The Dom Project (23 page)

Just get home.

Chapter Thirteen

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No
Subject
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I know nobody can read this right now, but I need to decompress somehow and it’s either this or I go full-on chick flick and cry into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. I figure journaling (since I can’t rightly call this “blogging” anymore) at least won’t give me indigestion.

I emailed John—I might as well call him that now—and told him to tear up the contract. Again. I don’t see the point of these things anymore. It’s all a fiction. Who’s really being protected? And it’s more than the contract, it’s this blog too. All the care and effort I put into disguising who I really was...I suppose the reality is that anonymity on the internet is just a thing we make ourselves believe in. It’s never 100 percent. Maybe the contract is the same way. A construct we force ourselves to believe in because we need to.

I know more about myself as a submissive. So I guess the project is a success, even though we didn’t carry it through exactly as planned. Still, I feel like an actress who just finished a play, but when I got up to take a bow, the whole damn set fell apart behind me, and the audience started laughing. Or the movie reel melted. I’ll stop now, but believe me, I could go on with the depressing metaphors all night.

I still love John. There, I can say it. But everything that seemed so easy before, well, it’s not anymore. And I feel so confused and ashamed and afraid of all the hard work it’s going to take on our relationship. I’ve worked so hard all my life, and I guess I’ve been rewarded for it, so I shouldn’t be complaining, but...I’m tired. I’m so tired.

She was desperate for some serious alone time before going back to work, and it just wasn’t happening. Sunday morning had already been fully scheduled with volunteer mentoring and errands and laundry...and then, in the evening, another goddamn dinner.

The last place Robin wanted to be right now was at a Saylor faculty dinner party. She stared dully at the table of canapés and held her wineglass in front of her as if she could ward away conversation-seekers.

Even Julio was being social, sipping a martini and talking up a 1960s Black Power media collection with the two other archivists that worked for Robin. The Chair of African-American Studies soon drifted over, and the graduate students followed her like moons orbiting a planet.

Usually Robin was perfectly in tune with these social patterns. She’d represent Special Collections, working the crowd and trying to reduce some of the monks-in-the-archive mystique for newcomers who didn’t really understand what they did. Her favorite moments happened when she could connect people with other people, becoming the bridge that introduced new knowledge into the world. Tonight, though, everything seemed murky and opaque, the earnest discussions all preening and ego-puffery at their core. She hated everyone and she wanted to go home and she hated herself for feeling this way. It wasn’t
her
.

I
wish John were here.

She wasn’t ready to face him yet. She’d overreacted. It wasn’t John’s fault. And as much as she loathed Jim, in the grand scheme of things, he was already living in his own hell. The waste of his life even made her a little sad. She remembered John talking about how he’d taught his five-year-old brother to ride a bike one summer, thought about her own kid sister and wondered if they’d ever live in the same country again.

Nothing lasts.

Laini, her yoga partner who worked in Exhibitions, walked over to the table. Robin forced a smile on to her face. “Looks like I’ll be meeting with African-American Studies soon,” Laini said. “It’s great stuff. I know you’ve been working on that for a while. Got anything new and exciting in the pipeline?”

“Yes.” The Mareau collection ignited a spark in her gloom, at least. “I can’t really talk about it yet, but it’s going to be in photography, and it’s going to be big. There’ll be a lot of work for you in it. The fun kind of work.”

“Fantastic! Oh, speaking of big photography exhibitions, I heard a rumor that UCLA is buying a recovered trove of Irina Mareau photographs. My regular book dealer told me about it this morning. Can you believe that? They said all existing images of her were destroyed in the 1950s, but apparently she’s just been hiding them this whole time! Some nephew of hers decided to sell them. They’re supposed to go for more than six figures, if you can believe it! Of course you can believe it. Irina-
fucking
-Mareau!”

“Oh,” Robin said. And then again, “
Oh
.”

“Robin? What’s wrong?”

Robin opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, shook her head. “I’ve got a headache,” she finally said, her voice appropriately shaky. “A sinus thing. I think it’s allergies. I’m...going to have to leave early.” But then anger flared inside her. She was tired of excuses too, and lying. “And I’m upset about the news. That collection was
mine
. Saylor’s. We were just about to make the bid. Julio got the lead, I tracked it down.”

Laini’s mouth turned into a shocked O.

Robin shrugged and put on a small, bitter smile. “Someone must have gone to UCLA. I have a feeling it could have been the appraiser.”

“But that’s totally unethical! If it gets out, no one would ever hire him again. Oh God, I’m sorry. This is awful. I would have loved to—Shit, shit, shit. God, and I can’t believe you found out like this. Me and my big mouth. Do you want me to tell Julio now?”

“Could you? I really do need to go.”

“Of course.” Laini gave her a brief but fierce hug goodbye.

Once Robin extricated herself from the party—at least she didn’t have to run this time, a small mercy—she went to her car, locked the doors and laid her head against the steering wheel. God, what she wouldn’t give to call John right now, tell him everything, let him comfort her.

But she couldn’t. Not now, not after last night, not after that email she’d sent. Maybe never again. She couldn’t take him for granted. She couldn’t take
anything
for granted.

* * *

John rubbed his aching hand and sighed.
Punching a wall.
Real mature.
Luckily, Andy’s face wasn’t judgmental, although he’d definitely noticed the split knuckles when John had first walked in.

“Sorry for dropping in on you without notice.” He took Andy’s offering of a bag of frozen peas. “Thanks.”

“You’d think I would have better first aid stuff around, but I guess not.” Andy shrugged and went to take a seat on the ratty couch across from the armchair where John was sitting.

John cast a look around Andy’s cramped, cluttered living room, full of dog-eared old textbooks and teetering stacks of assignments to be graded. He’d never really been inside Andy’s place before. It was kind of sad, to be honest. But then, it wasn’t like teachers made much of a salary, so the guy probably did what he could. “Well, I guess we usually do the aftercare at my place.”

“You’re not the only guy I need aftercare from, you know.” Andy smiled wanly.

“Of course not. Sorry. I know.” John wondered how much he should read into that. Was Andy hurt by John’s call to say they couldn’t do any more scenes for the foreseeable future? And was it just his pride that was hurt, or his heart? Maybe John thought too highly of himself. Andy had always seemed perfectly well-adjusted, outside of his fetishes. Why assume, now, that he was some sad pining turtledove, living alone with his pop quizzes and an empty fridge?

“So are you gonna tell me what’s got you punching hard objects?”

“Robin. Well, it started with Jim, my brother. Fuck, it’s complicated. But he hacked my email—sometimes he’s barely literate, but he happened to know the answers to my security questions, and he found out a lot of intimate stuff about Robin. And then he threw it in her face in front of my whole family. I don’t blame her in the slightest for freaking out—”

“I hope not,” Andy said.

“But God, if she’d have stayed in her seat and acted like she didn’t know what he was talking about, they would have all assumed he was on one of his drug-fueled paranoid-schizo rants. Which he
was
, it just happened to be accurate this time. But I guess she panicked because she ran out of the restaurant like it was on fire, and by the time I could calm my family down enough to follow her, she was gone. Then I get home and there’s this fucking
email
...”

“Do you want a drink? I think I need a drink for this.” Andy got up abruptly and strode to the wall of his main living space that was walled with cupboards. It had the fridge and stove and sink, but John wasn’t sure he’d go so far as to call it a kitchen.

“Yeah. If you’ve got a beer...and am I being an asshole, talking to you about this?”

When Andy opened his fridge, John saw that it was well stocked with water and vegetables and neat containers of leftovers. He pulled out two beers then closed it again, leaning back against the shut door. “That depends on if we’re friends or not.”

“Of course we are.” And they were, John realized. Even if they’d never fuck again, John would still want to call him up for drinks or to catch a game. He’d
miss
Andy. What if Robin’s idea of being exclusive meant entirely cutting off people like Andy? People he had a sexual history with? People who were important to him? John was so out of touch with the way traditional relationships were supposed to work...maybe Robin was the same way. Maybe she wasn’t. Goddamn, he didn’t have a clue.

“That’s your saving grace, you know.” Andy tossed John a cold bottle and twisted off the cap of his own. “Amazingly, I can trust you when you say something like that. I’ll be charitable. Confide away.” He made a beckoning motion with his left hand as he sat.

“She says to tear up our contract. Again. I was happy to do it the first time, of course, when it meant getting laid, but—it’s getting to be a pattern. Is this going to happen every time she has the slightest doubt about us or herself or her motivations or her needs, or whatever the fuck is her problem? She’s such a fixer, you’d think she’d want to talk it out, come up with a plan, solve whatever problem she’s got together. Instead it’s ‘tear up the contract’ like there’s nothing worth solving or saving.”

“Is there?” Andy looked at John over the butt of his bottle as he took a swig. “If she’s got cold feet or if she’s having second thoughts about being a part of this lifestyle and all it entails—I mean, I remember when I first had to balance being who I am and being a teacher, knowing that if it ever got out I’d probably get fired and blacklisted or worse—why not just let her go?”

“I can’t let her go, dammit!” John yelled, and would have punched his knee if not for the peas wrapped around his fist reminding him that he’d already punched something today. He sighed instead, mumbling into his lap, “She’s my best friend. And I kind of love her.”

Andy didn’t look remotely pitying. “So what, now that you’ve fucked, it’s that or nothing? Did she say she didn’t want to be friends anymore, or did she say she didn’t want to be your sub? Those are two different things. Believe it or not, you
can
go back, sort of. In theory. You’ll always have the memory and maybe it won’t be exactly as things were, but if you really want to be friends, you can. My ex and I get along okay, but then we don’t have a choice, since we’ve got a kid together and all. If we can be co-parents, you can be friends.”

“I didn’t know you had a kid.” John felt vaguely guilty, but then, maybe that was a boundary Andy had needed to keep. “Belated congratulations. I’ve got some nephews, but they don’t live in town. Oh, and my parents might be getting divorced. But I’m not going to tie you up and make you give me therapy.”

“Worst. Scene. Ever,” Andy joked, and they both laughed. Andy looked a lot like Robin in that moment. His body language was different, but something about the elegant way he held himself called to John.
That train left the station
, he reminded himself, not sure if he meant Robin or Andy or both.

“We had some good ones.”

“Yeah.” Andy didn’t sound sad, or angry, but the word came out on an exhale. Wistful, maybe.

“I’m going to take your advice. It’s going to be up to her—I mean, it always is, I’m just not going to press. But I’m going to make sure she knows I’m still her friend.”

“Good boy,” Andy said, in a pitch-perfect role reversal, and then he winked.

* * *

When Robin got home from a humiliating day at work dealing with the Mareau fallout, she checked her accounts like always. She wanted to cut herself off and avoid all contact, real or electronic.

What she
needed
was another matter. She couldn’t afford to give in, to curl up in a corner wrapped in a blanket of her failures.

Her personal emails were bearable, although the sympathy ones made her wince. Her KinkLife.com account, on the other hand, was an exercise in abject misery: the same manipulative, abusive, badly spelled shit as ever from all manner of Goreans, and fedora-wearing doms who spoke about themselves in the third person, and creeps soliciting her to be in their—totally classy, honest!—pornographic movies about naughty nuns.

And the worst part was, she didn’t even have a place where she could complain about it, not anymore. Nothing. No one.

Get your shit together
,
Robin.

Apparently the universe agreed, because a new message appeared on her next refresh: from a fellow sub, this time, who went by the handle Queen_Fefertitty and had a full, clear face shot for her userpic.

No shame. No fear. Robin had to admire that: her own picture was of a woman from the ankles-down, bound and wearing fetish “en pointe” heels. She opened the message.