“I feel like I’ll never fucking retire at this point,” he grumbles.
“Oh shut up, I don’t even have a 401k.”
He stops eating his taco to blink at me and I know I’m about to get a lecture that I absolutely do not need right now.
I hold up my hand to stop him. “I’m working on it. I promise.”
He sighs and looks at me patiently. “I know this isn’t what you want to do forever.”
“I’ll figure my shit out, Aiden. This lunch was to help you stop worrying about your shit, not to harp on mine.”
“It’s easier to talk about you. How's planning going for the fourth of July?”
“Amazing,” I beam.
My favorite thing about this job is planning events. Did I think I’d be working here for as many years as I have? No, but this part I actually enjoy.
“Davers and Davers Law Firm and Larry’s Pools have both signed the contract, so the yacht is all set up and isn’t going to cost us as much as we thought.”
“Thanks for handling all that. I know it’s a ways off, but I think everyone in the company needs something to look forward to.”
I smile. I like doing a good job. But this isn’t where I want to be forever. I wish I were one of those people who grew up knowing who they were. Instead, I’m stuck changing who I am every single fucking year and not finding anything that sticks.
Maybe I’m potentially going through a quarter life crisis, but then again, my whole life till this point has felt like one crisis after the next.
“Do you ever feel like you don’t know who you are?” I ask, catching Aiden off guard.
“All the fucking time,” he replies.
It’s not reassuring in the slightest.
What’sthe best way to figure out who you are? Anonymous sex, obviously. My consultation for membership is private. I didn’t want to strut through the club, not knowing if Aiden is here.
I might have accidentally stumbled onto one of his personal emails from the club listing what his preferences are. Even though I know I should have exited out of the email immediately, my nosey ass did not.
I should probably go somewhere else, but maybe it’s because I’m hard-headed or the fact that it’s right down the street from my apartment building, I can’t pass it up.
Plus, with what I’m interested in, we would never cross paths.
What I want is beyond just sex with strangers. I want to push the limit.
I’m in the back office with Clara, who handles membership management, as she tells me about the bells and whistles of the club. I don’t want to waste her time, so I interrupt her.
“This is all lovely, Clara. I appreciate you wanting to tell me about all the aspects of the club, but I’m looking for complete anonymity.”
“Ah, then this is what you’re looking for.”
She slides me over a brochure with a key hole on the front and it all clicks for me at that moment. It’s everything I’ve been wanting to explore. The desires no one has wanted to delve into with me, that I’ve been judged for. Maybe Avalon can be the place where I can express myself and figure out who I am, at the very least explore my sexuality without the fear of my heart being involved.
“You’ll go by an alias as a member, of course, only the back end staff will know your true identity. If there is anyone you do not want in your room, you’ll just have to let us know. Or if you have a scene with someone and would no longer like to partake in activities with them, we can add them to your hardline list. While we understand the point is anonymity, we also want you to be comfortable. Of course, this is a new aspect of the business, so we would have pre-scheduled times through our portal and you select other members’ profiles who are interested in the same things as you. This is also where you will list your limits, there will be safeguards in place in the room, but we can go over that next week. The profiles are how we use the online scheduling portal to ensure everyone gets what they want out of the experience. I’ll be sending you home today with the paperwork on how to sign into the portal and how to create your profile for the Key Club.”
“So if there’s someone I know who is a member, I can list them as someone I would not entertain, ever? Even if they don’t have a profile under the Key Club?”
“Yes, as well as if you didn’t have a good experience, you could put them on your banned list.”
“That will be perfect.”
“We’re still a week from opening up this section. There will be a private entrance for this space, and security measures in place to keep everyone anonymous, since that’s the allure of the Key Club. I can schedule you in for Wednesday for a tour.”
