29. Hailey
“Well, fuck me. I’m in love.” I plop myself onto the couch in Astor’s apartment.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” The scream that comes out of her either means the cops will be knocking on the door in ten minutes to do a wellness check or she’ll be evicted and looking for a new place to live next week. The ruckus hurts my damn ears. Still, despite my dilemma and her uncomfortable decibel level, I give her a smile.
“I knew it!” She jumps up and down and shakes her fists in the air. Her teeth are brilliant in the lamplit glow she has going. Her skin is effervescent.
“Did you go to the spa?”
Her smile doubles. I don’t understand how it’s possible with the wattage. She’s shining brighter than the bulbs in her lamps. She centers herself enough to pour two sangrias. But her smile doesn’t dim at all.
“I went to Crave.” She slaps a hand over her mouth the second the words are out.
I jerk upright and stare at her. She stares back at me. It’s like we don’t even know the other person sitting across from us.
“Holy shit!” I shriek, ensuring either her being kicked to the curb or meeting the local cops soon. “What is going on with us!”
“I don’t know.” She squeals.
“I don’t know either!”
Someone upstairs stomps on the ceiling. We both burst into hysterics. They stomp some more. So we laugh some more.
“Oh my God. We’re adults, right? Successful. Productive. Professional therapists.” My voice is getting higher and higher with every word. “We’re supposed to know what the fuck is going on, right?”
She shrugs, and it sends us into another fit of giggles.
Lifting her glass to her lips, Astor strains to swallow around a laugh. She points at me. “You first.”
“Oh, hell no.” My head is shaking. “Miss Crave is Holding You Back From Your Full Potential. Miss Kink is Fine for Others. It’s just not for me. Miss I Could Never.” I threaten her with my deep rose-colored liquor. “Spill or I will.”
“Miss I Don’t Invest My Heart. I invest my money.” Astor uses a nasally voice with her snark. I tip my liquid to the very rim of my glass.
Astor’s face forms an O. “Fine!”
When she sets her drink on the coffee table between us, I know this is going to be good. When she covers her face with both hands, I know this will be a game changer.
“I just went to check it out.” Her words are muffled.
“Take your hands away from your face and talk to me like a big girl.”
Her hands come down, but I’m met with a glare.
“Good girl,” I purr.
“Shut up!” she shrieks.
I pin my lips between my teeth and make an X over them with two fingers while still holding my glass.
“I was curious.” Her chin goes up defiantly. “I’m twenty-seven and don’t know what I like in the bedroom or out. I’ve played it safe, been the actual good girl, not the naughty good girl, forever. I’m vanilla when I should at least be chocolate.” She gestures to her dark skin.
“Yes, I’ve given you a hard time about Crave, but not on the principle of kink. It was because you were purposely avoiding connection.” She props her legs on the arm of the oversized chair, lounging back on it sideways. Her gaze meets mine, and I nod, conceding. She studies the ceiling for a second. “I’m not into degradation or scat play or being tied to a table and banged or even spanked. I know what I don’t like.”
“You think you know what you don’t like,” I counter.
She pulls a face that almost makes me laugh. “I know I have a lot of sexual energy coursing through me at all hours with very little outlet. I’m in the city of limitless sexual opportunity, but I haven’t taken part because I’m…I don’t know what, exactly. Scared of not fitting in. Scared of standing out.”
“You were born a standout, Astor.” The girl came into the psych department a damn near baby. She’d graduated from high school early, then wrapped up her undergrad in record time. She probably ran circles around the snot-nosed kids in preschool.
Her head lolls toward me. “I was born not fitting in.”
My heart breaks for her.
“I have always been the good girl, the smart girl, the girl with big eyes, the younger girl, the skinny girl, the darker girl.”
“The smartest, period. The prettiest, period,” I offer.
Astor blows me a kiss. “I’ve done all the things I’m supposed to do. Now I need to figure out what I want to do.”
“I get it. You’ve always been the odd one out even though you’re the furthest from odd.” I scoot toward the edge of my seat. “So how was it?”
Her mouth drops open, and her hands come back to her face.
“Astor, your carpet is at stake.”
She rearranges herself on the chair and faces me with her legs tucked under her and her hands miraculously around her glass instead of her blushing cheeks. “Remember that letter of recommendation I had you write for me a few months ago?”
“Yes.”
“It was for Crave. I didn’t want to commit to a membership when I wasn’t sure I’d like it. So I needed five letters of recommendation instead of three. I held them for a few months, working up the courage to submit my application for an exploratory guide.”
I try my best not to make a face, but I’m busting at the seams. “A sex guide?”
“Not exactly, but maybe,” she squeaks out. “It’s more of an exposé for me to see all that the club has to offer, try out what I’m interested in, and go from there thing.”
“So when you try out what you’re interested in, will it be with your guide?”
“Could be. Could not be.” She grimaces. “It’s up to me.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Is it?” She snatches her glass and downs the rest in one long pull.
“It is.” I get up and refill our short goblets. “How many visits have you had?”
“One.”
“And?” I sit back on her olive-green couch and wait.
“It was just a meet and greet for me and my three potential guides.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t drink at the meet and greet.” Her brows are pulled high and her jaw low at the audacity.
“Safe. Sane. Consensual. It’s hard to be all three when you’re trashed.” I grin. “If you ever decide to become a member, you can have two drinks a night, but even that’s subject to change depending on the seriousness of your scene.”
She gulps air. “Shit. I’m out of my depths.”
“Not for long.” I waggle my brows. “Not with your very own guide.”
“We’ll see.” She checks a message on her phone. Her blush is immediate. Astor shoves her phone between the chair cushions so fast and hard that she might never find it.
“Who was that?”
“One of my potential guides.” She huffs. “He’s testing me before the selection and questionnaire process begins.”
“How so?”
“It’s a sext, all right!” She goes purple with embarrassment. “He’s so pushy, this one.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She slams her glass down, and the table shudders. She doesn’t notice. “The whole time we were there, he looked at me like I was a human Rubik’s cube.”
Not far off.
My friend is a puzzle.
“The others were nice. One offered to show me around. He kept his hands in his pockets at all times, which I appreciated. The other one asked a few well-placed questions about me, non-kink related.”
“And the other one?” My heart is in my throat.
“He just stared.” She tosses her hands in the air. “He just reclined in this big chair, taking up the whole thing, and watched me like if he studied me long enough, he would figure me out.” Her fingers toy with the buttons on her blouse. “It was unnerving.”
“Was he hot?”
“Yes.” Her amber eyes roll, and she huffs like that’s a bad thing.
“And the others?”
“They were all beautiful. Muscular but lean. Ethnically ambiguous. My height or taller. That’s a guess for Mr. Stalker Eyes since he didn’t stand, not even to greet me, but when the others sat, he looked longer than them, meaner too.”
I can’t fight my smile.
“What?”
“Tell me what his text said.”
“No,” she whines.
“Astor.” I wiggle my brows and my glass.
“No more refills for you.” She fishes her phone out from between the cushions, opens the screen, and tosses it to me.
I barely catch it with my drink in hand. My chest makes a good backstop. I shift the phone and read. My cheeks blush, and then I hand it back. “Read it to me.”
“Hailey!” she growls.
“It’s practice, Astoroid Belt.” I Vanna White my free hand around her apartment. “If not in the safety of your own home and in the comforting care of your best friend, then you’re wasting your money on this exploratory guide.”
“You’re annoying. Like him.”
“Like who?”
“Mr. Stalker Eyes.”
I wink. “I know. I just wanted you to use his cute pet name again. Now, read!”
She makes a bubble with her mouth and pops it. Her hands shake as she lifts her phone. It’s amazing the things she faces head-on at work, and she’s about to wet her pants reading a mildly dirty text.
“When I…devour your parts, would you rather be bent over my desk, spread out on the table like my main course, or…sitting on my face like the queen you are?”
“That text didn’t say your parts.” I narrow my gaze at her.
“For Christ's sake, I’m a good girl, Hailey.”
“And good girls don’t say pussy?”
“No, they don’t.”
“Says who?”
“Everyone I went to church with for my entire life.” She stands and begins to pace. “I never once heard that word come out of any of their mouths.”
“You know they said it, though, right?” I set my glass on the table.
“No.” Astor shoves a hand into the pocket of her wide-leg trousers. “No, I don’t know that."
“They did. They touched pussy. They licked pussy. They said pussy. They fucked pussy. Even some of the women. Hell, even some of the married men. The least you can do is say it.”
Her face is awash with horror.
“Say it,” I demand.
She looks at me like she could snap my neck. “Pussy!”
“Looks like it’s my turn to be your therapist.”
My dearest friend collapses onto the couch next to me as though she’s run a mile. “I know.” Her groan is precious.
“Sexual repression brought on by religious shame.” I sigh. “I’ve seen it before, but most who experience it will never, ever seek help. And that’s tragic. Your body is a gift. As is your sexuality.”
“Fine. I’ll seek help.” Her long lashes bat in my direction. “Do you know any good therapists?”
“Bitch.” I chuckle. “Do you know which exploratory guide you have to choose?”
“Bitch!” Astor actually shoves my ass with her socked foot.
“Before that, though, you have to answer his text. And make it good.”