poly people up in Pennsylvania, too, so it wasn’t like she was shocked or anything. Just…it was unexpected, to her, with those particular three people.
Darryl being homoflexible hadn’t pinged her radar. Or Grant being bi.
Good for them for finding each other.
And with Darryl’s son living with them, and a baby on the way, they’d found their happiness.
Wistful thoughts tenaciously attempted to sneak into her brain.
Don’t go there.
She would find her Sir Right somewhere. All she had to do was stick to her plan. She was scheduled to work Friday and Saturday nights at the club with Cali, and they’d even invited her to a private party they were hosting at their house the Saturday after that.
See? Back in town a week and my weekend social calendar is already filling up.
It would only be a matter of time before she saw results.
No way would she settle for less than she deserved this time around. Red flags would not go ignored or unchallenged.
Skye Bauer 2.0 was in the house, and she knew she could rebuild her life.
Everyone had been very friendly last night during the volunteer meeting. Apparently, Marcia and Derrick’s partners in the club had suffered a serious vanilla-life bump in the road, and people were rallying around them to pitch in and help out so they could focus on what they needed to and not stress out about the club.
She was also surprised to learn that Cali, Max, and Sean were the owners and proprietors of Two Crafty Bastards Toys. They made good stuff. Kelly had several pieces he’d ordered from them in his implement bag.
None of which had made the move with Skye. She hadn’t wanted any of his BDSM gear. In fact, the cuffs and collar she now had, she’d bought herself a few years ago, because she’d wanted a specific set and he wouldn’t bu
y them for her because of the price. He’d told her if she wanted them to buy them herself. He didn’t care what she wore.
So she’d bought them for herself, with her own money.
Just more proof he hadn’t been right for her.
At the time, it had stung when he’d said it so casually. In reflection, it was yet another symptom of the larger problem—that Kelly was an asshole and had been cheating on her already.
She also had her own ball gag and blindfold, because she’d never wanted to share those with anyone, no matter who they were.
That was like the kinky equivalent of sharing a toothbrush or something.
Blech.
She easily found the address and pulled into the driveway, seeing several cars already parked there. Hopefully she wasn’t holding up their start time.
When she walked up to the front door, she didn’t even have a chance to ring the bell before Rusty opened it.
“Hey, you made it!” He leaned in for a hug and whispered, “Remember, not everyone here is in the lifestyle. Just those of us who were there Sunday. It was a dinner with friends in common.”
“Gotcha.”
Eliza poked her head out from a hallway and swooped in for a hug, then Darryl, Grant, and Susie appeared from somewhere to welcome her. Darryl’s teenaged son, Kyle, looked so much like him it was breathtaking.
Behind Skye, the front door opened, and she turned. “Milo? Are you kidding me? Wow!” They hugged.
“Holy crap, Skye. I haven’t seen you since, what, graduation?”
“Thereabouts. Oh, my god. This is great!”
“So you’re the new player, huh?”
“Yeah, looks like it. I’m pretty rusty though.”
Rusty cleared his throat and Eliza playfully swatted his shoulder.
Skye held up the Publix bags. “I brought cookies for everyone, and hard cider for me. I earned that.” She grinned. “I can now legally drink, unlike the last time I played D&D with y’all.”
“Come on,” Susie said. “I’ll show you around.”
The house was beautiful, had a pool and everything. In the kitchen, Susie handed her a church key from where it hung on a hook on the side of the fridge so Skye could open one of the bottles of Angry Orchard.
See You Sometime Page 4
