by Sionna Fox
“Fine,” she grumbled. “I don’t know. It was fun. And you checked in more than I remember, gave me plenty of outs, but I did ask you to.”
“It wasn’t fun for you before?”
She shrugged. “We were never playful. We were both taking ourselves a lot less seriously last night, and I liked that.”
“Good.”
“What about you?”
Ian paused. She’d never put a lot of effort into checking in on him before. She cringed, like it was hitting her that she should have been doing this all along.
“Let it go, kitten.”
“What?”
“I can see it on your face. You thought about how rarely you’ve asked me that question.”
“I’m sorry I was so selfish.”
“I know. Thank you.” He could spend all night trying to convince her that she hadn’t been selfish, that he’d been unobservant and irresponsible, but they could play that game forever and neither of them would ever believe the other. He’d carry that failure around for the rest of his life, but he didn’t have to talk about it every day.
She sighed. “Okay, seriously, in the spirit of not repeating our mistakes, what about you?”
“You felt more relaxed, more focused on what was happening than on how you thought you should be reacting. And I was more certain that you were being honest when I checked in, and that you would have used safewords if you needed them, all of which takes a lot of the pressure off me and lets me have more fun.”
“So, yay?”
He laughed. “Something like that.” He kissed her between the eyes. “Have you eaten dinner?”
They ordered takeout, which she insisted on paying for. He let her, because if Aileen had gotten her hooks into Kate about money, refusing to let her assert her independence would backfire.
They ate their dinner, watched some terrible show, and when Kate leaned over to kiss him, to pull him down on the bed, he told her good night. He went back to his house with an aching erection, but he’d kept his promises to himself. It was enough, for now.
* * *
Kate rattled around her sublet until the downstairs neighbor started banging on the ceiling. Talking with Ian was supposed to help, but it only made her more aware of the actual mountain of issues they were schlepping around. She didn’t want to end up like her mother, going to singles’ dances, hoping to snare some new guy with a decent job who could take her out to dinner for a while. He’d leave like all the rest and the cycle would start again. She’d lost track of her mother’s boyfriends, of all the “catches” she’d brought home.
She shouldn’t do this. It wasn’t fair to Ian, with all the other upheaval he was considering—and that had to have been at least partly her fault in the first place. She needed to be independent. She needed to be on her own. She’d seen him start to say it, then catch himself before he could ask her to move back in when her sublet was up. He’d saved the moment with a joke, but she knew how he worked.
They would end up like they’d always been, no matter what platitudes about communication and letting go of the past they said to each other now. She had to put a stop to it and soon.
She finally fell asleep, and in the morning, forced herself to stick to her routine. Ian had never gotten in the way of her work, and she wasn’t going to let him start now. She knew what she needed to do.
She emailed Dr. Baxter and asked her if she knew of anyone, anywhere, working on piloting programs like the one she’d worked in last year. She’d go wherever the grants took her, for however long she needed to stay. She wasn’t meant for politics or academia; she did want to get her hands dirty doing the work itself. If she had to leave Boston to do it—she’d been fine with that outcome when she finished her fellowship, fucking around with her ex didn’t change that.
“You okay this morning?”
Owen. Oh, sweet Owen. She hadn’t seen him in a bit, her routine all out of whack because of Ian. It seemed like a long, long time ago that she’d looked at him with enough interest to take him home and attempt to sleep with him. “Stressing about the future. Loans. Rent. You know, the usual.”
He made the face of a person who understood what compounding interest and making minimum payments with a deeply uncertain job market until you were eighty felt like. “Oh god. Yeah.” He sipped his coffee again. “Listen, would you want to get a drink later? We can stress about the future together?”
There was no way to hide how shocked she was at the question. How many guys meant it when they said yeah, let’s hang out some time after being given the it’s not you, it’s me speech on top of a sex-related injury to the face? She’d sent him home bloody and bandaged, and he didn’t even get to come.
She picked up her jaw from the table as he started to backpedal. “As friends. I’m not—I mean, no offense…”
She laughed. “I get it. I wouldn’t trust me around your soft parts either. I’m surprised you even want to risk drinks with me.” She did need someone to talk to about this part of her life. The part that didn’t have a steady job, partner, housing situation, even. “But if you’re brave enough, so am I.”
Making plans was only complicated by the sheer number of bars and pubs in Boston. They ended up choosing a place that prided itself on its mile-long draught list and selection of fried foods at semi-reasonable prices. It was the kind of place you’d only go on a date if you’d been together for a million years and had no illusions about impressing your partner. The kind of place Ian might take her to stuff her face with post-scene ravenous hunger. But she wasn’t thinking about things she would or could do with Ian.
Ian, who texted her to check in, even though they hadn’t done anything other than talk and snuggle the night before. For reasons best known to her self-sabotaging subconscious, she told him she was going out with a friend that night. She stopped short of telling him it was a guy she’d met at the café, the one he’d been jealous of. Even if it had ended awkwardly with terrible chemistry and a bandaged nose.
They hadn’t talked about who they had seen or what they had done while they’d been apart. Another thing to add to the baggage pile. Baggage there was little point in dealing with if the job market was going to take her three thousand miles away again. The message she’d sent to Dr. Baxter about further research or grant opportunities felt like the only thing she’d done right in the last few weeks.
She sat across from Owen and traced her fingers over the etching in the pint glass in front of her. She’d been complaining about needing peers, but now that she was in front of one, she’d forgotten how to have a conversation like a normal person. Especially not with the nagging sense of guilt that she’d let Ian assume she was out with someone like Jolene. She’d told him she was in for real, that she wanted to try again, and here she was having drinks with someone else, wondering how to get out of that agreement without breaking him.
“Can I ask you something?”
Owen looked slightly startled. He’d been toying with his fries on the opposite side of the table, looking equally lost for a conversation to have with a woman he’d been inside of. “Yeah.”
“How did you end up being a teacher? You said you did a program after undergrad, but was that like, a stepping-stone on the way to getting a Master of Ed because you always knew that’s what you wanted? Or was it more of a it’ll briefly defer my loans and give me a tiny paycheck while I figure out what to do?”
He laughed and picked up a fry. “I’m supposed to say I always knew I wanted to shape young minds and make them love history or some shit, right?”
“I mean, if that’s true, awesome. But…”
“It would be an absolute sack of horseshit. I graduated into a recession with a history degree. I do love history, at least that much is true. But I got my first loan bill and almost threw up. Teaching for a year and seeing how I liked it sounded like a better idea than getting a job selling wholesale insurance like half my friends. They all make more money than I do.”
�
�So why stay?”
“Because they all hate their jobs and only do it for the money. I’m kind of good at teaching, and I like the whole doing what I can to subvert authority by teaching multiple perspectives. Plus, if I stick around long enough, they’ll pay for my masters degree.”
“So it’s practical.”
“Yes and no. What’s your deal? Why go all the way for a doctorate?”
She sighed. How to unpack this for a near-stranger. “If you want to go all the way back, my mom almost died while having me.”
“Wow. Is she okay now?” He furrowed his eyebrows and placed a large, paw-like hand on top of hers. He must have to use the extra-thick whiteboard markers with those mitts.
Kate laughed and pulled her hand away. “Other than the fact she’s held it over my head for nearly thirty years? Yeah, she’s fine. But I guess I don’t want other kids to live with that. Or to live without a parent.”
“Okay, so I get that. But that still doesn’t quite explain a doctoral degree, and I’m assuming all of the debt that goes with that.”
“When I started I was, um, living with someone. So money wasn’t as tight.” She tapped her finger on the glass. No, money hadn’t been tight at all. She’d squirrelled away every penny because Ian insisted on taking care of everything. She’d hardly been on her own for a year, sharing an apartment, eating plain pasta most nights and squeaking by before she ran right into the arms of a man who promised to take care of her. She was no different than her mother.
“Oh. So I was like, a rebound thing?”
Fuck. Kate cringed. “I do like you. But, yeah, kind of.”
“It’s cool. You wouldn’t be the first.”
“Dude. That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“So what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why’d you break up with the guy?”
This was more commiserating than she’d bargained for. But she owed him some sort of explanation. “I had a research opportunity in California that I couldn’t pass up. And our relationship wasn’t working. I never wanted to be anyone’s housewife, you know? I wanted to be independent and pay my own way for things, and he…had a hard time understanding that.”
“But he was helping you through a PhD program, so it doesn’t sound like he wanted you to be his housewife. And if you were doing a lot of the household stuff, you could see it as being fairly compensated for your labor.”
“I think that was it, though. It started to feel transactional.” She’d never wanted it to be, pick up the dry-cleaning, do the cooking, and you’ll get financial security in return. That was her mother in a nutshell. That was the person she never wanted to be. Doing those things didn’t bother her—she even liked it—but he’d taken it for granted after a while. “And that made me feel gross.”
“But did you enjoy being the caretaker at some point?”
“Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Asking probing questions to people you don’t know that well?”
“Oh. Yeah. Occupational hazard. It’s what I teach my students to do. Keep asking, keep digging, to get past the surface narrative. You don’t have to answer.”
“Honestly, I think you just saved me a ton of money on therapy.”
Owen laughed. “Cool, then you can get the check.”
She’d never thought of herself as being especially service-oriented. At least, not in the way that she got enjoyment from the service itself. She liked the praise and gratitude for a job well done. It was like school all over again, the external validation driving her to do more, be better. Keeping him fed and stocked with well-pressed shirts and trousers was her way of repaying the debt she owed him for keeping a roof over her head, for making sure she didn’t go deeper into debt to continue her education, for loving her in the first place. She’d done it her whole life. With her mother, with teachers, with friends, with boyfriends. She’d always been making those transactions without realizing it. Look at all the things I’ll do for you so you’ll love me. Fuck.
“You okay?”
“Sorry. Just…realizing some things I thought I had dealt with are still driving the bus in my subconscious.”
“I hate when that happens.”
“It is the literal worst.”
She almost wanted to pay their bill and run to Ian’s house, tell him that she had figured it out, that she had an explanation. But it wouldn’t change what she needed to do. She needed to figure out how to trust anyone to love her without providing them a service in return. She hated how much Jolene was right about her needing therapy.
Talking to Owen was surprisingly enlightening, but when they parted ways, Kate knew she needed someone who understood the whole picture. Someone who didn’t have a vested interest in keeping her back in his life. She called Jolene.
“Hey. Would you call me a service sub?”
She took so long to respond, Kate wondered if the call had dropped. “Maybe a little? Why?”
“I just had beers with the ‘nilla wafer. You busy?”
Fifteen
“What the hell does being a service sub have to do with having beers with the lumberjack?” she whispered. A door closed in the background. Matt must have been home. “Does he know you were out with a guy?”
“He knows I went out.”
“Kate.”
“Shut up. We’re not”—she sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose—“we’re only sort of back together. It was a couple of beers; it’s not like I slept with him again.”
“I’m sorry, what? You didn’t tell me you hooked up with the wafer. Where are you?”
Which was how Kate turned around and went back to the same bar and had another drink with Jolene. They both ordered sodas. Kate had already had two beers, but for Jolene it was odd. Maybe they’d had wine with dinner at home. Nevertheless, Kate internally vowed to leave an excellent tip on their paltry bill.
As soon as the server left, Jolene hissed, “You slept with the lumberjack? When the hell did that happen?”
She had to think. It felt like eons since she’d brought Owen back to her place and it had ended in disaster. “A couple of weeks ago? After I came over to your place, but before anything happened with him.” If she didn’t say his name out loud, she wasn’t admitting to sleeping with Ian. If she didn’t say his name out loud, it wasn’t real, and she wasn’t on the verge of breaking his heart again.
“What. Happened?”
Kate dropped her forehead into her hands. “The most awkward, terrible sex I’ve ever had in my life. And that includes high school.”
“So do you accept that you’re not even a little vanilla?” Jolene didn’t attempt to hide the smugness on her face.
“My life would be so much easier if I were. But no, not even a tiny bit. It was so bad, Jo. Like, he cut his nose open on my teeth bad.”
“What?! How?”
Kate cringed. “I accidentally head-butted him with my mouth because I was trying to get some kind of friction happening.”
Jolene was laughing so hard she was snorting—loudly—on every inhale.
“It’s not funny. He’s a nice guy, and I don’t have any friends who aren’t Ian’s friends and under the age of thirty.”
She wiped her eyes. “You’re joining us in our thirties before too long, friend.”
“I know. But you know what I mean. You guys are all paired off and happy and shit. I need someone to freak out with about finishing my dissertation and applying for jobs. My advisor was less than thrilled with what I’ve turned in lately and I have no idea what I’m going to do and you’re all…adults who have their shit together and like, know how they’re gonna pay rent next month.”
“Okay, I get that.” She took a sip of her ginger ale. “But I don’t get how you got from bad vanilla sex, to going out for beers, to talking about service roles.”
“We didn’t actually talk about the kink stuff. It’s… He asked me what happened to my last
relationship and his questions made some things click.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I’ve been trading services for love since…always.”
Jolene toyed with her straw. “That doesn’t make you a service sub, necessarily. If you like that trade-off, if it makes you happy, then yeah, serve away. But I sense there’s a ‘but’ for you.”
“Yeah. I think it’s more that I kind of have a fucked-up sense of having to do stuff to deserve praise and attention and love? And money coming into it makes it feel even more gross.”
“Because you don’t want to be your mom. Yeah.”
The immediate way Jolene supplied the response made Kate wonder how often she’d repeated that refrain to anyone who would listen. If only it had made a difference in her own head. “But I did that with Ian for years, and when the praise and the gratitude stopped, because it was our normal, I resented the hell out of it.”
“Question. Why are you telling me this and not him?”
“Because I don’t think it changes the fact that I can’t do this with him. He keeps talking about moving on, but how can I move on when the entire basis of how I think love works is fucked up? I don’t want to end up in the same trap six months or a year from now. I don’t want my relationship to be a transaction. I want to trust that someone loves me because they do, not because we’re trading shelter for sex and dry cleaning.”
Jolene studied her glass for a minute. “That’s not unreasonable. And probably you should talk to someone in a professional sort of way. But I think you could talk to Ian about it, if you wanted to, and he would understand. It’s not like he doesn’t know what you grew up with.” She tapped the sides of her glass with her nails for a second. “And you could also talk to Matthew.”
“Excuse me, what? No way.” There was no way in hell Matt was submissive.
Jolene flushed. “Fuck. Shit. Goddammit.” Between the blushing and the cursing, it was clear Jolene wanted to take back what she’d said. “He’s not submissive. But he is kind of service-y. I thought everyone picked up on that.”
