But his suggestion of privacy seems like a good one.
“My car’s over there,” I say.
“We’ll come back for it later.” He gets up, tugging on the leash so the tiny dog at his feet hops up as well, trotting nervously behind him. I essentially do the same thing—the nervous trotting part.
Athena leaps into the truck’s cab before Mason guides her into the narrow backseat, where she sits with her head pushed between the front seats, tongue hanging out to one side.
“Do you mind?” Mason says, depositing Pamela into my lap. “She’s a bit nervous, and I don’t want Athena to squish her back there.”
The dog is so small it barely feels like I’m holding anything. She stares up at me with watery black eyes, and the tiny pink bow tied between her ears trembles.
“Where did she come from again?” I ask.
Mason grunts as he gets the truck started. “It’s a long story. Some people shouldn’t have dogs.” But when I glance back at Athena, he shakes his head. “Not you. You’re doing a good job with her. Anyone with a puppy like her would struggle, unless they had a lot of experience, and maybe a whole kennel of sled dogs to keep her busy.”
That almost sounds like a compliment.
We head out of the parking lot, and soon enough, we’re rolling down Jefferson Highway on the way out of town, and I realize Mason was serious about going back to his house. Somewhere along the way, Pamela does a tiny circle on my lap, tucks her feet beneath her, and falls asleep on a sigh so long and weary it’s like she’s been holding it her whole life.
I know the feeling intensely.
“You don’t really want to hear about the rest of my damage, do you?” I say.
Mason glances at me as he drives. “I’ll hear whatever you want to tell me.”
And as much as I don’t want to burden him with my sob story, I also want to tell him everything. All of it. Because he knows something I don’t about myself, and maybe if I dump the entire Gavin saga on him, and he fills in a few blanks, I’ll finally know what I did wrong so I can keep it from happening again the next time I meet someone.
“I think we’d probably been having problems for a while. It’s possible I got Athena hoping that if we had something to work on together, we’d get that...I dunno, that spark back.” I shoot him a guilty glance. “That probably sounds pretty weak, doesn’t it?”
He reaches across the cab and gently scratches Pamela’s ears. She’s so small his hand is deliciously close to my crotch, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. He says, “People adopt pets for all sorts of reasons. But you’ve stuck with Athena despite everything, so whatever your intentions were at the time, I think you’ve proven yourself.”
I blush at his words. “See? That. Gavin never did that.”
“Told you when you were doing a good job?”
“Acknowledged that I was making any effort, really. When we met, I’d had a few boyfriends, and I knew that what I wanted wasn’t quite what I’d had with them. In bed, I mean.”
“And Gavin was kinky?”
“We met on an app. I said I was submissive and he said he was a Dom, and at first it was okay. We were getting to know each other, getting to know what we liked, sexually speaking, and it was fun to explore with someone and not have to worry about feeling weird when I told him I didn’t want to be in control.”
Mason nods, but he doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead of us.
“But then, after a while, I don’t know. At first it got boring, almost? Like we were just doing the same stuff over and over. But then the things Gavin wanted to try, with some of the toys, with pain...I didn’t like that.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Sometimes. He liked to tie me up, but so tight that I’d lose feeling in my hands or with rough twine that would leave marks on my legs and my groin, I—”
Mason’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “If you told him you didn’t want to, outside whatever rules you agreed to, and he did it anyway, Charlie, that’s not kink. That’s assault. Especially the ropes? That’s dangerous. Someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing can leave permanent damage with shit like that.”
My heart is beating so fast I have to close my eyes. Athena whines to my left and licks my ear, and I reach up blindly until I find her muzzle and press it into my neck.
“It wasn’t...I wanted us to be okay. Like we’d been when we met. I thought if I just tried harder, if I let him take the lead, that feeling would come back. And instead...” Instead, I let him take advantage. When we had sex, it was about him and what he liked. And I was left feeling like I wasn’t good enough, that it was my fault I wasn’t enjoying it. Because Gavin was confident and self-assured, and with every week and month that went by, I was less sure about anything, most of all myself.
The truck gets silent for a bit. I pet Pamela. She’s so small. So fragile. I can feel her ribs as she sleeps. Here is a creature who needs to be taken care of, and Mason is the absolute right guy for the job. But I wanted someone who would take care of me, in bed at least, and it took me way too long to see that Gavin was never going to be that man.
As we pull into Mason’s driveway, he says, “Is Gavin still with the guy you found him with?”
