by Beth Merlin
“Some of you may know her from her recent films, “A Star is Porn, Mamma Mia Here We Blow Again, and Mistress Monica Breaks the Internet, but I know her as one of the best lecturers at the Retreat House Breakup Boot Camp. Please help me welcome my very good friend, Mistress Monica,” Louisa said, clapping into the mic.
Moments later, a strikingly tall woman with long, platinum-blonde extensions came into the ballroom. She strutted to the center of the floor, slowly unfurling a whip as she walked. When she got to the podium, she cracked the whip on the ground, and every eye in the place shot in her direction.
“Thank you, Louisa,” Mistress Monica said. The body mic skimmed her latex jumpsuit, crackling as it moved. She reached her hand down to adjust its placement.
“Hard to believe, but fourteen years ago, I was a very different woman. My marriage had just ended, and I was absolutely devastated. A friend, trying to pull me out of my slump, took me out for a night on the town, and we accidentally stumbled into a fetish club in Soho. We paid our entrance fee, hiked up the narrow staircase, parted some dark velvet curtains… and my life changed forever. As we made our way through the fog of dry ice and lights, I saw something that blew my mind, women embracing their power and control. You see, being a dominatrix isn’t about sex. Being a dominatrix, embracing your inner dominatrix, is about taking hold of your authority and influence. You are a force to be reckoned with. You are the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.”
Zosia leaned into me. “Profound words from a porn star.”
Emmy slapped Zosia’s leg playfully. “Shhh, I’m listening.”
Zosia turned to me. “This is total BS, right?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Porn star or not, Mistress Monica at least appeared to have it all together, projecting an enviable air of confidence.
“What is it about dominant women that make men go ga-ga?” Mistress Monica asked. “I’ll tell you. It’s confidence that they’re attracted to. Ordinary men just love to see a woman who knows she’s in control and feels good about herself. It’s a high like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and believe me, I’ve experienced a lot of highs in my life. Here, let me show you how it’s done.”
Mistress Monica walked to the back of the room, where a busboy was setting a table for lunch. She snapped her whip, and the busboy froze in place. He turned to her, and she motioned him forward with her fingers. The busboy took two steps, so he was practically nose-to-nose with her. She leaned in as if she was going to kiss him and then, just as quickly, pulled away, laughing.
“Now, can I get a volunteer?” She squinted her eyes and peered into the crowd. “You, in the silver top.”
I looked down. “Me?”
She waved me over. “Come on, join me up here.”
Emmy patted my left shoulder. “Go on, join her up there.”
I stood up slowly, the boots giving me a couple more inches in height than I was used to and wobbled over to where Mistress Monica was standing.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Joanna.”
“And let me guess, Joanna, your boyfriend cheated on you?”
I looked up at her. “How did you—?”
“How did I know? Look at how you’re standing, shoulders forward, head down.” She turned to face me, tilted my chin up, and pushed my shoulders back. “There, you already look more powerful. Now, take this,” she said, handing me the whip. “Snap it on the ground and repeat after me: I’m one bad ass bitch.”
“I’m one bad ass bitch,” I mumbled.
“Joanna, if you don’t believe what you’re saying, how can you expect anyone else to?” she asked.
“I’m one bad ass bitch,” I repeated.
“Better, but still not where I need it to be.”
“I’m one bad ass bitch,” I said more loudly.
“I know whoever this guy was, he hurt you badly. I can see it in your eyes. But that relationship, it doesn’t define you. You are so much more than the sum of its parts. So, I ask again, who are you?”
I snapped the whip with all the force I could muster and screamed out, “I’m one bad ass bitch.”
A smile firmly registered on Mistress Monica’s face. “Yes, yes, you are.” She took the whip from my hands. “Thank you, Joanna, you can go back to your seat.”
Chapter Fifteen
The lecture lasted another half hour, Mistress Monica illustrating the different techniques she used to exert confidence and dominance in everyday situations. When the class was over, even Zosia admitted she had learned a few things.
I changed back into my street clothes and checked the day’s itinerary. We had some free time before lunch. After that, the thing I was most dreading, my one-on-one therapy session with Dr. P.
It’s not that I didn’t think therapy had its virtues—of course it did. I just wasn’t ready to talk about Sam yet. The same way I wasn’t ready to talk about my mother. As I saw it, those were still fresh wounds. Merritt, a therapy junkie, had been seeing therapists on and off since she came out in high school. Even though our parents were fully accepting of her sexuality, she announced she needed her “own space” to work on herself. She was a huge proponent of seeking out unbiased wisdom wherever and however you could find it.
“Zosia and I are gonna take a dip in the pool before lunch. Want to join us?” Emmy asked.
“I was thinking I might go and hunt for the buried treasure.”
They nodded and set off for the pool, while I headed for the beach.
I got down to the shore and read the first clue from the treasure map aloud to myself. “Perched atop a lonely spire thrown against the sea beckoning those who roam. Silent fire, precise and measured, calls the wayward home.”
The lighthouse! I folded the paper, tucked it into my pocket, and started walking toward the rock jetty at the far side of the beach. The old lighthouse sat at the outer end of the embankment. Even though it was a bit of a hike from the shore, I was determined to get to the next clue before lunchtime. I hurried up the sand, and when I got to the start of the rocks, I stopped and removed my flip-flops, figuring my bare feet would provide a better grip.
I made my way easily over the first few stones before they started to feel slick from seaweed and algae. I glanced up. The weather was starting to turn, and the ocean was getting a bit rougher. Spray crashed up and over the jetty, soaking everything in its path, including me. I pushed on, making it almost to the halfway point of the jetty. Suddenly, I took a wrong step, slipping off the rock, my ankle getting firmly wedged between two of the boulders.
I pulled up with every ounce of strength I could muster, but the pain in my left ankle was too intense. I reached around to my back pocket for my phone before realizing I was device free. No phone, and no way to call for help other than literally calling out for help. I scanned the shoreline. The dark clouds and rough surf had cleared out the beachgoers, and there were very few people left on the sand. Besides, they were way too far to hear me over the crashing waves anyway.
After that, panic quickly set in. I’d told Emmy and Zosia I was going to the beach look for the buried treasure, so they might come looking for me, but how long would that take? An hour? Five? Ten? And what if nobody ever found me? Or at least, not until it was too late?
Then, I started to imagine Sam’s reaction to finding out I’d died on this jetty, taking pleasure in the idea that he’d be guilt-ridden and remorseful, blaming himself for the heartbreak that ultimately, if not actually, led to my untimely death. I was so caught up in my macabre daydream, I barely heard the male voice shouting out to me from the end of the embankment.
“Are you all right?” he called.
“What?” I yelled back over the surf.
“Are you all right?” he repeated.
“My ankle’s caught between the rocks. I think it might be broken.”
“I’ll be right there,” he shouted back.
I squinted to make out the stranger coming to my rescue, but he wa
s still too far away to see anything other than a vague outline. I looked down at my ankle, which appeared to be doubling in size, and tried pulling my leg out again. I managed to shimmy it up a few inches, but that was as far as I could budge it.
“Here, take my hand. I think with the right amount of leverage, I can get you out,” a voice said from over my head.
I looked up and into the light blue eyes of the handsome surfer I’d seen from my room when I first arrived. I searched his face for any shred of recognition from when I thought we’d locked eyes last night. There was none.
“It’s pretty swollen,” I said.
“I’m not going to lie to you, this may hurt. But you can yell as loud as you want, since there’s nobody here to hear you. Okay, on the countdown of five.”
I did a double take. “You want me to count down from five, not three?”
“I want you to really brace yourself.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Okay.”
“Ready? Five, four, and . . . three!” he said, pulling me up and out from between the rocks.
I rubbed my throbbing ankle. “Ow! Jesus, what happened to counting down from five?”
“I thought it’d be better if you were caught off-guard. What were you doing out here, anyway?”
“Looking for Blackbeard’s treasure.”
“You shouldn’t be way out here. You should be on the beach, looking for the Gold Hole.”
“The what?”
He pointed out to the long stretch of beach. “Somewhere on Topsail Beach there’s a supposed bottomless hole, which the locals call the Gold Hole. Topsail legend has it that in the mid-1900s, a team of treasure hunters came to Topsail from up north and identified that hole as the hiding place for Blackbeard’s treasure. They spent weeks in the Gold Hole, working into the late hours of the night. But one morning, they were gone without warning. Disappeared. Vanished as if they had never been on Topsail Island at all.”
“What happened?”
“Some say the treasure of Blackbeard was found and taken on that summer night. But personally, I think they gave up, and it’s still somewhere out on the beach.” He leaned down and examined my ankle more closely. “We should probably get some ice on that ankle. I have a cooler over there—let me bring it over.”
The handsome surfer left to go retrieve his large red-and-white cooler, using a fair amount of upper body strength to drag it back over to where I was sitting. He sat down beside me and popped open the lid of the Igloo. I peeked inside and saw dozens of fish packed tightly in crushed ice. He scooped out a large frozen handful, pulled off his T-shirt, and wrapped the ice inside. He gently placed the pack against my throbbing ankle, and almost immediately, I felt some relief, as the pounding slowed to a light pulsing.
Trying anything to force my eyes away from his washboard stomach, I pointed to the cooler. “Looks like you had a good day fishing.”
“Great day. I caught some bluefish, striped bass, and speckled trout. I was collecting mussels off the rocks when I spotted you.”
“Do you have a stand at the local market or something?”
“I’m the Executive Chef at the hotel, and this,” he said, holding up a striped bass, “is tonight’s dinner.”
“You’re the Executive Chef? I saw you surfing last night. I assumed you were a guest here.”
“I sneak away when they let me. I’m Todd, by the way,” he said, extending his hand.
“Joanna. You know, it’s not really sneaking away, if they let you.”
He smiled and lifted the towel off my ankle. “The swelling’s gone down a little. Do you really think it’s broken?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never broken a bone before, so I’m not sure what it feels like.”
“You’d know. You probably just sprained it. Think you can stand?”
I nodded.
He knelt and wrapped his arm tightly around my waist. “Okay, on the countdown of three.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. “A real three, or are you going to heave me off the ground on two?”
He held his hand over his heart. “A real three, I promise.”
He counted down and gently hoisted me up and off the rocks. I shifted weight onto my left ankle, but quickly realized it couldn’t support my frame.
“Lean into me. We’ll go nice and slow until we reach the sand,” Todd said.
I glanced back at his cooler. “What about your haul? All those fish?”
He pushed his sandy hair out of his eyes. “I’ll come back for them.”
A bright streak of lightning followed by a huge clap of thunder crashed overhead.
I glanced up at the sky. “Leave me. Get the fish back to the kitchen, and then you can send someone to help me back to the hotel.”
“No way,” he said, pointing to the gathering clouds. “Not with that storm brewing. We’re in this together, kid,” he said.
My breath caught in my throat. Kid. “Okay, whatever you think,” I answered, my voice cracking on the last word.
“See, you’re obviously in a lot of pain. Let’s get you back to the hotel and in to see the doctor, pronto.”
Chapter Sixteen
Todd practically carried me the half mile back to the resort. Once we were inside, he set me down on a couch in the lobby, propped my ankle up on a pillow, and hurried to find the doctor on staff. Moments later, Louisa spotted me as she rounded the corner to her office. She stopped dead in her tracks.
“Oh my God, Joanna, what happened?”
“I was following the treasure map to the lighthouse, slipped on one of the jetties, and managed to get my ankle wedged between two rocks. Thank God the hotel’s chef was out there fishing, otherwise I don’t know how long it would’ve taken someone to find me, especially with the storm.”
“Todd Aldrich?”
I nodded. “He helped me back at the expense of tonight’s dinner. Thankfully, he chose me over the fish.”
She waved her hand in the air. “Oh, don’t worry about dinner. I’m just glad you’re okay. Should I fetch the hotel doctor to make sure?”
“Todd went to look for her.”
“Great,” she said, adjusting her stance. “Well, let me know if you need anything. We can have food sent to your room tonight, if it’s too hard for you to get to the dining room.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling warmly as she walked away.
A few minutes later, Todd returned with the doctor and a pair of crutches. After examining me, the doctor determined my ankle wasn’t broken, but as we’d guessed, badly sprained. A few days of rest and repeated icings, and according to her, I’d be as good as new.
“Can I help you back to your room? You’re the cottage closest to the surf shed, right?” Todd asked.
So, he had noticed me last night when he was coming up from the beach.
I pulled my itinerary from my bag and checked the schedule. I’d already missed lunch and was running late for my appointment with Dr. P.
“I have an appointment in the Palm Lounge,” I answered.
“Wait, are you here for the Breakup Boot Camp?” he asked, his voice barely disguising his confusion.
I slid one of the crutches closer to me and used it to push up and off the couch. “Yup, I’m one of them.”
“One of whom?”
“One of those tragic women who apparently need intense therapy, tantric yoga, and dominatrix classes to get over my ex.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Dominatrix classes?”
“Don’t ask. Anyway, thank you very much for all your help. I’d probably still be trapped out on those rocks if it weren’t for you.”
Todd handed me the other crutch and flashed a sweet smile. “I have a feeling you’re far more resourceful than you give yourself credit for.”
My heart stuttered in my ribcage. Was he flirting with me? The feeling took me by complete surprise. For as long as I could remember, nobody but Sam had ever stirred up those kinds of emotions. Sam had so fully occupied my life and hear
t that there was never room for anyone else, or even the idea of anyone else. That’s what hurt so much about his affair. He let someone else in, even pushing me out to make space for that someone. Yet, somehow, the notion I could be interested in another man still felt like a betrayal. It wasn’t rational, but then again, neither was love.
“We’ll see,” I said coolly.
He took a few steps back, narrowing his eyes. “I should get to the kitchen and figure out what I’m serving for dinner tonight.”
“I’m sorry again, about your haul.”
“Try to take it easy, kid, and make sure to keep that ankle up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Dr. P pointed to the daybed. “I don’t normally encourage my patients to lie down—it’s too much a cliché—but in your case, probably a good course of action.”
I hobbled over to the couch, slipped off my shoes, and settled in.
Dr. P rested the crutches against the wall. “You don’t look too steady on those. New injury?”
I nodded. “Brand-new, happened right outside, on the beach.”
Picking up his pad and pen, Dr. P leaned in and said, “So tell me, Joanna, what brings you to Retreat House?”
“To be completely honest, I’m not sure.”
“Not a big believer in talk therapy?”
“It just feels a bit indulgent to sit here analyzing a relationship that’s over. What’s the point?”
“I don’t know, why don’t you tell me.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “I’m not trying to be rude, but is this really how this works? I ask a question and you just pose it back to me? If so, I might not have the patience for talk therapy.”
“No no, don’t worry, therapy’s a two-way street. What I was trying to do was get at the idea that you came to this retreat because of that relationship. Because of the demise of that relationship. So, there must be something that feels unfinished to you?”
