Nervous

by SM Johnson

  I ate my ice cream, thinking about it. Not that I was an expert on Avery, but I had spent eight work days in his office. I thought about Stephanie with her tone of exasperated humor, and how Evan responded to Avery’s request for a button with a very direct and firm ‘No’. Neither of them seemed to worry about how Avery would feel. And, as far as I could tell, they weren’t much worried about being fired, either. They took care of themselves, socially, despite the force that was Avery Phoenix.

  Huh. It did seem to work for him.

  I still wasn’t sure it would work for me. I wasn’t like Avery. I wasn’t confident. I was nervous.

  And yet, here I was, sitting at the kitchen table in the dragon’s lair, with the dragon, eating ice cream.

  When our dishes were empty, Avery took mine, ruffled my hair, and said, “Go to bed, Jules. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about everything.”

  I crawled into my bed in my new room, in a new building, in this crazy noisy city. I closed my eyes and prepared myself to lie awake for the next couple of hours, but when I anxiously jolted awake to check the clock by my bed, it was already morning. I’d gone to sleep without any anxious, spinning thoughts.

  chapter nine

  three things you can hear, two things you can smell

  I’d only been awake for a few minutes before Avery tapped on my door. “Jules? Time to get up, sleepy head.” Hearing his voice first thing in the morning was like waking up to my favorite song.

  I grinned at the ceiling. It was almost like being at my parents’ house again. But of course, much better, because the person I could hear moving around was Avery.

  I’d washed my clothes the night before checking out of the hotel, so I picked through the few things in the dresser, and turned on the shower. The rush of spray hit the surround and made a noise like an obnoxious snare drum. I stepped into the shower, a little worried that Avery would walk in on me. Then tried to decide if worry was the appropriate emotion, since I didn’t think I’d mind if he did.

  The stoplight colors bled into my mind. Green for ‘I love this’, yellow for ‘something’s wrong’, red for ‘stop everything’. I wondered if I could find a way to use this new knowledge with the idea that I could let people be responsible for their own discomfort. It would be nice if everyone knew these simple rules, and you could just whisper a color when things didn’t seem to be going right. But I could use that code with Avery, at least.

  I remembered Avery’s expression when the ice cream was in his mouth. Eyes closed, his whole face showing the pleasure he felt in that moment.

  The laugh that involved his whole body, not just his face and voice.

  I washed myself as I daydreamed, and between my hands and my thoughts ended up with an impressive hard-on.

  If Avery walked in on me now, I would die of embarrassment. This made me finish washing in a hurry, get out, dry off, and get dressed.

  I was a little sorry for my baggy jeans, after how good I’d looked last night, but there wasn’t much I could do about it without going shopping. Maybe I’d find time for that over the weekend.

  I grabbed my laptop case and found Avery in the kitchen, sipping from a cup of what smelled like very strong coffee, and reading that damn story I’d given him. Seeing him sitting at the table reminded me of ice cream. I could feel the blush starting already.

  “You really liked this one, hmm?” he said, as a greeting.

  This wasn’t going to help my hard-on.

  “Um. Yes. The writing is pristine, the tension, the build-up… just perfect.”

  He was sitting and I was standing, and he tilted his head and grinned up at me. There was something in his smile that I couldn’t quite decipher. “I agree. Even the complicated descriptions are crystal clear.”

  “Well, yeah, except you can’t really get a grasp on whether the creature is a ghost, or a demon, or an alien.”

  “Oh, it’s definitely a demon.”

  He was so sure. I took a step closer to him and poked his upper arm. “You’re well-versed in demon porn, then?”

  “Perhaps I am,” he said, still smiling. He glanced at his watch. “Are you ready? Or do you want coffee?”

  I didn’t want to spend another minute talking about demon porn while remembering the way he ate ice cream. “I’m ready.”

  “We’re a bit early – I could show you how to use the subway to get to the office.”

  I shuddered. I wasn’t prepared for that much anxiety before eight o’clock in the morning. “Could we do that over the weekend? I mean, well, n-never m-m-mind. You p-probably have other th-things to do.”

  “I do adore that stutter. If only everyone had such a clear tell. What are you nervous about now? The subway?”

  I wasn’t, not really. The Twin Cities has a light rail system, and as far as I could tell, public transportation usually made enough sense that it shouldn’t cause me too much trouble.

  “Um. Assuming you don’t have plans for the weekend.”

  “Jules. I don’t have plans for the weekend. I would enjoy showing you around the city.”

  His words caused a sunburst in my chest for some reason. Like a bright, glowing feeling of happiness. Which was followed by a sudden sense of dread.

  I had a crush on Avery Phoenix.

  “You still have make-up around your eyes. And maybe a little product would make your new haircut behave.”

  He took me by the hand like I was a little kid and led me to his room, and then into his bathroom. The bathroom smelled more like Avery than the bedroom did, and Avery smelled like Avery. It was like standing outside in the dark while giant snowflakes fell around me, every sound hushed by the scent of clean, crisp air.

  Instead of handing me the washcloth, he wet a corner of it and swiped it gently around each of my eyes. His breath smelled like coffee, and I liked it. Then he positioned me in front of him at the vanity counter, picked up a tube of some sort of hair product, and squirted a line of it across one palm. I watched us both in the mirror as he rubbed his hands together, and then smoothed them through my bangs, kind of fluffing them, kind of pushing them into place. He was quick, and it looked good. He dropped a kiss on my cheek, and said, “Okay, now you’re ready.”

  The slush pile was good to me that morning. I found two submissions that deserved a second look. The beauty of this job was the guidelines required the author to submit a cover letter, a synopsis of the whole book, and the full manuscript. I typically scrolled right past the cover letter and the synopsis and started reading at the beginning. If the first pages showed promise, I’d scroll back up to the synopsis to see if there was a reasonable plot. If so, I’d read two or three more chapters, then either email it to my tablet, or, if something about it was exceptional, send it to the appropriate editor.

  I imagined authors agonized over the cover letter that pretty much no one ever read, or at least no one read until an editor decided to contact the writer. I didn’t know much about what happened after that.

  One of the submissions was well-written and felt like it was going to turn into an explicit gay romance. I saved that one to my hard drive and sent it to my tablet. The other was some kind of legal thriller, and I was completely engaged with the main character within the first two pages. The skill of some authors to suck a reader in right from the start blew me away. I suspected this was something they got help with from an editor sometimes, but some writers must have a natural talent for that sort of thing. I closed it, and forwarded the file to Mark, the editor who usually liked books featuring lawyers and private eyes.

  I went back to the gay romance and picked up where I’d left off. It was Friday, and it had been a long, stressful week, so the decision to just read this one through came easy. I didn’t want to write a rejection letter until I’d read the entire book, even though I already suspected I’d be writing a rejection letter. Phoenix & Phoenix didn’t accept erotica. Still, I might convince an editor to take a chance on it, if it didn’t get too explicit. Hell, I might
convince Avery to take a chance on something like that, if the writing was exceptional.

  The story captured all of my attention. I had no idea how long I’d been reading when Avery barked my name. “Jules!”

  I looked up at him, startled, not even aware enough to yank my finger from my mouth.

  “Find something good?”

  I realized I was chewing one of the fingernails that had regenerated, by way of Avery and his neckties, and whipped my hand away.

  “Um. Yeah.” My voice sounded sheepish. “See? This is what happens. I get sucked into someone’s world and everything else falls away.”

  I ducked my head, let my hair fall over my eyes. I couldn’t believe I’d relaxed enough to allow this to happen.

  Avery got up and took my coffee cup, which was empty anyway. “You know what happens next time.”

  “Last time you hardly even waited for next time. You punished me anyway.”

  “Are you sassing me, Jules? Do you want me to spank you right now?”

  I shivered. Did I? Maybe I did. Or maybe I just wanted to test the rule.

  “If you want a spanking, all you need to do is ask.”

  That tone in his voice. It was shivering delicious, electric. I didn’t know what I wanted. I’d been perfectly content reading. How did anyone manage to navigate a relationship with another person? Was he saying he wanted to spank me, because he liked doing it, or that he was willing to spank me because he thought I liked getting spanked? Did I like it? I remembered how it made me hard. Which had to mean I liked it, right?”

  “Jules?”

  The sass went out of me. “I don’t know, sir. Maybe not.”

  Avery laughed. “So. Are we in the green?”

  Relief flowed over me. “Yes. Yes, sir, definitely green.”

  A loud, firm knock on the door startled us both.

  Avery got up to open it, and I went back to reading.

  Stephanie followed Avery to his desk, and sat in the visitor chair. “I thought I should remind you that I’m only here Monday and Tuesday next week, then heading to my sister’s on Wednesday.”

  “Fuck,” Avery said. “That’s here already?”

  “Why yes, Avery. My sister’s been in pain for three months, and she’s finally having surgery. You’ve known about this for a while.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like an asshole. It just snuck up on me. It’ll be fine.”

  “Of course it will be fine. I just want to go over your calendar, so you know what to expect, and remind you that you’ll be drafting any necessary contracts yourself. I might be able to help with some of them over email, but no guarantees.”

  At that point, Stephanie dragged her chair around Avery’s desk so she could sit beside him, and I put in my earbuds, because none of this seemed to concern me. I had no trouble falling right back into this book, which was starting to get naughty.

  A tug at my ear some time later startled me out of the story. I must have jumped visibly, because Avery was laughing. I wasn’t laughing. He caught me chewing a fingernail and he was staring at the noticeable bulge in my baggy jeans. Shit.

  “Ah, you have found something good.”

  I squirmed, embarrassed.

  “Something really good?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I muttered. “But nothing you’d want to shop around.”

  He still looked delighted. His grin had the devil in it. He said, “Well. Keep finding those kinds of stories, and we might have to open a publishing house. E-books are both popular and cheap to produce. And of course, the internet was invented for porn.

  “But first, let’s go find something to eat. We can’t have you starved and shaky for your punishment.”

  As if I was going to be able to eat anything, after that threat.

  “Stephanie’s going to be gone?” I asked, as he escorted me out of the office.

  “Yes, for three weeks or so. Her sister is having a hip replaced. The second one this year, the poor dear. Steph will stay with her until the worst of her recovery is over.”

  “Wow, that’s dedicated.”

  Avery shrugged. “I think Stephanie is dedicated, in many spheres of her life. Including dedicated to making sure I don’t make a fool of myself while she’s gone. She peppered my calendar with digital sticky notes.” He sighed. “And she’s sending you to the submissions pool until she gets back.”

  “What?”

  No. No, she couldn’t do that, could she? I liked being in Avery’s office. I didn’t want to be in a cubicle in a row of cubicles where people might try to make conversation as they walked by. I liked to work alone. And I liked to work with Avery. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate at all in the middle of a whole department of people. Strangers. “Avery, please.”

  “It can’t be helped. She knows I can’t afford distraction in the office when I don’t have her to handle the complicated stuff. It won’t be so bad. I’ll introduce you to Susan, and she’ll take you under her wing. You know Susan.”

  No, I really didn’t. I mean, I could make the assumption that it was the same Susan who praised me for identifying all thirty publication-worthy submissions in my test feed, and we’d exchanged a slew of very nice emails, but we didn’t know each other.

  I pouted.

  “Jules?” Avery questioned. “Come on, you can do this.”

  I shook my head. “Yellow, yellow, yellow.”

  He jostled my shoulder. “I should have expected that. I will give you some very fun rules. Rules like you will not chew on yourself. And I’ll take you to lunch. Every day.”

  “Can’t I just work from your apartment?”

  He seemed to consider this. “You could. But I don’t want you that far away. It will be stressful for me too, you know, having Stephanie gone. Stop worrying about this, at least until Wednesday morning. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, but how, exactly, was I supposed to do that? He was going to throw me into the pit. How would I survive it without falling apart?

  chapter ten

  one thing you can taste

  There was a hook above my head on the bathroom wall, a hook for a very tall person to hang a towel on. Or at least that’s what I thought when Avery pointed it out. But then Avery produced wide leather cuffs from inside the free-standing linen cabinet and put them on my wrists.

  “Still green?” he asked.

  I nodded, staring at my arms. My wrists looked tiny wrapped in the cuffs.

  Where was my need to breathe, to identify five things? Where was my anxiety? Not here. It didn’t seem to exist in this alternate universe where Avery clipped my wrists together with some kind of mountain-climbing safety device, raised my hands above my head, and turned me to face the wall. In the bathroom of his office. In a building of offices. A place of business.

  He slipped the mountain-climbing device, a D-shaped clip that had a name – but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was called – over that hook.

  My toes could touch the floor, but just barely.

  “Green?” he asked again.

  I thought about it. This would get uncomfortable, probably soon, but at the moment it just felt unreal. “Yes, sir, green,” I whispered. Avery stepped in very close to me, lifted the back of my t-shirt, and flipped it over my head, with my arms still through the sleeves. I shivered at the sensation of his eyes roaming over my back.

  He kissed me then, invaded my mouth with his tongue, and he tasted like the mints we’d both sucked on after lunch.

  Then he tugged at my pants until they fell down to my ankles. My boxers, too. “I’m going to leave the door open just enough so I can see you from my desk. Don’t panic.”

  I wasn’t even close to panicking.

  I stared at the wall until my vision softened. My nerves crawled with the certainty that he was staring at me. The bumps of my spine. My silly, twiggy legs. My buttocks that clenched when I thought about how I’d expected him to spank me. How I’d wanted him to spank me. Clench.r />
  I held my weight up by my toes, and it wasn’t very long before my calves got tight and tired.

  I heard a knock, heard Avery get up, and heard Evan’s voice. “Where’s the new reader?”

  “Hanging out in the bathroom.” I could hear the smirk in Avery’s voice.

  Oh my God. I was strung up almost naked in the bathroom, with the door open. I knew Avery could see me because he told me he could, and somehow I knew he wouldn’t leave me like this if it wasn’t true.

  I imagined myself sitting in the visitor’s chair, and didn’t think Evan could see me.

  An ache started in my shoulders.

  I could hear the murmur of their conversation, but I couldn’t pay attention.

  The muscles of my calves were quivering.

  Their voices droned on and on.

  The cuff was cutting into the side of my right wrist. I twisted to the side a little, trying to find a more comfortable position, but there was no more comfortable position.

  I don’t want you suffering unless I’m making you suffer on purpose.

  Was he making me suffer on purpose? If that was the case, how was I supposed to know?

  I was starting to cry, when I remembered what he said last night. He had to know that I could tell him to stop.

  “Avery,” I said, pushing his name past the lump in my throat. “Avery. Red.”

  I heard Evan say, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, Avery.”

  It was only an instant before Avery was there, pushing the door closed, lifting the carabiner from the hook. He set me gently onto the rug, and my legs crumpled. He folded himself down to the floor beside me. The cuffs were off and he rubbed my arms for a few seconds before fixing my t-shirt. He was murmuring something like, “There’s my boy. There’s my good boy.”

  He left me for a couple of seconds, but only to crack the door open and tell Evan to come back in an hour.

  I didn’t hear Evan laugh, but when I heard him say, “You and your goddamn sex games,” I imagined he was laughing. But by then Avery was on the floor again, pulling me into his arms and holding me tightly against his chest. I discovered that when Avery held me like this, I didn’t much care what Evan might think.