Vanilla_Little Black Book Club

by Remi Richland

  “Well, I’m talking to you, and if you can’t speak with respect in your voice to the members of this establishment, employees or patrons, then you can leave. He’s not your pet.” I was not scare of this little weiner, not one bit. And he could take his scrawny, going bald, plaid button down tucked into jeans wearing ass out of this bar. This was a safe space, and he was wrecking it.

  He narrowed his beady eyes and regarded me with contempt, sarcasm pouring from his mouth. “Oh little girl, he was my pet, once. And you can stand as tall as you want to behind that bar but I can guarantee he’s not yours either. I happen to know that Ash here just loves cock, and frankly, you lack the equipment to satisfy him.”

  It wasn’t so much his words that shocked me, although he was going for that too. No, the worst part was seeing Ash just stand there, cheeks flaming red against the pallor of his skin, allowing this man to talk down to him like that. This was not the Ash I knew. He was stronger than this. He was the bar manager, and he had a circle around his neck that said he did not have to take this shit from any damned body. What the hell was going on? Who was this guy to him? I was so pissed off I forgot about Wesley at the bar, forgot that I was an employee, hell I forgot all about the protocol of working at the Double C altogether. All I knew was this man didn’t belong here. He was hurting my friend and he didn’t belong here.

  Before I could even think twice about it my hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of his ugly blue button down shirt that looked two sizes too big anyway and yanked him halfway over the bar. He was too surprised I think, being manhandled by a girl, to put up much of a fight. “Listen you little shit,” I said angrily, little drops of spit falling from my mouth and landing on his cheek. “You might have been able to boss him around once, and trust me, it’s boggling my mind to figure out how he ever let that happen, but you aren’t alpha to me, got it? Keep lipping off and I’ll give you something to be mad about.” I was not a violent person, but I was just so, so protective of Ash. So very angry that no one was coming to his rescue. Where the fuck was Bear? Or Maggie for that matter? Isn’t this where the dungeon master is supposed to step in? I didn’t really have the authority to make him leave, but I was incensed that no one had stepped in yet, what with the security protocols we had in place for people who created a scene. Outside of an actual scene, that is. I couldn’t help myself, and maybe it was pure vanity that had me spitting the next words out before I let go of his shirt and sent him stumbling backwards off his stool.

  “Last I heard liking dick wasn’t a kink, asshole. If that’s what you think then maybe you’re in the wrong place. Actually, now that I think about it, you are in the wrong place. You need to leave. Now.” From above his head I saw the crowd part and a burly figure start walking to the bar. Finally, there was Papa Bear. “I can even get you an escort if you can’t find your way.”

  “That’s enough, Amelia.”

  Now there was a man who had a presence. Stepping up to the bar from the opposite direction as Bear came Damien, his posture ramrod straight and his strides filled with purpose. He also looked pissed. The crowd parted for him as if it were made of water, any pretense of merriment was gone, everyone wanting to see how the boss man would handle the disturbance. I crossed my arms and eyed the wimpy newcomer as he got up from the floor and straightened his clothes. He was going to get it now.

  “Apologize.” It took me a moment. A few agonizing seconds of confusion before that bone deep betrayal to set in. Damien was looking at me. He was talking—to me. “Amelia. We have rules here, put into place for the protection of our employees as well as our patrons. You put your hands on a guest. Apologize.”

  The hell you say?

  “You have got to be kidding me, Damien.” I gawked at him with my mouth open. No way was this my normally harried, always polite boss who treated me kindly and fairly. No way was it the same man who gazed at me with eyes as hard as stone. This wasn’t real, it wasn’t really happening. The loud cracking noise that no one else seemed to hear was surely my heart breaking into tiny little pieces.

  “I assure you I am not joking in the slightest.”

  “You don’t even know what happened, and your first instinct is to lash out at me? You didn’t even hear the things he said to Ash. And speaking of,” I turned to Ash, who was still looking at the ground, hair partially obscuring his face, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. “Why did you let this dick talk to you like that? I may not understand all of the dynamics of what goes on between a Dom and a sub, but there isn’t a dimension in the galaxy where I did a damn thing wrong here and you won’t convince me otherwise.” Hot tears pricked my eyelids and mentally fought to keep them from spilling. My two favorite people were pissed at me, and not a single member of my work family was standing with me or even attempting to back me up. I had never felt so exposed, so isolated and alone. This was my place, and I was systematically being pushed out of it. Made an object of ridicule.

  “You seem to be laboring under the impression that you are in charge here,” Damien continued, jaw set firm, voice low and dangerous. “I own everything in your eyesight, and as such I am the Master of this place. It is my duty to see to the protection of everyone under the roof, including Ash. I would have handled the matter, however, the only person I see getting violent is you. So I say again—apologize, or leave.”

  The very air between us crackled with the electricity of our mutual anger. How could he? I trusted him. Nobody spoke, nobody breathed. Even the crowd of people in the club started shifting their feet, anxious for the tension to snap and whatever weird scenario we were in to be over. No one’s evening could continue the way we were going. Essentially, Damien and I were holding up the entire show.

  “Please, V, just apologize.” Ash whispered next to me, as if he was afraid Damien would hear him. “Please just say you are sorry so this will all go away.” He darted a glance in my direction, then looked over at Damien. The look in his eyes was so fierce that Ash couldn’t hold his gaze and he quickly looked down at the floor. That little display of Dominance did it for me. My patience snapped in half with an almost audible crack.

  “You guys are fucking crazy, you know that? I expected better from you Ash, I really did, I thought you were my friend. But you?” I met Damien’s gaze head on, he didn’t even blink, just regarded me cooly, waiting for the apology that would never come out of my mouth. “You were something different. I looked up to you—I trusted you.” I probably imagined it, but at the word trust a shadow seemed to cross over his face. It was probably just me though, and I didn’t stick around to hear any more garbage come spewing from his mouth anyway. I didn’t even bother to remove my apron, just walked around the bar and straight out the front door, through the vestibule and out into the street, Bear close behind me, probably making sure I actually left. The crowd stepped aside as I made my way to the door, almost like they were repelled away by my presence.

  The girl that doesn’t belong. The oddball. The vanilla. How could I understand their lifestyle? The answer was I didn’t. Not even a little bit. Not at all. A large hand fell gently on my shoulder, and a sad voice boomed above me. “I’m sorry honey, I’m sorry you don’t understand what happened in there. I’m sorry about all of it.”

  “You better not touch me,” I told Bear, shaking off his arm and stepping away from the comfort he was offering. I wasn’t having any of it. “You wouldn’t want to catch whatever is wrong with me. You know, me being a freak and all.”

  “Oh, V.”

  “My name is Amelia,” I said as I walked down the street, not willing to stand around and wait for the next city bus to come by considering I didn’t drive. “Say hi to Jordan for me.” And I walked, at ten o clock at night, six blocks down and two streets over to get to the next closest bus stop. The one in front of the biker bar, next to the themed in and out wedding chapel, thinking about how, in a span of ten minutes I lost my job, friends who felt like family, and simultaneously little pieces of my heart. Nobody questio
ned the angry girl on the corner, with tears streaming down her face. Lots of people cried in Las Vegas.

  3

  My heart was broken and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even that I had worked there for so long, but I had just felt a closeness with those people. A sense of belonging even though I should have stuck out like a sore thumb. I’d just been sitting at home for the past five days, combing the internet for job postings and drinking wine until I fell asleep. I was curled up tight in the corner of my beige sofa when a flash on the coffee table caught my eye. The black apron that I had been wearing the night I had been unceremoniously dismissed from the club lay exactly where I had dropped it, splayed out on the table, strings hanging down over the side and trailing underneath. The corner of a small black card poked out of a sad little otherwise empty pocket. The card that Wesley had given me. I wondered what had happened to him that night. Probably left wondering why the hell he had ever bothered to visit in the first place.

  The Little Black Book Club? I took the card from the apron pocket and turned it over in my hands. Fantasy, huh? I wonder if he can make it so that the events of that evening didn’t happen, that someone I respected and looked up to didn’t let me down horribly, and I didn’t lose my job and friends in the process. That was looking like a pretty fine fantasy to me. Oh well, it was probably an escort service anyway. I hadn’t had sex in a long time, but I was a far cry from going pro to get laid again. Nope. I preferred lusting after emotionally unavailable and overbearingly controlling men. Preferably at the same time. Because I’m an idiot and I like punishment apparently. I let the card drop back down onto the apron at the same time my cell phone rang.

  It was the club phone number. What they hell would they be calling me for? Because I’d taken the apron home with me? Well, I’d left behind my dignity and bits of my soul so who got the bigger trade? I didn’t answer it and no message was left.

  Twenty minutes later my phone rang again, this time from Ash’s number. Tears pricked my eyes just looking at his name on my screen and I hit the little red phone icon on the glass to ignore the call. It was painful to do and I hid my phone under the cushions of my sofa so I wouldn’t be tempted to answer the next time it rang. I lasted about an hour before I had to pull my phone back again. I was too depressed to leave my apartment and I needed my phone to order food delivery. I had just pulled the cell phone free from under the maroon stuffed throw pillow when the text notification dinged in my hand.

  My mind raged that it had better not be the club again, while my heart pleaded for it. It was Ash.

  Please.

  That was all, just that one word. No follow up or even an explanation for what the please was for. I debated stuffing the phone in the cushions again, but it had been five days of agony, trying to rationalize what had happened at the club and simultaneously dying a little that no had even tried to contact me to clear it up. They had all cut me off. Completely severed.

  Please what?

  Please answer your phone.

  My heart beat a little faster in my chest. He was begging. Ash, my sweet friendly Ash, was begging. I thought about what he might look like, on the other side of the phone, waiting for me to respond. His dirty blond hair half pulled up at the back of his head, probably chewing his lip as he waited for my reply. I should answer him. Put him out of his misery.

  I didn’t message back.

  I did, however, answer on the first ring when he called again, ten minutes later.

  “What did you need to say, that you couldn’t bring yourself to say a week ago?” It was mean. I knew but I couldn’t help it.

  “I’m so sorry, Amelia.”

  “What? I don’t get a V, anymore? I’m just Amelia now?”

  “Bear said you don’t want to be called Vanilla anymore,” he whispered on the other end, and I wondered for a moment if he didn’t want anyone to know he was talking to me.

  “Bear doesn’t know what I want. None of you do, because I was forcefully removed from the club a week ago like I had tried to shoot up the place. Any particular reason you are calling me after I was made into a scapegoat, Ash? Does Damien even know you are talking to me right now? I would think based on the way he treated me he would have everyone thinking I was the antichrist by now. And how about that other guy? Y’all give him the VIP treatment? Has he got a drink on the menu named after him by now?” I was coming in hot but I couldn’t help it. I had a weeks’ worth of anger and loneliness and angst built up. Someone needed to take that load from my shoulders and that someone was Ash. He sighed deeply on the other end of the phone.

  “I deserved that. But there are things you don’t know, important things. Damien had to do what he did, you don’t understand.”

  “You got that right Ash, I don’t understand, so why don’t you tell me. He hurt me. You both did. So bad.” And dammit if I didn’t choke on that last part, my steadfast decision to be strong and give Ash a piece of my mind completely crumbling underneath the monumental strain of admitting that I had been emotionally wounded. “I was trying to protect you.”

  “I know. I wish it could have gone a different way. I wish I could just tell you everything, or make you understand how things are with us, but I can’t. Things are different for me than they are with other people. I’m different.”

  “Because you’re a sub? Who cares? There are lots of subs in the world. That doesn’t mean you should take a knee to every person with a dominant trait who wants to boss you around.”

  “No, I know,” Ash agreed, and it occurred to me that this was the first time we were talking about his preferences. I wish it wasn’t over the phone and due to such a shitty situation. “But it was different with him. I was different with him.”

  “Why?” I asked, genuinely concerned. “Why did you feel that you had to stand there and take his abuse? Why did you let him call you pet and say those other derogatory things about you?”

  “Because they’re true okay?” Ash’s voice rose for a moment and then, as if he noticed that he had shouted, his voice came back down to a whisper. “He was my Dom. Not now, obviously, but before. I really was his pet. Although he embellished a couple of things.”

  Okay, that was a new development. But I knew damn well that collar around his neck did not come from the man at the bar. I don’t know how I knew, but I did.

  “He’s not your Dom anymore though, Ash,” I said gently. “So why were you so put on the spot? Did something bad happen with him?”

  “Yeah. It did. I’m fine now, but I hadn’t expected to see him ever again. I never wanted to, to be honest, and when he showed up at the bar I just…locked up. I had an anxiety attack and couldn’t function. I was lucky I didn’t pass out.”

  My poor, sweet Ash. The thought of anyone mistreating him made my insides boil with rage. I wish I would have punched that weaselly asshole when I had the chance.

  “I’m sorry you had an experience like that, Ash.”

  “I didn’t call to tell you that, Amelia, but thank you for listening anyway.”

  “What did you call for then?” It wasn’t to offer me my job back that much was for certain. “Does Damien know you are talking to me right now? He doesn’t, does he? After the way we left things I wouldn’t be surprised if he put a gag order out on everyone.” I snorted at my own joke. Gag order. Ha.

  “He does not know I am talking to you right now, and yes, he specifically forbade me from calling you. But it’s not what you think, I swear. You know, he has it hard too. Damien has a lot of responsibility, and he always has to act a certain way. It isn’t my position to say but I feel like if I don’t make the effort we will lose you forever and I don’t want that. Damien doesn’t want that.”

  “How do you know he doesn’t want that?” Hope sparked in my chest and I quickly squashed it. I shouldn’t care one way or the other what Damien wanted after how he threw me out of the club.

  “I know everything about Damien, Amelia. He’s my Dom,” Ash murmured quietly into the phone and my h
eart plummeted into my shoes. The final nail in the coffin of my crush on Damien Stockton, hammered home. Not only was he unattainable on a personal level, not only had he coldly refused me in front of a room full of our contemporaries, but he was also Ash’s Dom. Completely out of my reach. I don’t know why I was surprised, but I still had to breathe deeply in through my nose and out through my mouth a few times to regain my composure before I spoke again.

  “Well I guess that explains his superiority complex,” I said thickly into the receiver as I dashed at the corners of my eyes for reasons I didn’t want to stop and think about.

  “No, it explains nothing, Amelia. I’m not doing this right. I’m saying things all wrong and this is probably the exact reason Damien didn’t want me saying anything in the first place. Shit. Just do me a favor okay? When he calls you, and he will, Amelia. He will be calling you. When he does, just answer okay? Please? For me? He just wants you to understand. We both do. It’s important.”

  “I can’t promise that, Ash,” I whispered into the phone, all pretense of me acting like I wasn’t affected gone with the wind. “But I’ll try, okay? My heart hurts right now.”

  “If that’s all I can have then I’ll take it. I miss you though, we all do. We want you to come home —it’s just…complicated.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, then hung up the phone. For some reason I didn’t want to say goodbye to Ash. I didn’t want to use the word. After five days of exile I had been desperate for his voice, no matter what I tried to tell myself. Goodbye is a word you use when you are ending a conversation. It was too final for me and I couldn’t bring myself to say it.