Chapter 4: The Ties That Bind

The door to my apartment opened so gently I didn’t even hear it. One minute I was punching a ball of pizza dough down on my counter, and the next minute Molly was giving me a bearhug from behind.

“Hi.”

“H-hi Molly! It’s nice to see you again, heh.”

She looked down over my shoulder, nodded in approval, and kissed me on the cheek. “Need a hand with anything?”

“Not at the moment ... the tomato sauce is done, I need to let the dough rise for an hour or so, and we can deal with the pizza toppings later.”

“Sounds great. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“Help yourself to a beer, I’m covered in flour. Did you get my email?”

“I did: ‘no stories tonight.’ I have to admit, I’d picked one out before I got your note, so I might try to distract you with it later. You want to give me a hint what’s on your mind?”

“Uh, no. Let me just finish this and I’ll be right there.”

I greased a glass bowl, dropped the ball of pizza dough into it, and covered it with plastic wrap. I didn’t really need to clean up the counter, but now that Molly was here I wanted the extra minute to prepare myself for what promised to be a difficult conversation. Eventually I washed my hands, grabbed my own beer from the fridge, and joined Molly in the living room.

I pulled up short when I heard the music. “Gnarls Barkley? Suddenly we’re back in undergrad.”

“Well, I found that mix you made for me junior year, and ... I guess I was feeling a bit of nostalgia.” I arched an eyebrow at her as I settled into my recliner. “This is about that last scene, right?” she asked.

“Well ... yeah.”

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure out that you might have some questions.”

“Honestly, Molly, at this point I’ve got nothing but questions.”

“I know. I haven’t been very fair to you.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed and looked out the window. “Do you remember back when I first asked you to do this, and you said you wanted to know what the ‘rules of the game’ were?”

“Of course. You said you needed to be ‘in charge’.”

“And I couldn’t really tell you what the game was or how it was going to be played. Turns out you were maybe a little too on the nose with that metaphor. I have been playing games with you, Nick, and I’ve been keeping you in the dark ... on purpose. Well, kind of.”

“On purpose? Why?”

“Because I needed something simple. I wanted a play partner that was going to let me run the show without asking a lot of questions or trying to dig into my past. I needed somebody that didn’t really know what was going on, because I ... I need to do this on my own.”

“I don’t understand. Do what on your own?”

“Fix myself. Get ‘over it’.” She actually made the air quotes with her fingers. “Dig up all the toxic garbage left over from my previous relationships, and figure out how to have fun having sex with people again. But I couldn’t pick somebody that was going to try and fix me, you know? I couldn’t deal with somebody going all ‘white knight’ on me and trying to save me from myself.”

I snorted. “So you picked me?”

“Well, I didn’t really pick you. That was an accident.”

“Oh. Because of my story.”

“Because of your story. At first I just thought it was some fun bondage smut, and I wasn’t even going to say anything. But then ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’ came on the stereo, and suddenly ‘Sarah’ turned into ‘Molly’ and ‘Ryan’ turned into ‘Nick’ and it was so clear, like you’d never even changed our names.”

“Yeah ... sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. You said it yourself: you never intended for anyone to read it. Especially not me. But everything fell into place at that point; the setup was too good. I already knew you wanted to sleep with me. I figured you already knew enough about my breakups that I wouldn’t have to tell you anything. I was sure I could stop you from asking too many questions. And once I read that story it was clear that you knew how to push all the right buttons ... and that was that.

“But Nick, I was wrong. I was really, really wrong. You weren’t the person I was looking for. You knew too much. You cared too much. And even after I figured that out, I kept trying to force you into that box. That wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve that. And I’m so sorry.”

It took a minute for that to sink in.

“So none of this has been real to you. It’s all just been, what, a game?”

“No, Nick, that’s not—”

“Just part of your master plan.” The tears were starting to well up. Sure, I knew Molly could be flighty at times, but it was hard to believe she could be this careless. “You’ve been using me this whole time.”

She winced. “That’s not how I’d prefer to say it, but it’s not completely unfair.”

I was trying not to lash out, but it hurt. On the other hand, she was trying to explain herself to me, and wasn’t that what I’d wanted all along? I wiped my eyes, frustrated and unsure of myself. “Fuck. This is all about your relationship with Brian, isn’t it?”

Molly’s eyes narrowed, and she glared at me. “First of all, I’ll thank you never to say that asshole’s name in front of me again.”

“I hope I never have reason to.”

“Second, what the hell do you know about him?”

“Only what Jane was willing to tell me.”

Her tone shifted at the mention of our mutual friend. “You ... talked to Jane? Why?”

Jane worked the door at the local BDSM club. She was a really good judge of people, and she kept an eye on everything going on at the club. I knew Molly picked up play partners there pretty regularly. I suspected that some of those partners had turned into relationships, and I knew some of those relationships had ended badly. If one of those guys had hurt Molly somehow, Jane would know about it. Which is why I called her.

“Because, Molly, you scared the crap out of me. Because you fell apart on me in the middle of a scene, and I didn’t know why. Because you begged me to do something you didn’t actually want me to do. Because you forced yourself to go down on me even though you were crying, and because I couldn’t get you to stop. Because you wouldn’t talk to me, and I didn’t have anyone else I could ask. Because I really like playing with you and I want to keep doing it. But mostly because you’re right, Molly: I care too much. I care about you. And it broke my fucking heart to see you hurting yourself like that.

“I don’t really know who that dude is, and I’m not sure I want to. Jane kind of told me what he did to you, but all she really did was confirm what I’d already figured out. But I was wrong; this isn’t really about him, is it? In fact, I’m sorry I mentioned his name, because he sounds like a real asshole and I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk about him. No, this is about you and me, Molly. If you want to keep doing this, you can’t keep holding me at arm’s length. You’ve got to let me in.”

I buried my face in my hands, trying to stop the tears. I was hurt. Angry. Confused. Worst yet, I didn’t even know how to process it all. But that’s when I felt Molly’s arm go around my shoulders, followed by the rest of her as she climbed into my chair and hugged me.

“I’m trying, dummy.”

My shoulders were hunched forward and my stomach was in knots. A moment ago, Molly admitted that she’d been freezing me out on purpose, using me to work through a bunch of her own issues. Having her wrapped around me didn’t make all of that go away, but ... fuck, she felt good. Molly’s hugs always felt good, but this was different. She felt good in a way I didn’t realize I’d been missing. I slowly tried to uncurl myself, leaning back into her, breathing out some of the muscle tension, grabbing her arms with my hands and holding her tightly.

“I have a really hard time letting people in, Nick. Always have. It’s never been my style. Most of the guys I fooled around with in college, you couldn’t even really call it ‘dating’. We’d flirt, we’d go out on a few dates, I’d take them to bed and fuck them.”

“Except me.”

“You weren’t the only one! It’s not like I fucked all of them, geez. Give me some credit,” she said with a laugh. “Most of them never called me back. The ones that did, I’d just do it again. But we were all young and stupid and nobody really knew anything about building relationships. Least of all, me.

“Every now and then one would slip through. We’d see each other a couple of weeks in a row. Eventually they’d start saying things like ‘relationship’ and ‘girlfriend’ and, to be honest, I’d usually panic. Things never got much further than that. I didn’t let them.

“It took me years to figure out that the reason I didn’t let those guys in was because I never trusted them in the first place. But before I figured that out, I’d discovered the BDSM scene, and started playing with rope and impact and stuff like that. For somebody like me, finding new play partners is even easier than picking up college guys. Negotiating a scene had this sort of built-in framework of trust that meant I didn’t really have to do any work. And most dudes that are into BDSM are used to navigating casual play without any expectations for afterwards. So I coasted on that all the way through the time you and I were living together. Until ... I met Brian.”

“Molly, you don’t have to tell me this part.”

“I know. But you asked, and I owe you an explanation for why I lost my shit on you the other week.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “You won’t be surprised to hear that Brian is a real charmer. Dude’s charisma is just off-the-charts high. He showed up at the club one night and had girls crawling all over him, and yet for some reason he picked me out of the crowd. He absolutely made me feel special.

“We did a scene that Friday, and then again at the club the next night. Jane had a bad feeling about him and tried to warn me off, but I didn’t listen to her. Next thing I know we’re getting together during the week. He blew right past all of those places where I used to panic and pull away from people, although in hindsight it should have been a huge red flag that he wasn’t interested in actually listening to me when I said ‘no’. Anyway, long story short, we went from zero to sixty over the course of a couple of weeks. The first time we played at his place, he tied me up and spanked me a bunch.”

I couldn’t help but notice the parallel, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.

“Two weeks later he bought me a chastity belt and had me wear it – and nothing else – for an entire weekend.” She shook her head. “I’d heard about orgasm control and it sounded super hot, but I’d never even tried it. Brian was more than happy to show me how it was done,” she said, spitting the words out like a mouthful of spoiled milk.

“At first he said it was just for Friday night. But Saturday morning he didn’t let me out. Fucker kept me locked up all weekend. Every time I had to pee, or take a shower, or otherwise needed him to take the belt off, he’d cuff my hands somewhere so I couldn’t touch myself. Said I needed to be ‘supervised’. Then he’d tease me for ten minutes and then put the belt back on. By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I was so horny I couldn’t even think straight.

“He told me he was finally going to let me come, then made me beg him to fuck me. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to do it, and I had a whole bunch of absolutely explosive orgasms. Good enough that when he threatened to lock me up again unless I promised to let him train me to only come with his permission, I did it in a heartbeat. That was how the rest of our relationship went.”

“That’s ... intense. And doesn’t sound particularly, how should I put this, consensual?”

“Yeah, I get that now. He figured out all of my kinks, and then used them against me. The orgasm control thing was just the tip of the iceberg, if you can believe that. Once he had that trigger installed, he’d hold it over me to get me to tell him things, or to do stuff I wasn’t comfortable with. He never raped me, or did anything he could actually get in trouble for, but he walked right up to that line.”

“What an absolute asshole. I stand by my previous comment about him.”

“He really would destroy you if you tried anything, but I’ll let that slide for now. The point of telling you all this is to explain why I fell apart on you. I probably bit off more than I could chew, and I shouldn’t have pushed myself that hard, but The Keys to the City was so fucking hot and I really wanted to do that service scene with you. It’s just...”

“Molly. That’s not the same belt, is it?”

She turned away and didn’t answer me, which was answer enough.

“So there I was on your bed, hogtied and locked up in a belt with a couple of vibrators in me. I guess I didn’t really think it all the way through; in hindsight, it makes sense that I would end up in a place where I couldn’t come without some ... external help. And given everything Brian put me through, you can probably see why finally getting off, especially like that, wasn’t exactly relaxing.”

I nodded. I’d guessed some of it, Jane had confirmed a few things, and now Molly had filled in the gaps. I didn’t really feel any better about how our scene had ended, but at least now I felt like I had all the pieces and I basically understood what had happened.

“Brian’s not the only person I’m trying to get over, although he’s definitely the worst of the bunch. The whole point of this ‘master plan’, as you called it, was that playing with you would be a safe place for me to work some of this stuff out. I guess I’m trying to, I don’t know, deprogram myself? I was hoping to do some scenes with you that had a bunch of bad triggers from my relationship with Brian, but this time with someone I actually liked.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Do you trust me?”

She thrust her head forward so she could actually see my eyes. “Do you really need to ask me that?”

“I’ve been asking it a lot over the last few months, to no one in particular. So, yeah.”

“Yes, dummy, I trust you. That’s why I’m telling you all this.” She paused, considering something. “But, see, this right here is part of the whole ‘fixing my shit’ thing I’m on right now. Now that I’ve laid this all out for you, I think I understand why you’re asking. I shouldn’t have done this without letting you know what was going on, and I can see how that hurt you. Nick, I’m really, really sorry for that. It’s, just, it’s not easy for me to talk about this stuff with anybody, okay? Jane knows some of it, but I haven’t really ever told anyone else. The last guy I tried to actually date broke up with me because I wouldn’t tell him. But you... “ She sighed. “You were supposed to be different.”

“Different? Different how?”

“Like I said before: somebody I could keep in the dark while I worked my shit out.”

“But that’s not fair to me.”

“Nope. Not even a little.”

I sighed. “So where does this leave us?”

“Well ... I think that’s kind of up to you at this point.”

“How so?”

“I really need to do this thing, Nick. I know we didn’t start out on the right foot, and that’s mostly my fault. I can try and make it up to you, or we can drop it and I can go figure this stuff out on my own somewhere else. I won’t blame you either way. But we got into this mess because I did the thing I wanted without really talking to you about it. So I think the question is, what do you want?”

It really was the six million dollar question. I took a deep breath to think about it, and for a moment I felt that same old haze of confusion start to wash over me. But I leaned into Molly’s hug again, and this time it wasn’t quite so hard to find my words.

“You know, up until we started doing this, I used to think I knew the answer to that question. You were unobtainable. I don’t mean that in the sense of putting you up on a pedestal of perfection or anything like that, it’s just that we already had this solid friendship that I really enjoyed, and anything more than that wasn’t even an option. That seemed pretty clear from the way we’d flirt, but it would only ever go so far.”

Molly had leaned back into the chair again, so I couldn’t see her react, but I heard her breath catch. She knew what part she’d played in that dynamic. But she also didn’t say anything.

“So back then if you’d asked me what I wanted, the answer was simple. I wanted what I already had: you, in my life, coming over to my place every couple of weeks for dinner and a conversation. That was it. We had our routine and our rituals, and the whole thing was fun, and comfortable, and nice. I liked it, and I’m not just saying that; I really liked what we had. But then...” I shook my head.

“But then I found your story.”

“Do you realize how terrified I was?” I’d been trying to forget what it felt like to stand there in my kitchen, paralyzed with fear as she read the name of the story back to me, but here I was reliving it out loud.

“Terrified? Of what?”

“That I was going to lose you. That you were going to walk out the door and never speak to me again. That I’d chased you away by being an absolute creeper. I mean, I sure as hell wasn’t ready to admit it at the time, but I put a bunch of stuff into that story that I never should have committed to paper.”

“Is that why you kept trying to deny it was about us?”

“Yeah. I mean, two parts embarrassment, one part denial, and several million parts fear, but yeah. But then, instead of the thing I was most afraid of happening, you go and do the exact opposite, right? You pulled me into the bedroom and asked me to tie you up. And it ... kind of blew up my internal sense of our relationship. If tying you up was suddenly on the table, what else was possible? I had this mental picture of a tidy little box with a very well-defined lid, and our relationship fit neatly inside it. And then suddenly, it exploded. Nothing made sense anymore. And I feel like I’ve been sifting through the rubble ever since.”

She let out a low whistle, like you’d make after seeing a bad car crash on the highway. “Geez, Nick. I mean, I knew you’d been holding on to some feelings for me, but I had no idea.”

“Well, I’m not sure I really did, either. I think I’ve been sitting on the feeling that I wanted something from this relationship for a long time, because I didn’t think there was anywhere to go. Up until recently I don’t think I could have even told you what it was, and I’d have been too scared to say anything about it anyway. But then you offered me a chance to get closer to you, and I fucking took it. And it’s only over the last couple of weeks that I realized what was missing.”

“ ... what’s that?”

“This,” I said, squeezing her arm again. “And this.” I turned halfway around in her arms and found her lips with mine, giving her a solid kiss but not holding it for too long. “And, most important, this.” I placed my hand over her heart and tapped it twice.

“Molly, playing with you has been a blast. I haven’t had a good play partner for a while and you’re absolutely electric. We apparently share a whole bunch of kinks, and you already know I think you’re incredibly hot. But that’s not all I want.

“I don’t want to send you home after a scene anymore, and I definitely don’t want to feel like you’re pushing me away. I want to learn how your head works ... and your heart. And I want you to get inside mine. I want to tell you about all the things that scare me and excite me. I want to hear about all this crap you’re trying to work through, and I want to help you make it better. I don’t want to do it for you – hell, I can’t do it for you – but I want to be there when it happens, if that makes any sense?

“I want to know what you love about your job. I want to call you up at 3am when I’m getting off a shift and drag you out to a bar so you can meet my friends. I want to crawl into bed and curl up behind you and fall asleep to the sound of your breathing. I want to make you breakfast some time, instead of just dinner. I want you to be part of my life, and I want to be part of yours.

“I want you, Molly. I want your trust, your heart, and your love. And I want you to have mine.”

We stared at each other for a long time. Molly’s eyes were soft and warm, and her smile was inviting. Finally, she spoke.

“I only have one question.”

“What’s that?”

“Will you teach me how to cook?”