Jaywalking

by Rachel Ember

  “I know how it sounds. But at the time, it felt like…”

  “Do you know how it sounds?” Bria sounded surprised and curious, but not angry or outraged. “Because to me, it sounds like you met a guy, and you were into each other at first, but then he changed his mind.” She raised a brow.

  Jay felt a surge of relief, not unlike what he’d felt when Emile had told him that he hadn’t felt threatened that night—that Jay’s advances hadn’t been unwanted. But what Emile had said and how he’d looked when they’d been interrupted in the classroom—right before he’d bolted again—sent two very different messages.

  He felt an odd urge to argue with her. “Only an asshole gets pushy about sex,” he said firmly. “You’re not supposed to make a move on people unless they tell you it’s okay. You know—consent.”

  “That sounds boring,” Bria said flatly.

  Jay gaped at her for a long moment. When he regained control over himself, he sputtered, “What the fuck? Consent sounds boring?”

  She shrugged. “Sure, it’s important. But if you get carried away with it, it can be a real drag, too.”

  Jay could not believe what he was fucking hearing. “Would you be acting like this if he’d been a girl instead of a guy?”

  Bria snorted. “What, because women aren’t as tough as guys?” she murmured with deadly calm, reminding Jay how terrifying she was. He imagined trying to compel Bria to do something she didn’t want to do, and repressed a shudder.

  “No,” he said with less confidence, off-balance.

  She sighed. “Maybe it would be different. I do think that sometimes women don’t feel as comfortable saying no, but that doesn’t mean that men necessarily are, either. Look, you’re a pretty perceptive person. Don’t take that as a compliment. It’s exhausting. But I have a hard time believing that if he was giving you mixed signals, you failed to notice. Did he give you any indication that he was uncomfortable? Did he move away from you when you got close, or did he try to get you even closer?”

  Jay slowly shook his head.

  “There’s all kinds of chemistry, Jay. Different things work for different people.” Her gaze turned thoughtful. “I guess I can see you as a Dom. A gentle one that likes to hug, maybe.” She wrinkled her nose and shuddered infinitesimally to remind him that she found hugging repulsive.

  His cheeks were heating up again with a fresh wave of fire. He’d barely heard anything she’d said after one word. “‘Dom’?” he echoed incredulously.

  She looked at him for a quiet moment. “What, you’ve never thought about tying someone up?”

  He looked at her with his brow furrowed, heart pounding guiltily. “What? No.” Even in his own head, he sounded halfhearted.

  “Why not? It’s totally normal. I bet almost everyone has that fantasy.”

  Jay hesitated. “It could be fun, I guess,” he said cautiously. “I’m open-minded.”

  Bria nodded like bondage was a natural and healthy part of any balanced sex life. “And a little dirty talk… that’s fun, too, right? A little praise, the occasional spanking?”

  “I guess,” Jay said, voice strangled, and then he saw Bria’s slow grin and bristled. “Are you fucking with me?”

  Her wicked smile shifted into something almost gentle. “No,” she said, and when the fact that he wasn’t convinced must still have been written all over his face, she added, “I promise.”

  Jay relaxed, marginally. And as soon as he’d lowered his guard, Bria went on.

  “Well, I was fucking with you when I implied that a lot of people are openly kinky. Most people are boring—vanilla or repressed. But there’s nothing wrong with liking to boss people around, and there’s nothing wrong with other people liking to be bossed around. So, stop berating yourself.”

  Jay rubbed the back of his head. His hair was smooth against his hand, and he liked it long, but he needed to get a trim before it started getting into his eyes at practice.

  “I’m not saying you should go kidnap the next hot guy you find, and restrain and sound him without advance negotiation. Or at least, like, texting him a heads-up.”

  Jay stared at her, lost. Though he’d only understood about half of what she’d just said, he seized on just one word he was sure he’d misheard. “‘Sound’ him?”

  Bria went on like he hadn’t spoken. “But I’m ninety-nine percent sure that that guy you met is not nearly as worried about what happened as you are, even if he wasn’t into it. Okay?”

  Jay bit his lip. “Okay.”

  She clapped him on the shoulder. “Crisis concluded. I’m sorry that it got weird and that you got confused.” She paused and grimaced, like it pained her to add, “If you want, you can ask me about this stuff. But to start with, you can probably get a lot of mileage out of Google.”

  A belated realization struck Jay, and surprise waylaid his embarrassment. “Wait. So, you—?”

  Some people stumbled around into the side yard, laughing and singing lines from an old musical he’d heard before but couldn’t remember the title of. The dog started barking again.

  Jay, frowning, looked over the fence to where the dog was straining against a chain looped around a tree. All the grass within the bounds of the chain was worn away in a sad circle, and a dark little dog house sat beside the tree trunk. The lights were on in the house.

  “I hate people,” he muttered, briefly considering unbuckling the dog’s collar and stealing it. “Do you think we could fit a pit bull in the backseat of your car?”

  Bria sighed. “Over my dead fucking body. Want to go see if we can find you a date? You can’t throw a rock in a group of theater nerds without hitting a sub, in my experience.”

  Sub. Even Jay’s inner voice sounded bewildered when he repeated the word in his head. He gave Bria a narrow look, too deeply in shock to revisit the question of how, exactly, she’d scored an invite to this party, though he was even more curious than before. “Nah. I’ve got an early practice.”

  And there was no way he was going to cruise for theater nerds because he could not stop thinking about their English professor. Not that he was going to confess quite that much to Bria, even considering the revelations of the past ten minutes.

  Jay went back to the dorms intending to sleep, but he didn’t manage it.

  Eric wasn’t around, which Jay had gotten used to. His roommate only seemed to be in the room in the middle of the day, lending credence to Jay’s mom’s theories that Eric was a serial killer after all—that, or he worked the night shift somewhere. The jury was still out.

  Jay was grateful for the solitude. He spent hours looking up BDSM websites on his phone. He started with the informative sites, jumping every time he scrolled down to find a picture of rope or cuffs or toys. The props freaked him out. He wasn’t into leather or studded collars or whips, all the things he’d always associated with those four letters.

  But some of the other stuff the websites said… about the core of what it meant to ‘Dom’ someone, about pulling them deep into a scene until they trusted you, begged you…. Fuck, yes. He was into that. Very.

  His mind was electric with words and phrases and concepts it seemed like he should’ve figured out sooner or hunted down, right around the time he’d hit puberty and become fascinated with the scenes in movies where heroes got tied up by villains.

  Better late than never. Now he knew.

  He also knew what ‘sounding’ was, and he had about a hundred questions for Bria that he was probably too scared to ask.

  At some point, Jay did manage to drift off. He woke up what felt like minutes later, his alarm ringing and his hand on his chest, still holding his phone. It was a hot rectangle against his skin.

  He got ready and went to practice, which was an intense hour and a half, but somehow he wasn’t even tired. He just felt focused and strong. His coach even praised him for improved accuracy in his back heel.

  One of his teammates, Wyatt, followed him into the showers. Jay stepped under a showerhead a poli
te three paces’ distant and tossed his towel toward the teak bench along the far wall. “I thought you didn’t have time to shower?” he asked Wyatt. “You’re always saying Friday practices make you late to Physics.”

  “Physics,” Wyatt said with an exaggerated shudder. “Nah, man. I dropped that shit. Impossible to make that class time with practice and, like, any campus traffic whatsoever.”

  Jay’s mind suddenly became clear and still.

  Of course, people could drop classes. He’d known that. It probably happened all the time.

  “Was that a pain in the ass?”

  Wyatt let the water run over his head and then leaned out of the spray. “No. It wasn’t a big deal. I had to meet with my advisor, but he was cool with it. Hardly even asked me any questions; just took care of it the same day.”

  “Right,” Jay said. “Cool. Well, that’ll make your life easier.”

  “No fucking kidding, man,” Wyatt agreed, but Jay was hardly listening.

  As soon as he’d rinsed his hair, dried off, and thrown on his clothes, he crossed campus toward his advisor’s office, so excited that he jogged the whole way.

  Six

  Emile

  September

  Emile had known he was submissive for as long as he could remember, since well before he’d even known he was queer. Although, in the throes of puberty, he would not have described his urge to be held tight and asked to succumb as BDSM. Sometimes, it still felt like a false label for what Emile wanted, which was more about finding a particular headspace than it was about toys, safe words, and scenes.

  In truth, Emile found the subculture a little dramatic for his tastes, and he’d only gone to clubs or actively engaged with other people in the lifestyle for Oliver’s sake, and later for Ben’s. Now that he and Ben were over, he wasn’t in touch with most of the people he’d thought of as his friends in the scene.

  The exception was Oliver. Emile valued their friendship, which had somehow grown from the ashes of an ill-advised, eight-week affair seven years ago. Their dating relationship could have been a case study demonstrating the universal truth that kink compatibility doesn’t conquer all.

  Somehow, though, they had wound up friends. They had lunch or a drink at least once a week, which was more often than Emile saw anyone else socially; save Sydney, anyway, who was in her own category.

  When Oliver texted about getting lunch one morning in the fourth week of the semester, Emile happily accepted.

  He jogged up the three concrete steps to the heavy wooden door of Ellipses. Oliver had chosen the bar and restaurant for their first date, and had kept suggesting it after they’d parted ways romantically. An example of his particular brand of humor.

  The place took up the ground floor of a narrow, deep downtown building that hadn’t been updated significantly since its initial construction in the mid-nineteenth century, except to tack the HVAC to the ceiling in plain sight. Its ornate tile was riddled with cracks and patches; the woodwork around the soaring doorways was pitted with the wear and tear of a hundred years; and the enormous original glass windows let more heat pour in than the air conditioner could fully counter. Emile loved it, of course.

  He saw Oliver wave from a booth in the back. Oliver was his usual immaculately groomed, immaculately clothed self. He seemed to be growing out his hair from the trendy undercut he’d sported for the past year or so, and Emile thought the softer lines of the new style suited him better. Oliver’s dark red waves were one of his best features, and when they framed his face, they softened some of its razor-sharp angles. He wore a pristine, custom-tailored gray suit that nicely set off a pair of chestnut Italian leather shoes which had likely cost more than Emile’s house payment.

  “You’re late,” Oliver said testily, picking up a menu.

  “I thought you said the food here was poison.” Emile glanced at his watch and decided to ignore Oliver’s reprimand. If he was late, it was by less than a minute.

  “I said ‘likely poisoned,’ and I’m starving. So, if it’s likely death by poison or certain death by hunger, I’m willing to gamble.”

  Emile smiled patiently and picked up his menu. “Fair enough. So, how have you been?”

  “Please, let’s not with the small talk.” Oliver set down his menu and gestured for a waitress, his air of natural authority summoning her as though by magic even when he’d barely raised his arm.

  “Yes, sir? What will it be?”

  “Two ice waters with lemon. The Poe Boy for me, but just a half. And he’ll have the Crepe Gatsby.”

  “Excellent,” said the waitress, taking their menus while Emile gave Oliver a disgruntled look.

  “Who asked you to order for me?” Emile muttered.

  Oliver had immediately picked up his phone after handing his menu to the waitress, incapable of so much as a second of downtime. He looked up with an expression that showed genuine confusion.

  “What? You like it.”

  “I liked it when we were fucking,” Emile said mildly. He leaned against the back of the booth, feeling the old vinyl crinkle. “Now, not so much.”

  “I forget how subbing is so connected to sex for you,” Oliver said thoughtfully, which rendered Emile briefly anxious enough that he glanced around for eavesdroppers. Oliver had lowered his voice, though, and their usual booth was close enough to the kitchens that the half-audible racket through the swinging door kept their conversation private. They’d had enough candid talks, seated at this very table, that Emile probably should have been more comfortable with them by now.

  “So, what was it you needed?” Emile felt compelled to remind Oliver that lunch had been his idea, and presumably not to discuss Emile’s subbiness.

  “Right,” Oliver said briskly. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve acquired a dog.”

  Emile frowned. Oliver may as well have told him the sky was green. “You don’t like dogs.”

  “I do! I like Godot well enough.”

  “You barely tolerate him, and he’s a polite old man in a dog suit. Are you telling me you’ve found a dog even better-behaved?”

  Fascinatingly, Oliver appeared to wince. “Well, no.”

  “Did you ask me here to help get him off your hands?”

  Oliver looked dismayed at the suggestion. “Of course not! She is my dog,” he said, sounding firm about it. “I just may need some help. Don’t you have a nanny for Godot?”

  Emile laughed outright. He’d forgotten how fun it could be to poke holes in Oliver’s almost-impenetrable dignity. “Dogs do not have nannies, you ridiculous alien being. But yes, someone walks him for me.”

  Oliver nodded eagerly. “That’s it. That’s what I need. And you have someone good, I’m sure? Only the best for precious, smelly, blanket-hogging Godot.”

  “You see,” Emile pointed out, grinning, “this is why it didn’t work out between us. Your heart was holding out for a different dog.”

  “Oh, yes, obviously,” Oliver grumbled. “Will you share your dog-walker with me or not?”

  “I’ll give you his number.”

  “Thank you,” Oliver said levelly. “Now, what’s new with you? Have you found a rebound yet?”

  Emile winced and reviewed his options. He could lie, which Oliver would see through with his emotional x-ray vision. He could also tell a half-truth which would probably be equally useless. Or he could tell the whole, pathetic truth, such as it was.

  And if anyone would understand Emile’s emotional disorder, Oliver probably would. He might be the only person Emile was remotely close to who stood a chance.

  Sydney absolutely wouldn’t. Not only had she miraculously found true love while basically an infant, giving her no true grasp of how difficult romance could be, but she didn’t understand kink. She tried, but she definitely overestimated her insight; that much had been made clear when she’d repeatedly told Emile he was lucky to be bisexual because it doubled his dating pool.

  If only.

  Emile didn’t just need a ni
ce-looking man or woman with an artistic sensibility who happened to be a dog person. He needed all that and a strong desire to inflict at least minor physical torment while babbling praise in his ear.

  Ben had come so very close to perfection until Emile had caught him with his pants down. To quote Sydney, literally.

  He couldn’t help recalling the seconds after walking in on Ben and his student, and what he’d seen… and the memory didn’t strike him as hard as he expected, as if the cut had healed to a point where it was no longer painful, but the scab still itched.

  “Do you think if you stay quiet long enough, I’ll go away?” Oliver sounded amused. “Sadly for you, no. Or at least not until I’m fed.” He looked testily toward the kitchen. “How long, exactly, does it take to put copious amounts of mayonnaise over lunch meat on bread?”

  “I think it’s incorporating the poison that’s time-consuming,” Emile tried, but he could see from Oliver’s narrowed eyes and frown that evasion would get him nowhere.

  “If Ben’s weaseled back into your good graces, I don’t think I can stand it,” Oliver said, after completing whatever study he’d been making of Emile’s face. “It’s one thing to be a liar, but he’s not even a good liar. You deserve better.”

  “Spoken like a true lawyer,” Emile said wanly, then paused while the waitress returned with their waters. When she was out of earshot, he bit the inside of his cheek and then said, “It isn’t about Ben. It’s worse than that. Or better. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Oliver grinned and murmured, “Oh, really?”

  “I may have a thing for someone,” he admitted at last, and then hurried to add before he could change his mind, “someone who’s a student of mine.”

  Emile met Oliver’s wide-eyed stare nervously. Being the center of Oliver’s attention was always disconcerting. His eyes were very dark blue, and their color in contrast to his fair complexion made them seem even larger in his thin face than they really were. After she’d met him, Sydney had referred to him as an “eerie, hot Leprechaun,” and Emile had to admit it was an accurate description.