“Aw. I could have helped.”
“You, er, did.”
“Oh! I’m so glad. What’d you go for?”
“Er… another one of your… narrations,” she mumbled, picking at the corner of the pizza box. “It was the one with a roleplay of a competitive… er…”
“Oh, hatefuck with your college rival turns into a romantic fuck?”
“That’s, er, I do think that’s more or less how you described it.”
I nodded sagely. “That’s one of my more popular ones.”
“But aside from a… brief interlude,” she said, “work was good. I suppose I felt… invigorated today. I had some good applications, finished the draft of the freelance project I have on, and I… well, I reached out to HR to file a report about my old boss.”
“Oh,” I said, turning to her. “Oh, that’s huge. Are you feeling okay?”
She looked down, and she nodded, barely there. “Yes. Feeling just fine, actually. I don’t know why, but it just felt… easy, after all the…”
I gave her a minute to finish before I said, “After you started reclaiming agency over sex instead of it being something that happens to you.”
She cocked her head. “I guess… when you put it like that.”
“Were they gross about it?”
“Quite professional, actually. Made no particular comments one way or the other, just said that they would protect my anonymity and start an investigation.”
“Sounds a little weaselly, but it’s good they weren’t trying to tell you off at the gate.”
“Mm.” She sighed. “I appreciate you… giving me a space to talk about things… to work things out. This hasn’t been easy, but you’ve been…” Her voice trailed off to something small as she said, “You’ve been the best thing in all of this. The best thing to happen in quite some time. So… thank you.”
Oh, fuck me, I was definitely going to start falling for her if she went and said things like that. “Of course,” I said softly. “I’m here for you. But I’m just here to support you, you know? Only one actually doing the things is you. So give yourself credit too.”
“Thanks,” she laughed sweetly, and her gaze flicked to my lips before she looked away, standing up. “I owe you for dinner, too.”
“You’ve bought me dinner like a million times.”
She leaned against the counter, giving me a look that made everything else irrelevant. “I said, I owe you for dinner,” she said, voice low. “Anything… you want from me to pay you back?”
Ohh. I got it.
Chapter 14
Victoria
Bridget said she got a lot of… inspiration from me, but it seemed like she wasn’t the only one. I carried myself more confidently, more relaxedly, like a weight had been taken off, and I was able to show up more fully to discussions with other people in the field, potential employers and contacts who I interviewed or just chatted with while trying to scope out the current state of the industry.
Well, usually I was showing up more fully. When Bridget sent me off to a work-from-home session with a remote-controlled panty vibrator, I was tense as piano wire even when it wasn’t turned on, knowing it could start at any second. Luckily, the first time she’d started it was while I was just filling in a form, because I let out a cry and jolted my knees up against the desk, the tension I’d held for an hour suddenly resolving. I think she was paying attention to when I was on a call or not, because she, er, worked me up to… eased me into… well, the second worksession where I wore them, and she activated it while I was in the middle of a call, and I… well, I at least managed to wait until the instant the call ended before I collapsed in a gasping mess.
But even with the occasional distraction, the next two weeks were marked by success—I filled out more applications and made some good contacts, even though I was starting to feel complicated feelings about potential job leads that would make me move away again. It was what I’d been hoping for… somewhere in New York or San Francisco or maybe back to Seattle. And it wasn’t like I’d talked with Bridget about… whatever was happening, if we’d keep doing it indefinitely, let alone that it would be… more than that?
We met Kevin and Sam regularly, too, catching up on how the family was handling things—it had made a bit of a stir when the four of us had shown up, and Kevin was the one who was the most in-touch with the family still, so we dropped by Sam’s place or to a café in town or something every now and then and got the updates. And I tried to keep a straight face every time Kevin made a comment about me and Bridget in that subtle tone that implied things I wasn’t going to answer.
But he was getting better after the whole fiasco at the family house. And he could tell I was doing better, too, figuring out my work and making progress.
It wasn’t just me making progress, either, though we didn’t tell Kevin and Sam that part—Bridget lit up, knocking out books and narrations at twice the speed, and I knew she was doing well with the online outreach, because her live shows were picking up on view numbers and donations. It did not need explanation why I knew the status of her live shows. Not like I didn’t give it away by mistake anyway—I commented offhand over dinner one night that it was nice that the live donations went to LGBTQ advocacy charities, and she lit up and asked how I’d enjoyed the show, and I’d choked on my food.
It wasn’t long before I found myself helping her with her videos too—it was first just telling her she was welcome to record in the common areas, and then when I’d found her recording in the living room and I ended up staring at her, she asked if I could help her with a camera angle. And I wanted to pretend I was just being a helpful friend, but kneeling in front of her to record a close-up of her playing with herself was, well…
