Chapter 3: The Version That Is Mine

I told her everything. I started where the week had gone sideways in a new direction: the speech I had packed and then failed to deliver.

“I was going to talk to him,” I said. “Monday night, after Mike’s, I decided the training was going too far. Whether it was intentional or not, the looking for his face, the permission to cum, had affected me, and I was unable to finish in Mike’s bed. That was the second time it had happened. I was planning to have the conversation when we were both still dressed, because once clothes start coming off, I seem to lose all self-control around that man. Then, as you will recall, I got back from Mike’s and found the roses, the bracelet, and the invitation waiting for me here.

I went to bed Monday planning to discuss it with him on Tuesday when I went to his house. Tuesday, I postponed it again because I was worried about how he would react and whether the conversation would end things; then I wanted to enjoy that night with him at his house, just the two of us. So I put it off until the morning.

Wednesday morning he had to go to work, and so I put it off again. That night I told myself I had gotten a piece of myself back because I came with Mike without asking him first, which is a hell of a thesis to build on a lie I told a good man under a ceiling I hate.”

Amber did not interrupt. She watched me the way she watches a story she already suspects the ending of.

“Thursday morning he told me to come over after work,” I said. “It did not sound like a request. I said no, that I had already promised I would go out for drinks with my coworker. I was proud of telling him no. I tried to treat it like I had instituted a ground rule, like if I could keep one night that belonged to me, I might still be a person who can say no.”

“And then,” Amber said.

“And then he spent the day taking my orgasms apart on a timer.” I laughed once, ugly and small. “Bathroom before the shift. Park on my lunch break with a turkey sandwich dying in the passenger seat. Bathroom again in the afternoon. Each time when I was ready, he would tell me to stop—hands off. Go back to work and walk the floor like that. Good sluts listen. I have heard versions of that before, Amber.