Swipe Right (Emerald Bay #1)

1. Motion Sickness

CHAPTER ONE

motion sickness

IMOGEN

NEW YORK CITY

TWO WEEKS BEFORE FALL SEMESTER

My ass is numb.

My back is killing me.

Even though I’m sitting still, there’s sweat pouring off my face.

I fucking hate New York in the summer, and I’ll be happy to leave it behind for the west coast. I’m almost ready to make the move across the country. I just need to pack the kitchen and find a place to live. In two weeks. No pressure. I’m great under pressure. I thrive under pressure.

My thumb is working overtime, scrolling through rentals in Emerald Bay, Washington as I sit, hunched over my phone on the orange & teal checkerboard floor. I’m surrounded by plates, old Tupperware containers, and appliances I didn’t even know we had. We’re supposed to have the kitchen packed and be ready to go in 90 minutes, but all the anxiety of trying to lock down a place to live has me rooted to the floor.

A notification pops up on my phone.

LOGAN: Did you need me to pick you up from the airport?

Dr. Logan Flynn: 36 years old, the Wunderkind of the Flynn family, and my brother. Graduated high school at 15, finished his bachelor’s at 19, and had his PhD by the time he was where I’m at now. I’ve always trailed behind him, and now we’re continuing that tradition: he’s teaching at the same school I’ll be attending as a student.

Logan had nothing to do with me getting into Emerald Bay University, and we won’t have any academic contact while I’m there. I still had to clear my application with the head of the department, I can’t TA for him, and he can’t teach any of the courses I’m in, and yet I’m still having trouble grappling with the whole thing.

Emerald Bay was actually my last resort. I wanted to stay at NYU, or get into Dartmouth, Princeton, or Harvard to differentiate myself from my brother, but I guess even stellar references from my professors and a good pitch wasn’t good enough for any of their programs. That said, there aren’t a lot of people who would be able to effectively take me on, given my topic. ‘Kink and stigma among working professionals’ is a fairly niche area of expertise, and so being accepted to EBU’s sociology program under one of the leading researchers in the field may have been a blessing in disguise.

Kink gave me a space of refuge and a place to work through my grief. My dad died four years ago and for a year afterward, I couldn’t feel much of anything. I was simply existing, moving forward on autopilot until I found it. Combined with journaling and grief counseling, it helped me find my way back to myself. I could weep openly as a submissive and have a play partner who could help me through it. I felt reborn in a way, and that change fascinated me.

I had a stumbling start to academia. I almost failed a couple of the required courses during my bachelor’s degree because I could barely juggle my responsibilities. Poor time management, handing in the wrong assignments, rushing to complete papers at the eleventh hour… the list was endless. It wasn’t until I was faced with the possibility of being the only Flynn to flunk out that I went out and got a formal diagnosis for ADHD. Since then, I’ve understood more about myself and my brain.

I sigh, returning to the task I’ve been hyper-fixated on for the past three days: finding a goddamn apartment.

The only thing all my introspection hasn’t helped is my tendency to procrastinate.

“Just fit in the box, you bitch— ow! I am not above throwing a Chanel bag out the window!”

I can hear my roommate Piper in the other room, swearing and grunting.

“Is that the fake one?” I call out to her.

She pokes her head into the room, scowling at me, her dark brows knit together. Her inky black hair is a mess of wild and frizzy waves, and it makes for a striking image.

“First of all, yes. Second, you don’t have to tell the whole neighborhood—” Her eyes dart around the kitchen and she does a double take. “Iggy! What the fuck?! You said you were packing!”

“I am!”

She’s already storming toward me, clutching the fake Chanel bag like she’s going to beat me with it, before I can even pretend to have been working.

“You’ve barely even started packing the kitchen!”

I grab a fork, keeping her at arms-length.

“Put the weapon down, Pipes.”

“You first!”

I grab the bag, tugging hard on it. Piper lets out a yelp of surprise, stumbling forward before regaining her composure.

“Let go of it or I will beat your ass!” She laughs.

I release the bag and Piper grunts, tossing it somewhere among the pile of boxes in the living room.

“Fine, you win,” I sigh. “I’m not about to get my face busted by some knock-off Chanel.”

“Alright, so outside of getting in fights, what the hell have you been doing out here for 2 hours?” Piper asks.

“I’m packing and finding an apartment! It’s called multitasking!”

“Very impressive,” she replies, resting her hands on her hips.

Piper is that knock-the-wind-out-of-you kind of gorgeous, with intense green eyes, plump lips, and dewy skin that practically makes her glow. I don’t think I’ve seen a pimple on her face in the three years since we’ve known each other.

“Remind me why you didn’t opt for the campus dorms?” Piper asks.

“Because the idea of living with a bunch of freshmen while they’re constantly blasting loud music and having sad sex isn’t exactly my idea of paradise,” I say flatly, glancing back down at my phone.

This deep into the search I’m scrolling through places that are not only outside of the town, but outside of my budget as well.

Fuck my fucking life, right?

Piper sighs, looking around at the complete disaster I’ve made of the space.

“Come on, Iggy, Jay’s going to be here soon. We wanted to arrive right when the doors open, remember? 10:00 PM sharp.”

Jay’s Piper’s boyfriend, and he’s kind of the reason why my house hunting is getting so difficult. They’re moving into a cute little one bedroom apartment together, one they annoyingly found almost immediately, which left me fending for myself. The plan was to go out to our local kink club for one last hurrah before the three of us leave New York behind for the next big chunk of our lives.

“Yeah,” I sigh. “I guess I can apartment hunt tomorrow.”

“You know, you can always stay with Jay and I?—”

“Pipes? No offense, I love you guys, but that place is for you. I don’t want to be crashing on your couch for a semester.”

“We could all sleep in the same bed like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” she suggests, pulling me to my feet and plunking a box down in front of me.

“Hard pass,” I laugh as I scroll through the listings again, growing more and more hopeless.

No apartment, no job prospects, and on top of all of that, the university is taking its sweet fucking time processing their TA applications. Apparently, there aren’t enough positions to go around and it’s competitive. So, I’ll be moving to Emerald Bay potentially homeless and broke.

“I should drop out.”

“Nope!” Piper replies. “Why are you making this such a big deal, just stay with us!”

“I need a space to work and shit, and you’re in a one-bedroom apartment. You know how crowded that’s gonna be?”

Her eyes twinkle, and I already know what she’s going to say before she says it.

“Well, maybe it’s time you call your brother.”

“Or, instead...” I grab a wine glass, holding it up in front of her. “I could break off the stem, and shove this right through my eye. Sounds about equal to me.”

“Iggy, he’s teaching at EBU, he’s gonna find out you don’t have a place. You could be living in a van down by the river and he’d still manage to drag you off to that house of his.”

I shake my head.

I haven’t told Logan about my living situation, or lack thereof. I’m just trying to avoid him jumping in to save the day like he always does.

“Hell no. I’m not living with my brother. He’s got his own life?—”

“And a big ol’ house near the woods with two extra bedrooms.”

I know she’s right, and all I would have to do is text him, but I want a space of my own, somewhere where I don’t have to compromise and don’t have to worry about anyone else’s rules. Besides, it’s embarrassing to have to rent a room from my big brother. I’m 26 years old. I should have my shit together.

Just as I’m crafting the perfect comeback, I hear the lock click and the sound of Jay whistling as he walks through the door. Every time I see them together, I get reminded just how fucking lonely I am. I say I don’t need anyone, but you’d think there’d be one decent fucking guy in New York who could change my mind about this whole commitment thing. Like Richard Gere does for Julia Roberts in Runaway Bride.

It would help if he was just as hot, too.

“Iggyyyy!” Jay calls out, dressed in a pair of leather pants and a black shirt, the sleeves rolled up to expose his tattooed forearms. “What’s cookin’ good lookin’?”

His brown eyes sparkle with mischief, his black hair pushed back and out of his chiseled face. He’s got a long nose, a square jaw, and broad shoulders that look like they’re practically bursting out of his dress shirt.

“I guess not much with the kitchen like this,” he chuckles.

“Well, we were waiting for you ,” I fire back. “Someone’s gotta grab things off the top shelves.”

“Aren’t you 5’10’?” He asks with a grin.

Piper rolls her eyes, patting him on the chest.

“Help her toss this shit into boxes. Then, we can get ready and head out.”

She scurries off to the bathroom while Jay stares me down, folding his massive arms over his chest.

“You’re still coming out tonight, right? There’s a bondage workshop. You love those, no way you’re skipping out.”

“I don’t know,” I sigh as we get to work. “I still have to find a place.”

“You don’t have time to go out for like three hours?”

“Oh, please, it’s more like six,” I laugh. “I don’t have much time left to find something before we move.”

I’m restless, the kind of restless that makes me want to get things done. I’m fixated on finding a place to live, and it feels like I can’t move forward until that feat is accomplished. Probably helps that I literally can’t, either.

“You can stay with?—”

“She said she hates us and doesn’t want to!” Piper shouts from the bathroom.

“That’s not true, and close the door when you pee, please! ” I yell back.

“How long have you been looking today?” Jay asks.

“All day, dude. In between packing my bedroom and doing the readings for my first class.”

“Well, there are still gonna be the same amount of zero apartments for the rest of the night, so take a break. It’s not like you’re watching the stock market.”

“How can you be so cavalier about this?”

“I’m not being cavalier ,” he snickers. “I’m saying you need to give that big brain a rest. Besides, can’t you just live with your brother?”

“Ha!” Piper cackles from the bathroom.

“Can you take her batteries out?” I ask him.

“I tried once,” Jay replies. “Got a book to the face. Her life’s mission is to drive us both crazy.”

He grabs a handful of cutlery and tosses it in without a care in the world. Piper’s going to flip when she sees what a shitty job we did, but at this point I just want it all to be over.

“We’re saying goodbye to New York, Iggy! Normally, I’d let you make your own decisions, but you’ve been torturing yourself all week. We gotta go out with a bang— literally.”

I hear the sink run from the other room as Jay gives that ‘don’t bullshit me’ look he’s so good at. I can’t keep eating, sleeping, and breathing apartment listings.

“Fine, I’ll go,” I mutter.

“Yes! Hey Pipes, I got her!”

“What was that?!” Piper asks as she walks back into the room, pulling a leather skirt up past her hips.

“I’m coming with you guys.”

“Yay!” She rushes for Jay and high fives him. “Teamwork!”

I walk into my fully packed bedroom, ripping open a box of fetish gear to pull out a little pastel pink latex dress and a pair of matching heels. I watch myself in the mirror as I tug my long lavender hair into a ponytail, smearing some glitter around my brown eyes before swiping on some bubblegum-pink gloss. The entire time, what Piper said about my brother and his giant empty house rattles around my head.

I need a place to live, and as much as I want my independence, I’m so stressed about finding an apartment that I can’t even enjoy the excitement of moving to a brand new place.

I’ve lived in New York my whole life, but Logan moved to Emerald Bay after his PhD and never left, content to settle down and start fresh in a quiet little town.

Now, against my better judgment, I’m about to interrupt all of that.

I draft up a text, my thumb hovering over the send button. I feel so fucking childish, but it’s my fault for waiting until the last minute to start apartment hunting.

“Uber’s here!” Piper calls.

“Coming!”

Fuck it. I hit send, toss the phone in my bag, and rush out the door.

IMOGEN: Hey, Logan. This is kind of awkward, but I need a place to live in Emerald Bay. Can I stay with you until I’m back on my feet?