She made a different face for each inflection, pantomiming each person taking her hand or touching her shoulder, and it was perfect and horrible.
“How did you keep a straight face?”
Dru smiled, incredulous. “Yes, exactly! Right? I didn’t, that’s the thing. I mean I’m there at the funeral and the reception and just . . . oh my God, I hadn’t slept in days, and people kept saying it, and at more than one point I had to cover my face with my hands and pretend to be sobbing because I was actually laughing hysterically. Which . . . sounds insane, I know. And so horrible I couldn’t believe it. Who laughs at their wife’s funeral? But then I’d remember us having this exact conversation and I knew that Padma would be cracking up about it, so I was still laughing but also sobbing and . . . oh God, that was a long day.”
“Longest day of your life, I bet.”
“No.” Dru looked up like she was remembering. “No, not the longest. But definitely close.”
Probably recalling, Amie realized with another chill, her wife dying. Because of course that would have been worse than the funeral thing. Jesus.
Amie decided to let that one lie. She flipped one corner of the blanket up and pulled it over her lap, then did the same for Dru, tucking them in. They scooted closer, knees to knees, to maximize the coverage. It wasn’t that chilly in the club, but they were still naked, the sweat from their recent exertion still cooling on their skin. And it seemed like a moment for bundling up. Plus, it gave her something to focus on for a few precious seconds so she could gather her thoughts, because she still had no idea what to say about what she’d learned. She only knew it couldn’t be, I am so sorry.
At last, she went with: “Okay. So you told me something. Now I’m supposed to tell you something, but I don’t have anything like that in my history. So whatever I tell is going to be pretty lacking.”
“Oh, I wanted to know a specific thing.”
And after a story like Dru had laid down, it wasn’t like Amie was in any position to deny her. “Gosh. Okay, well. Shoot.”
Dru cleared her throat and plucked at a piece of fluff from the blanket. “So. This will be a fairly dramatic subject change. And it’s kind of a shot in the dark. But . . . when was the last time you had an orgasm that you didn’t give yourself?”
Nope. Nooooooo no no. Nuh-uh.
Fuck, though. Because she had to answer it, didn’t she? After Dru finally explaining about her deal, and her being a goddamn widow, and both of them still sitting there naked, which was obviously the most appropriate setting for a discussion about getting off. Even if Amie’s instinct was to put on full armor and start mortaring together some bricks with maybe steel reinforcement girders, and . . . Fuck.
“Well. You like dicks, I like my hand, so . . . preferences, right?”
“Or frottage.”
“Sure. Sometimes.” Rubbing off on a willing, recently beaten butt was not that different from masturbation, for Amie. It never had anything to do with the partner in question—it could literally be anyone she’d just beaten, because the beating itself sometimes charged her up. She wasn’t going to get into that distinction with Dru, though.
Dru shifted, leaned closer, then seemed to rethink the move and pretended it had been a stretch. “I remember back when we first got together—in college, not now—it took a while for you to—”
“To warm up? I was still figuring out my deal.” It was true. A big part of her problem back then had been sorting out her guilt about sex in general from her feelings about kink, figuring out what made her tick. Learning the names for concepts she’d always thought were her unique, private shame.
“You did warm up. Only with me, though. Never when you were doing a scene with anyone else, that I could tell. And I had to wonder, because you mentioned Mara, but you weren’t with her all that long and you said the two of you didn’t work as girlfriends. And you haven’t mentioned anyone else, besides a bunch of play partners you only see at clubs and parties. So, like, who or what have you been doing all this time, sex-wise, if you still have this thing where you don’t really . . .” She grimaced, fisting the blanket at her waist, then releasing it. “Have sex.”
Amie licked her lips, tried to exhale slowly. Her hand was already messing with her ponytail, flipping it clockwise, and she wondered how long she’d been doing that. Lately the hair was starting to develop a memory, twisting in that same direction all the time, as it had when she was a little kid. Before her mother had “broken” her of the habit by putting the hair in a brutally tight braided bun for a month with hairpins sticking out all over it.
She forced her hand down, resting her elbows on her knees and clasping her fingers tightly together. It looked uncomfortably like prayer. Honesty. Communication. Hadn’t she spent all that time and money in therapy learning that her instincts about those things were wrong, the product of a dysfunctional upbringing? Didn’t she have a reputation for being too honest most of the time anyway? But that was the wrong kind of honesty, she suspected. The wrong tone, the wrong something. Because she was wrong, somehow, and this was only another facet of her wrongness.
“You say what you think,” her current therapist had pointed out. “But do you say what you feel?”
“I don’t like talking about it,” she finally admitted. “Or thinking about it. I’m not saying I won’t. Just that I’m not sure how. I guess I’m out of practice too.”
“At talking?”
“No. Well, yes. Or no, because I’ve never had much practice at that. I meant with the whole thing about . . . having sex like a normal person.”
Dru’s head tilted, and Amie could practically hear the gears spinning in her brain. And she suspected she knew what was happening up there. Matchmaking of some sort. Hooking Amie up with the perfect partner, or the perfect therapist, or the perfect product, or—
The club phone rang, breaking both of their trains of thought. They looked toward the sound in unison, then Dru sighed and climbed out of the blanket nest, calling back to Amie as she turned the corner to the entrance hallway and the office door. “I want to check caller ID in case it’s one of the employees and I need to schedule a replacement or something.”
“Okay. Don’t forget you’re still naked.”
Except for the rope, which she really should untie. It looked so great, though.
After a few more seconds passed, Dru’s voice drifted down the hallway—not directed at Amie. It sounded like she’d picked up the call.
Saved by the bell.
Amie had packed up the blanket and the unused ropes, and slipped back into her clothes, when Dru’s tone changed. Angry—or scared. Frantic.
Puzzled, Amie poked her head around the corner, and picked up enough to grasp that the caller wasn’t an employee.
“Fuck. No, I’m looking at it right now. Can’t you do the . . . you know, and see who the owner is of the . . .” Rapid keyboard noises punctuated her pause. “Yeah, yeah, a who is search . . . Oh. Well then what’s the whole point of those searches, if . . . Shit. And how long will that take?”
It sounded more like an internet problem than a club problem. Amie walked down to the office and watched Dru click from some search results to a tab with a black page and white and red letters, plus some horrible scrolling yellow thing at the top with more text. A web 1.0 horror show.
“Druse? Everything okay?”
“No.” Dru and waved her in, then gestured to the monitor. “Ugh. No, sorry, Gavin. I was talking to Amie. Yes to you . . . What? Oh God, I hadn’t even thought of that. I hope not.” She pressed the handset to her chest and turned to Amie. “The subscriber list for the class schedule newsletter. Is that the same newsletter account as the general club emails?”
“Um . . . yes? It’s a different list and different campaign, but it’s all under the same account.”
Dru shook her head and pressed the phone back to her ear so Gavin could hear her response. “Fuuuuuuuuuck.”
Amie leaned over the desk to read wh
at was on the monitor, trying to ignore the eye-strain-inducing color scheme and focus on content.
About halfway down the page she had to stop and press her forehead to the desk, echoing Dru’s Fuuuuuuuuuck.
Dru patted her shoulder and whispered, “It’s redirected from the registration page. Nice, huh?”
Amie wished she could’ve stuck to hating the colors. The hacked page informed the reader that if they were on the “Club Excape maling list” or had registered for any “extra sessons” they were “AT RISK” (in bold red, and at least spelled correctly). That their personal information—or “personnel info,” rather—could be given to the local news at any time.
“Okay,” Dru was saying to Gavin. “Yeah, I know. The emails are already coming in.” She changed tabs again, staring at what appeared to be a very angry inbox. “I’ll have something to post within a few hours. You’ll work on the hack part in the meantime?”
Excape. Sessons. Tiny hairs prickled at the back of Amie’s neck.
Indicating by gesture that she wanted to look at the hacked site again, Amie took the mouse over from Dru and clicked back to the horror show. Read down the page more carefully this time, instead of skimming.
If you are on any Club Excape maling list
or registered for any extra sessons at
CLUB EXCAPE you are
+++++AT RISK+++++
You personnel info coud be sent to LOCAL NEWS at ANY TIME
Play at Club Ecxape and UR GUNA BE OUTED
She pressed a trembling hand to her mouth and told herself she had to be imagining it. That lots of people made the same stupid spelling errors. That if nothing else, Chris would never risk doing this because he knew it might come back to bite him in the ass at work, since Amie was obviously a friend of Dru’s and was likely to see the hacked site. He was at least that smart . . . wasn’t he?
Or was Amie the idiot? Because if she pointed the finger at Chris and it ended up getting him in actual trouble, like legal trouble . . . it would out her too, wouldn’t it? They were only employees at their gym, and the very small chain that owned it didn’t have particularly open-minded management. It was a family, a pretty conservative one, who liked to donate to right-wing political types and hold fundraisers for them. Amie suspected that Oh yes, and now I’m a witness in this criminal investigation because I’m a major player at a local kink club would get any Torque employee’s ass kicked to the curb with blinding speed.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t risk telling her suspicions to Dru . . . could she? Dru’s wife had obviously left her in a decent place financially, and even if the club had to close, Amie doubted that it would ruin her. Even being outed wouldn’t ruin Dru, necessarily—she pretty much lived out, because she had managed kink clubs for years. Failing to stop a hacker determined on breaching a club’s security might make another club think twice about hiring her, but then again it might not. It seemed like the kind of thing that could happen to anyone. The government, huge corporations, everyone got hacked. All the security measures in the world might not have been enough to stop this. Dru hadn’t done anything wrong or illegal, no matter how much negative attention she might get in the press if the hacker actually followed through on the doxxing threat.
But Amie needed her job. She had some money set aside. Once she’d moved up to management, she’d even gotten a 401K. But her safety margin was a few months at best. If she lost the job, that would wipe her savings out. She didn’t want to go back to living paycheck to paycheck again, not after she’d worked so fucking hard to get where she was. Not because of this. Too much honesty, too much fucking communication, without anybody’s consent.
But if she didn’t tell, and it turned out her suspicions were correct, and Dru ever found out . . .
Dru nudged her hand to the side and took the mouse back over so she could look at her email again, opening one near the top of the list. “Oh, and I have a horrible feeling . . . Fuck. Yes. What a coincidence, the Chamber of Commerce app happened to get rejected. Which shouldn’t surprise me given how many members here are members there, and they’re probably all panicking about getting doxxed, but still.” She leaned on one hand, her shoulders slumped as she pushed the mouse away again. “Okay, I will. Thanks. Hey, and thanks so much for everything . . . Yeah, you too. Bye.”
She hung up and sat for a few seconds as if she were dazed, before finally speaking. “Well. This day isn’t going quite as planned.”
Either the fluorescent light or Dru’s ears were humming, a barely audible background noise that seemed to amplify the pressure building in her head. It wasn’t a headache yet. But it would be. The mother of all headaches, she predicted. And her stomach was in knots.
Amie looked nearly as bad. Pale, haunted, and she kept pressing her hand over her mouth. Thinking hard, still in shock, or trying to keep something in—Dru couldn’t tell which.
Seeing Amie’s clothes reminded Dru she was naked, and her torso was wrapped in a few dozen yards of rope. “Let’s get this off me, okay?”
She stood, picked up the towel she’d thrown over her office chair before sitting down earlier, and shoved it into the laundry bag on a hook by the door as she returned to the main room with Amie following. Amie was silent, grim as she worked all the knots and loops free. Afterward she shook out each strand and wrapped the rope with meticulous care, taking her time. Too much time, way more than was needed. Dru was already dressed again by the time Amie made the twist to secure the last bundle.
Finally Dru couldn’t take the quiet anymore. “Something on your mind?”
Amie looked up, eyebrows raised. “I have several things to choose from.”
God. Their earlier conversation. Gavin’s call had completely wiped it from Dru’s thoughts. “Sorry. Obviously you were giving me a great answer earlier, and I’m sorry we can’t keep talking about it right now. Because of—”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m . . . worried about that too. And—” She flipped her ponytail around, then turned to put the rope in her bag.
“And?”
Amie sighed. Put her palms up to her temples. Maybe she was getting a headache too. “Of getting doxxed, right? I can’t afford to lose my job.”
“We’ll figure something out, okay?” Dru reached for Amie, nonverbal hug barriers be damned. After a second or two, Amie relaxed, hugging her back. “Everything will be all right.”
The last time she’d spoken those words to somebody, it hadn’t turned out all right. But she’d meant it then, and she meant it now, and that had to count for something.
A million tiny details all at once, that was what running this place by herself sometimes felt like. Restocking, and payroll, and paperwork, and newsletters, and keeping the employees and customers happy, and making sure the dirty towels from the playrooms and bar got dropped at the laundry and the clean ones picked up. She balanced it all every day, ignoring how precarious the whole stack was, until one key piece started to slide or got knocked awry and then, like a Jenga tower near the end of the game, the whole thing threatened to tumble down. Not a matter of if, but when.
“Maybe Trip was right,” she muttered into Amie’s honeysuckle hair.
“Mmm?” Amie pulled back enough to look at her face without ending the hug entirely.
“Oh. Trip. The co-owner, back in Seattle, the guy who bought me out. He didn’t want to, he had expected me to stay. Maybe I should have.”
“Your ex, though, right?” Amie frowned. “Is that ever a good idea?”
“A kink partner.” Dru shrugged, running her fingers over the curl at the end of Amie’s ponytail. “We were still friends. All of us. We worked together well. He thought I was running away from Seattle because of the memories, and I was, probably. And he pointed out that just because Padma and I had this dream together didn’t mean I had to follow through all by myself.”
“It’s a lot to do,” Amie agreed. “All the ownership crap, plus the management, plus hosting. Right now you’re wearing too many
of the hats yourself.”
Dru looked around at the big, empty room, wondering if there would be a crowd filling it tonight. Once people saw the hack . . . “And until the club is really going strong, I can’t afford to hire people to wear all those hats. Things were looking up with the extra classes and stuff, but if we lose members over this website thing . . .”
Amie tightened her arms, pulled Dru closer, kissed her cheek. “Gavin seems like a bright guy. He’ll figure something out.”
Everything will be all right.
But what if it wasn’t?
Amie showed up to work the next morning with only moments to spare before her first class was scheduled. Breezed into the office to dump her things, brushed everyone off, and dashed away before she ever had to make eye contact with Chris. She was a chickenshit. But if she had to look at his smug, smarmy face, if she had to listen to him say anything, one word that suggested his involvement in the hacking . . . she wasn’t sure what might happen, she only knew it wouldn’t end well for either of them.
No real proof. That was what she kept telling herself. Gavin could find something way more concrete than “this ‘guna’ seems familiar,” and that would be a bigger help to Dru than anything Amie could tell her.
It hadn’t helped her sleep the night before. It didn’t help her concentrate on her two Pilates classes before lunch, or on her one-on-one training sessions after lunch. But at least Chris was busy with clients of his own by then, and they were able to avoid one another.
Things were fine until about two in the afternoon, when she had desk duty. Chris sauntered by with his latest prospect, a kind of deliciously plump soccer-mom type whose body image he had probably spent an hour weakening even further. And when they passed the desk, he turned to Amie and gave her a quick appraising look, then a smirk, before resuming whatever he was saying to the poor client.
And that was more proof than she’d ever needed or wanted. The fact that he hadn’t even felt the need to speak to her. He knew that she knew.
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