Chapter 8 #3
I was so hungry I’d forgotten. “I’m fine,” I said, on reflex, but he’d already gone to the fridge and pulled out the bread, the cheese, the butter.
He moved with that deliberate efficiency, not fast but never wasted: knife in one hand, bread in the other, working the blade with the casual violence of someone who’d handled sharp things forever.
I sat at the table, hands in my lap, and watched him make the sandwich. He put it on a plate, cut it into triangles, and set it in front of me.
“Eat,” he said.
He didn’t sit until I took a bite. When I did, the taste was better than I expected: rich, sharp, comforting.
I ate two triangles in a row before I remembered he was there.
When I looked up, he was sitting across from me, hands folded on the table, watching with a kind of intensity that was almost embarrassing.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Are you going to stare the whole time?”
“Maybe.” He didn’t blink.
I ate another triangle. It was easier to do things when he told me to. This fact was unsettling, but also a relief. Like I could turn off a part of my brain and just follow instructions. When the sandwich was gone, he pushed a glass of water toward me and watched me drink half of it.
Only then did he open the folder.
Inside was an arsenal. Not of weapons, but of paper: a stack of typed pages, a thin black notebook, a set of index cards, a printed reading list, even a small pink gel pen.
Everything was arranged with clinical neatness, nothing out of place, no creased corners.
I could smell the new paper and the faint edge of the printer toner.
He turned the folder toward me, letting me see everything.
“What is all this?” I asked, trying not to betray how much I wanted to grab it all and run.
“It’s the contract kit,” he said, as if this was obvious. “If you want to do this, we do it right.”
He pointed to the top document. “This is the template. Terms, boundaries, rights, responsibilities. I made it myself.”
He slid the black notebook out. “This is for you. You write anything you need—questions, reminders, whatever. I don’t read it unless you say I can.”
He tapped the index cards. “Safeword sheet. You fill it out, you keep a copy. I memorize it. You can change it whenever you want.”
The reading list was next. “Stuff to look at, if you want more detail. I annotated which parts I think are bullshit, which parts are useful.”
At the bottom, a soft-covered journal. Pale blue, almost like a child’s diary. I ran my finger over the cover. It was soft, velvety, not the kind of thing I would have picked for myself.
I looked up at him, trying to calibrate. “Did you . . . have this ready already?”
He shook his head. “Marco helped me put it together. We’ve been talking. He’s good at logistics. I’m better at follow-through.”
“Marco?” I said.
“My cousin’s husband. He’s a good man. It’s how they live.
” He said it so matter-of-fact that it knocked the wind out of me.
The idea that his whole family knew about this, that they helped him build the architecture of care for someone like me, was—devastating.
I felt something in my chest crack, clean through, and for a moment I almost lost it.
But I didn’t. I breathed in. I let the paper smell anchor me.
“Walk me through it,” I said. My voice was steady.
He nodded. He started from the top.
“The contract is a guide, not a prison. You can change anything you want, anytime. We do it in pencil first, ink after.”
He walked through the sections: boundaries (hard and soft), daily check-ins (text, in person, or phone), rules (must eat at least twice a day, must get minimum six hours sleep, must notify if leaving the apartment, no self-harm without reporting).
I felt myself relax with each rule, as if someone had come in and straightened the picture frames of my mind.
He went through the rights—my rights. The right to say no. The right to privacy. The right to safe words and to stop anything at any time. The right to ask for time alone.
Responsibilities, his and mine. I was to do my best. He was to do his best. If either of us failed, we would talk about it. No blame.
He asked, “What do you want to add?”
I took the pencil and wrote in the margin: “Must be honest at all times. No games.” I thought for a second, then wrote another: “No sleep deprivation as punishment. I like sleep.”
He smiled. Not at me, at the page.
He took the pencil and added one of his own: “You can text me anytime, even at three in the morning.”
I added: “You can wake me if you need to.” I liked the symmetry.
We went back and forth for half an hour.
I edited. He agreed. I crossed out the sleep rule and rewrote it to allow for “occasional late night, if approved in advance.” He added a clause about exercise, but only if I wanted it.
We worked together, quietly, the way people do when they’re building something that matters.
Finally, he pushed the pages toward me.
“If you want, you can sign now. Go on to the second part. Or we can wait.”
I looked at the pencil. I looked at my name, printed on the top. I looked at the rules, the rights, the boundaries. All of it was clear, defined, not negotiable except by my own hand.
I signed.
He signed next, quick and sharp, like he’d been waiting his whole life to do it.
When it was done, he folded the contract, set it in the folder, and closed it.
He looked at me for a long time.
“Thank you for trusting me,” he said.
He returned to the folder, opened the next set of pages. This time, the font was bigger. Each section had a heading: DISCIPLINE, REWARDS, PHYSICALITY, SEX, RESTRAINTS, HARD LIMITS. The words felt heavier than the rest. I could feel the weight of them just reading down the line.
He watched my face as I read. He watched everything.
I said, “Is this the part where you tell me I’ll be punished if I color outside the lines?”
He smiled, just enough. “If you want to be, yes. But only if it helps you. Otherwise, we find other ways.”
I took the pencil. I tapped the first line. “Discipline. What does that look like for you?”
He shrugged. “Depends on the infraction. Sometimes it’s just a talk. Sometimes it’s loss of privileges—no sweets, no tv, no phone. Sometimes it’s something more physical. If you need it.”
“Spanking?”
He nodded.
“Anything else?”
He considered. “Corner time. Early bedtime. Extra chores. Writing lines. If you wanted to go further, we would talk about it.”
I thought about the blog posts, about the girls who craved order more than pain. I said, “I don’t like being hit. Not by surprise. Not hard.”
He nodded. “That goes in the contract. Only open-hand, only when you ask. Or you can strike it altogether.”