Jon gave me the week off work when I got back to New York. It was time I needed away from Patrick and just for myself – so I didn’t answer any of his texts or calls. I told him I needed some space for a bit, to think, to revaluate things between us, and just to clear my head. I couldn’t shake the distrust, every time I thought about the Plaisir, I felt him trying to hurt me – to punish me for looking at Jon. It wasn’t a game, it was jealousy and anger, and it scared me. But I felt ashamed for asking Jon to come stay with me afterwards, it was childish and unfair to Patrick.
It was nice being at home though, to be back in reality; I had sort of forgotten what it felt like to be normal, to not be at someone’s beck and call sexually. At first, I struggled to make it through the day, I no longer had a set schedule to follow and it made me anxious. Slowly though, bit by bit, I found myself less dependant on them. It also gave me time to work on my art, my blog, and have a social life again since Allie was miraculously still speaking to me.
“Dia, honestly - we never see you anymore,” Allie complained. “The pay can’t be worth it.”
Alison Montgomery, the only person in the world willing to go weeks without talking to me and still happily agree to go out drinking when I called. Her sly smile always made me feel better, just being around the girl I considered my sister made me feel a lot more level-headed. It had been her idea to go to a club, I’d rather be drinking at her place in my pyjamas, but I wasn’t about to complain.
The ‘we’ she was referring to was our friend group, or hers anyway, most of which were out on the dance floor currently getting felt up and enjoying themselves. I couldn’t do that, I wanted to, and two months ago I was doing exactly that. Now I felt like I couldn’t relax like I couldn’t tell her about work, or Patrick, or anything else, and it made me sad. And since I didn’t want to be sad or anxious anymore – I drank, the obvious solution to all of life’s problems.
I downed another shot, this time without flinching. “It’s not work, it’s everything that comes along with work…”
“Baggage from work is shafting you so badly that you can’t hang out with friends? Sounds like a shit job to me,” she replied with a laugh.
Literally and figuratively. “I’m sorry I’ve been so shitty though, I’ll be better. I’ll call more.”
“It’s fine, honestly, but yeah text more often - I miss talking to you and so does mom.”
“Same,” I said under my breath. I missed her mom, who was at one point my foster mom, and I figured I’d get a lecture on not calling her more often too.
“Come up to the roof with me, I want to have a smoke,” Allie told me more than asked.
I grabbed another drink and went with her happily though, teetering in my too tall fuck-me heels, and trying to keep the hemline of my slinky, white strapless dress down. I wasn’t looking to get laid, but I wanted to feel sexy without the obligation of being sexy. Unlike work, where sexy was expected.
On the roof we had a stunning view of the city skyline, far away from the noise and bustling of people, it was beautiful. And it reminded me of the view from Patrick’s apartment. I felt almost homesick, and I had only been there once.
“Allie, can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, of course, babe.”
“What’s like, the weirdest thing you’ve done with a guy?” I asked, suddenly feeling ballsier as my brain became foggier.
She cocked an eyebrow and took a drag of her smoke before replying, “With a guy specifically, or just in bed?”
“In bed,” I said as I leaned back against the railing.
“I mean once I was seeing this guy with a mommy fetish, it was weird, and I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t into it. But with my last girlfriend, she had a thing for being slapped, and I’m not talking like a light tap like full-on bitch slapped, backhanded.” She paused and narrowed her eyes at me, a mischievous grin spreading across her face. “Are you up to shenanigans with someone you haven’t told me about?”
I couldn’t help my surprised laugh. “More like playing James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal,” I answered.
“Come again?” she asked, her jaw practically on the floor. “Like, with your boss? Lydia, ohmigod, are you okay—”
“Oh! Yeah, no, I’m fine!” I interrupted quickly. “We had this flirtation-ship that got heated one day, and it’s maybe completely the reason I’ve been M.I.A.”
She narrowed her eyes and a gust of wind blew her hair wildly as she scrutinized me. “How James Spader are we talking?” Allie asked after a long silent minute. “Lightly scolding, or full-on beat your ass?”
“Beating my ass.”
She stubbed out the cigarette. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
I want to tell you everything. I didn’t have anyone else to share with, only the guys, and I was feeling suffocated by it. I needed someone else, someone who knew me better than anyone else. My face was burning from a combination of the alcohol getting to me and sudden exhilaration at my confession. “Now take James Spader and multiply him by two.”
“No,” she retorted with a disbelieving look. “Absolutely no way, you can not be telling me that you’re in a ménage, Three’s Company scenario.”
I nodded, trying to hide my smirk behind my glass. What drink number is this? I didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. “Jack Tripper wishes he was up to the shenanigans that I am.”
“When did you become a ho?” Allie asked quietly, leaning in close with wide excited eyes. “Seriously, I can’t believe you were holding out on me.”
I told her everything, it just started coming out and I couldn’t stop it. She circulated between disbelieving, horrified, and begging to know more. I had a feeling she didn’t believe all of it and because of that, I left out the parts about Plaisir.
“Like, an actual paddle? A frat paddle?”
“Yeah, but without the weird Greek alphabet.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Allie, it’s a fucking paddle, what do you think?”
“Oh, don’t go getting all attitudinal with me, Morrison, I’m not the one facing corporal punishment from my boss.”
She had a lot of questions. We continued to drink well into the early hours of the morning, I got to the point where I could barely walk straight, let alone hold myself up. It was probably because of this that I ended up locked in the bathroom dialling Patrick.
“It’s awfully late for you to be calling,” he answered tiredly. “Especially when you’ve ignored about fifteen of my calls.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the door, his voice was thick and sleepy and it made my heart flutter. “You’re the one answering your phone at two-thirty,” I said softly. “I wanted to hear your voice…”
“I missed you this week,” Patrick replied. “I was starting to wonder if you weren’t going to come back. All I could think about was how much I wanted to take back the entire day, to make it all disappear and start over.”
I felt cold, tired, and shameless, I wanted to know if he understood my anger and resentment. “You tried to hurt me - and not in the fun way… You were so mean, and then you left and I thought you hated me--” I broke off, choking on the words as tears came up, I pushed them away, I wasn’t crying about this anymore. “I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.”
“I understand, Lydia. I don’t know how many other ways I can say I’m sorry--”
“You have to mean it,” I interrupted. “It’s not just an ‘I’m sorry, let’s fuck now’ situation, Patrick. You left me there, alone, after I finally admitted that I have no fucking clue what I’ve gotten myself into, after letting an almost stranger have sex with me, and after fucking my ass as a punishment. Sorry doesn’t cut it.” The silence that followed my tirade was long and suffocating, my chest tightening with every second that passed without his response.
“I hate that you want his approval,” Patrick said finally. “I kept telling myself that it didn’t bother me, but it did, it does. I resent Jon for not sticking to our plan in the first place because if he had I don’t think I’d be this jealous.”
Plan? “What plan?”
“I wanted you for a long time, and when I mentioned it to Jon, he told me that you had gotten flirty; undoing buttons on your blouse, bending over in front of him…” Patrick paused, his voice was thick and exhausted. “I asked him if he thought you’d be receptive if I came on to you, and he told me he didn’t know. Eventually, he came to me and said he was almost certain you’d accept it, and we agreed to do a tag team approach - he comes onto you and if you were receptive to him then I’d try too.”
“You walked in on us,” I pointed out. “And you didn’t seem mad either.”
“But I didn’t know you were there; he had already finished with you when I showed up. And the way you looked at him like he was the only person that mattered, even when I was trying to fuck you. I wanted you so badly, kitten, I didn’t want to share you with him, not emotionally anyway.” He sighed and I could hear some shuffling around. “Jon and I had a long fight afterwards because of it.”
My heart was caught in my throat, I couldn’t speak, just clutched my phone tightly and lolled my head to the side, watching myself in the mirror. My platinum blonde hair was starting to fall out of its updo in thick tendrils hanging around my face, my pink lipstick was faded and slightly smudged. Grey eyes were ringed with eyeliner that seeped outward in a thick, faded line. “I kissed Jon,” I admitted quietly, my voice shaky. “When he was helping me get cleaned up. I was so upset, and I just went for it without thinking… I asked him to come sit with me later that evening too, nothing happened, I just wanted someone to talk to.”
“Maybe this isn’t going to work then.”
“Patrick—”
“Lydia, please, this is frustrating. I hate that you keep all this shit from me, it feels like I’m a teenager all over again and I’m over that part of my life! I want an adult who’s willing to talk to me, not a child that feels the need to hide things.”
“I’m not a child,” I protested shrilly, probably not proving my point in the slightest. “I want to prove that to you, that’s all I’ve tried to do is prove that to you!”
“Sometimes it’s easy to forget that we’re almost fourteen years apart, and other times it’s painfully clear,” he said quietly, his voice hoarse. “Where are you? I keep hearing screaming in the background…”
“A nightclub,” I answered. “I’m telling all my friends that we’ve been playing James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal.”
“That was a dated reference a decade ago, you really couldn’t call it something else?”
“Well, I’d rather fuck James Spader over Jamie Dornan, so no.”
“Your daddy issues run that deep?” he teased.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I replied breathily, trying to make it sound sexy and failing miserably as laughter bubbled up. “I missed you.”
There was another long pause and a sudden sigh. “If you’re in the city I wouldn’t mind seeing you if it’s not interfering with your friends anyway.”
“I was going to crash at her place, but she has to work tomorrow, so I could make sure she gets home safe then head to the apartment…”
“I’ll let the doorman know you’re coming.” He stopped and I heard more shuffling, this time frantic and I knew he was trying to clean up a bit. “And Lydia? I love you.”
“I’m infatuated with you,” I whispered. “I’m not sure about loving you, but I don’t want to lose you.”
“I can accept that.”
When I came out of the bathroom, Allie had her tongue down the throat of a tall, pretty, East Asian woman, it made me feel better about having spent that long talking to a guy and leaving her on her own. I let her know I was going to his place and the two of them decided to go back to her apartment together.
“Dia,” she mumbled as she pulled me in for a hug. “Don’t let your whole life revolve around a guy, okay? Call me soon, we need to spend more time together.”
We rocked back and forth, squeezing her tightly. “You make so much sense when we’ve been drinking,” I told her. “I’ll call you tomorrow, we’ll have dinner or something.”
“I’m holding you to that.”
I got them safely into a cab and checked to make sure I could see her location on my phone. I might be shitty enough to spend twenty minutes locked in the bathroom, but I wasn’t about to let her go home with a stranger without knowing I could track her if something happened.
Patrick sent an Uber for me as I tried to keep myself upright on the sidewalk. I was tired, half falling asleep by the time I got my ass on the cracked leather seat of the car. The Park Imperial at 230 West 56th Street was a massive condominium building, all glass and steel and well over 50 stories high. From the car, it loomed above the street menacingly, and once I was standing below it, I could swear it looked like it would topple right on top of me. Not a comforting feeling.
I breezed past the concierge and doorman, straight to the elevator. My heels clicked loudly around the lobby, and even more in the confined space of the foyer in front of Patrick’s apartment. He opened the door quickly after I rang, standing there in loose grey sweatpants that hung low on his hips, the faint line of hair tapering down his abdomen and disappearing into his waistband.
I pouted up at him, shifting from foot to foot while I batted my eyes. “You haven’t seen a bitch running around, have you? She got off-leash and I know she’s just dying to come home to her Master…”
He smiled faintly, his mouth tilting up at one corner and showcasing his dimples. His hair was mused; spiky on top and falling in his eyes, his facial hair was grown out and unkempt. “Why don’t you come in and I’ll see if I can help you find her.”