by Rachel Ember
Oliver sighed and began again, more gently. “How about this? Whatever it is about him, he must be worth the risk or you wouldn’t be taking it.”
They had more or less had out loud the argument that had been raging just in Emile’s mind for weeks, but hearing it out loud made everything feel more clear.
“Yes,” Emile agreed, “he is.”
The next day that Jay was scheduled to walk Godot, Emile smiled at his surprise when he answered the door before Jay could slide Blake’s key into the lock.
“You’re here,” Jay said with a happy grin, pulling Emile against him for an immediate hug. He smelled good—Emile couldn’t help turning his face against his shoulder and breathing deeply. Just detergent, sweat, and cheap bodywash, and yet Emile wished he could bottle it.
Emile reluctantly stepped backward out of his arms so that they could close the door. The house was private; not even the mailman came up the driveway, but if they were going to do this, they had to be careful.
“I did some of my grading last night so that I’d have the afternoon free,” Emile admitted nervously. “I thought, if you had time, I could make dinner for you.”
Unsurprisingly, given that he was a teenager who played a college sport, Jay instantly lit up at the promise of food. “Yeah. Thank you. I’ve got time.”
Godot’s cold nose wedged its way between them, and Jay laughed as he knelt down to pet him, Godot’s pink tongue lolling in a rare display of enthusiasm for anyone other than Emile.
“I think I might be a little jealous,” Emile mused, looking down at them as Jay crooned to Godot and rubbed his thumbs firmly into the ruff of white hair around the dog’s neck.
“Huh?” Jay looked up, blinking guilelessly. “What did you say?’
Emile laughed and shook his head. “Nothing. Do you like Indian food?”
“Sure, I like everything.” He stood up in a way that appeared eager, like he could have bounced. “Can I help?” Then, he quickly added, “I don’t really know anything about cooking. But I could probably chop something. Or stir. Maybe.”
When Emile had gotten the impulse to surprise Jay by cooking for him, he’d also catalogued all of the ways that it could go wrong. Like, Jay would just stare at him blankly when Emile brought up the subject of dinner, as if chatting with Emile while he cooked was the dullest night he could imagine having. But Emile had gone through with it anyway because he wanted to spend time with Jay. They had things they needed to talk about, after all. And it wasn’t like he could just ask him out for coffee. Seeing Jay’s seemingly genuine excitement filled him with relief.
“I already did most of the chopping,” Emile said. “And it’s just chicken korma. There’s not a lot to it. Although, if you really want to stir, I won’t stop you.”
While Jay chuckled, Emile led him through the house toward the kitchen. He’d chopped the vegetables during the restless hours after he’d gotten home from Walland and found that he was too nervous to sit still. He’d also cleaned the floors until they shone, though he could inevitably spot a few stray white hairs from Godot here and there. The happily paid price of having a dog.
“I love your house,” Jay said, craning his head to look at the glossy exposed beams in the vaulted ceiling of the living room, and then he exclaimed softly when they reached the kitchen and he saw the breakfast nook with its floor-to-ceiling wood paneling and built-in shelves. When Jay had spent the night, they’d been rushing to shower and get out the door; there hadn’t been time for a tour.
“Thank you,” Emile said, pleased that Jay didn’t seem to be feigning his admiration. “I did quite a bit of work on it when I first bought it. Mostly just pulling out all of the weird updates someone tried to make in the eighties.” He leaned his hip against the countertop near where he’d been working on the food when Jay had shown up, and from there he watched Jay prowl around the room, pausing to look out the sliding glass doors at the sloping and somewhat overgrown backyard. “The outside is more of a work in progress,” Emile added. “I’m not much of a gardener.”
“Me either,” Jay said, “but it looks really cool how it is. You don’t feel like you’re in the middle of town.”
“That’s what I loved the most about it when I saw it, too,” Emile agreed. He turned back toward the food while Jay wandered back over and sat at a stool at the island. “What’s your parents’ house like?”
“It’s kind of a newer house. I think it was maybe brand new when I was born. It’s fine, but it doesn’t have… I don’t know, character, I guess?”
Emile understood. He doubted that whatever house Jay had grown up in, the child of two white lawyers, could be comparable to the little apartments he’d shared with his mother, but they’d always been newer, too, and faceless, like most subsidized housing. “Older houses have their quirks, but I’ve always preferred them.”
“How old is this one?”
“It was built in 1959.” He paused. Everything was about ready to go in the pan, and he hadn’t planned on taking the time to make naan, but Jay had looked so hopeful about the possibility of helping. “Hey, how do you feel about stirring and flipping?”
Jay was off the stool in an instant, his bright expression making it obvious that Emile had made the right call. “I can do that.”
Two hours of cooking, cleaning up, eating, and doing dishes later, Jay dropped into one of the armchairs in the living room with a happy sigh. “That was so good.”
Emile paused in the middle of the room and smiled at him. “Well, you were a very good sous chef. Top marks.”
Jay laughed and shook his head. “I never had Indian food before,” he said.
“What? When I asked, you said you liked it.”
“I said I like everything, which is true. Or in theory, anyway.” Jay’s head lolled against the back of the chair as he looked at Emile. The lights weren’t on in the room; it was illuminated only by the reddish evening light through the windows, and the faint, warm glow of the over-the-counter lights in the kitchen that came on automatically at night. “Hey,” Jay said softly. “Come here.” He patted his thigh.
Emile walked past the chair that matched the one Jay sat in and sank onto his knees at Jay’s feet. He looked up, tentative and half-ashamed, as always, by the implications of the position, and by the inherent challenges of this role he so craved, but Jay’s smile and the gentle hand that lifted to his hair eased that tension, and so he leaned into Jay, resting his right arm over Jay’s knees in order to pillow his head there.
From where he knelt, he could see their shadows—just a darker part of the darkening room—and the sky through the west-facing window, which was a blur of deepening blues and grays. Minutes passed, and when the sky was fully dark, the window became a mirror reflecting the room and, with it, Jay and Emile.
For a moment, the picture of himself curled at Jay’s feet startled Emile, and he tensed against Jay’s calves.
“What?” Jay murmured, his hand stilling in Emile’s hair.
“Nothing,” Emile said, but he felt abruptly self-conscious and couldn’t shake the sensation off. “I should let Godot out.” Ordinarily, he’d walk him, but he could hardly invite Jay along for that, and he didn’t want to give him a reason to go just yet. He stood, smoothing his hands over his thighs and smiling when Jay stood, too. His smile turned into an avid stare when Jay stretched, pulling his T-shirt up a few inches and showing off the ridged muscles in his stomach.
The three of them went out into the backyard through the glass doors in the kitchen. Emile was barefoot, and Jay paused to pull off his socks so that they could walk together out into the damp grass. The night was overcast and the sky seemed close and dense. The rustle of the overgrown grass and brush as Godot trotted along the fence line was undercut by the more distant hush of a car’s tires on the street, as though to remind them that the world wasn’t quite so far away as they were pretending.
“Emile?” Jay asked.
Emile turned to him. “Hmm?”
/>
Jay looked uncharacteristically solemn as he slid his fingers through Emile’s, which gave Emile a pang of unease. “Do you think I could get your phone number?”
Emile’s soft laugh still sounded sharp in the quiet dark. He squeezed Jay’s hand. “Yes. Thank God you asked. That will make… this...” he struggled for a word, and went with one that would earn him a point in Sydney’s game if he found it in a student’s paper, “...thing, so much easier.”
Jay’s smile grew a little, and then he bit his lip. “‘Thing’?” he echoed, a hopeful note in his voice. “The thing between us, you mean? The thing we’re going to keep doing?”
Emile felt his smile fade some, gripped by the gravity of the moment. Not that there was a decision left to be made; he’d made it, and even if he’d had his moments of guilt, he’d had none of doubt. “Yes. That thing.”
Thirteen
Jay
October/November
There were probably more convenient times to fall in love than in the middle of his first semester of college—a college where he was also playing a varsity sport—as his classes spun into full gear and midterms loomed. But Jay wasn’t complaining.
His life over the next six weeks had been a blur of practice and studying, stolen hours for sleep, sunny walks in the cooling fall air with the dogs, and… Emile.
Somehow, it had all worked. His game was improving markedly with the collegiate-level coaching and the synergy of a skilled and driven team. They’d only lost one match. Their single contest at home was coming up, and Jay was torn between exasperation at his parents’ excitement about seeing it, and him, and genuine excitement over the idea of seeing them.
His classes had their challenges, especially given the constraints on his study time, but for the most part, he felt like he had them under control. The ways in which they challenged him felt good, like he was using a new muscle group that hadn’t necessarily been activated in the small-town public schools he’d attended growing up.
And with Emile, Jay felt like the best version of himself. On the days that Jay walked dogs, he arrived at his last stop to find Godot already walked and Emile waiting for him. Usually, Jay stayed until morning.
He spent the rest of his time looking forward to those rare hours.
When Jay fucked Emile, he felt deified, and when Emile sat at his feet, he felt at peace. What had seemed like an impossible balancing act between all of the demands on Jay’s time and attention somehow hung together. Maybe it was inevitable that it would all come tumbling down, but it hadn’t happened yet.
Tonight, Jay sat in a carrel in the library that he’d come to think of as more of a home than his dorm. His relationship with Eric had yet to warm, though he’d hardly admitted that when his mom had nervously inquired during their weekly phone calls, and so, during the day, when Jay needed a place to study—or sometimes a place to nap—he could be found here more often than in his room.
Bria had figured it out, apparently, because she showed up there and folded her arms over the partition.
“There you are.”
Jay thought about telling her to whisper, but this part of the floor was always sparsely occupied, which was part of the reason Jay liked it. He didn’t see anyone close enough to complain about her speaking at an ordinary volume.
“You found me.” He took his hands off of his laptop keyboard and stretched, grimacing when his back and shoulder popped. “Not that I was hiding from you,” he added in semi-apology, thinking of the several unanswered texts he’d gotten from her that day and the day before. “I’ve just been busy.”
“Hmm,” she said with obvious skepticism, entering the carrel and crowding Jay away from the desktop, which she hopped up onto before kicking off her shoes.
Jay wrinkled his nose at the sight of her bare toes, but instead of objecting, he just shoved back his rolling chair to give her space and scooted his computer out of her way. “And how are you, Bria?” he asked ruefully, cocking an eyebrow at her as he linked his hands behind his head and tipped the chair back.
“I’m great,” she said breezily. “Got an A on my lit midterm, thanks to you.” Her lashes swept down as she gave him a slow wink. “I think I came up with the perfect way to thank you. What are you doing tonight?”
Jay frowned. It was already—he glanced at his phone’s lock screen—eight o’clock. “I was going to study,” he said, stating the obvious. “And I have a couple of plays to memorize.”
“You’re not doing that anymore. You’re going to come with me.” She slipped her feet back into her shoes and stood up from the library table. “I’ll come get you in an hour. Wear something—” she looked him up and down and frowned before finishing, “black.”
Happy to have avoided Eric somehow, Jay waited for Bria in the only piece of black clothing he had, which happened to be an undershirt, along with his usual jeans and Nikes. When she pulled up in her little car, which he hated, she sighed at him through the rolled-down window.
“Is that really the best you can do?”
“Yes,” Jay admitted, climbing into the passenger seat. She wrinkled her nose, but grudgingly put the car in gear and drove out of the dorm parking lot once he was seated. After a few seconds of fidgeting, Jay glared at her. “So?”
“So, what?” she asked blithely. She looked different than usual. She wore black, too—though it was more black than Jay had managed to scrounge together. That wasn’t a surprise; Bria always wore black. But tonight she didn’t seem as casually dressed as he was used to seeing her, even though her outfit was technically just fitted black jeans and a black shirt. The shirt had a high collar, and her shoulders looked broader and squarer—he felt pretty sure the shirt had shoulder pads, which he’d teased his mom for wearing. And while Jay couldn’t remember ever seeing Bria in anything but simple, slide-on shoes or with bare feet, tonight she was wearing heeled black boots that laced to her knees. The leather creaked and the bright silver eyelets winked as she worked the clutch.
“So, where are we going?” Jay asked, as patiently as he could manage.
Bria gave him a sidelong smile. “Remember that talk we had, at that horrible party at the start of semester?”
Jay shrugged. “Yeah. What about it?” Considering how scathing she’d been about that party, he couldn’t imagine that she was taking him to another one.
“Well, since then, I’ve been trying to think about how I can help you. Dominant to Dominant.”
She’d spoken casually, but Jay still found his hands tightening against his knees as a puff of incredulous laughter escaped him. “Is that right?” He’d suspected, of course, but he hadn’t brought himself to ask. He looked at her boots again with commingled fascination and horror. “So, you’re… and you think I’m—?”
“Yes, and yes,” Bria said simply. She gave him a reproving look out of the corner of her eye and merged onto the four-lane that wove through town and connected with the major highway to the north. “Are you going to tell me I’m wrong?”
Any uncertainty he’d had about this subject had faded away some time during the first night he’d spent with Emile. “No.”
“Good. I don’t think I would have had the patience for it if you did.” Bria’s voice was humorless, as usual, but there was a trace of a smile on her lips—which Jay had only learned to recognize after several years of seeing her almost every day.
“So, you’re taking me to… a dungeon?” Jay asked cautiously.
Bria laughed softly, almost giving more of a snort, and shook her head. “You are such an innocent.” Her teeth quickly raked her full lower lip and she glanced at him, sobering. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
“You, second-guessing yourself?” Jay asked, faux-shocked.
“It’s kind of like taking a kid who just finished his first summer of swimming lessons to the Olympics.”
“So, you’re going to try to drown me?”
“Immerse you,” she corrected. “I just hope it inspires you inste
ad of destroying your confidence.”
Jay scoffed, dropping his head back against the seat’s headrest. “I’m not that easy to break.” His heart thumped in anticipation, and he felt almost giddy. “So, it’s really a dungeon?”
“Don’t say dungeon, for fuck’s sake,” Bria muttered. “Also, no. There isn’t a real club I’d be caught dead in around here that doesn’t have crazy membership requirements. But sometimes a few people in the scene will get together for something specific. Like, tonight, I helped a friend set up a public-use scene.”
“‘Public use’? Is that…?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” Bria confirmed with a sharp grin. “Well, that’s the fantasy, anyway. In reality, the show is invite-only, and I’ll also be keeping an eye on things to make sure he stays safe.”
Jay wanted to play it cool, but was sure his whole expression was screaming ‘innocent’ just like Bria had accused. He cleared his throat and ducked his head toward his own window, as though he’d noticed something interesting about the next lane of highway traffic. “That sounds… I don’t know, kind of wild.”
She shrugged. “It’s not exactly my thing, but it will probably be pretty hot. If you get cold feet, you can always wait in the car.”
“I’ll be fine.” A dozen questions were spinning in his head. “So, this friend. You’re, like, his Domme?”
She shrugged, draping her right arm over the steering wheel so that she was effectively steering with just her wrist. “Not really. We’ve played together before, but not for about a year. I’m not participating tonight. I’m really just there for security. Well, supervision. You’ll be security.”
Jay’s brows rose. “So, this isn’t really about my immersive education in… BDSM.” Saying the acronym out loud after reading it and thinking it so many times in the past several weeks felt strange. “You just needed a bouncer for your sex party.”