“I’m so worried about you,” I texted Daniel on day four.
“Don’t be,” he answered.
“My god, you’re there? I thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth!”
“I’ve been under the weather.”
“Under the weather? Sick?” I picked up Penny and started to pace.
“The Lyme flared up. I was in the hospital a few days.”
My stomach lurched at the thought of Daniel in a hospital bed, maybe even wearing a paper-thin, undignified hospital gown tied wrong in the back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I texted quickly.
“I didn’t think it was something you needed to know.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I didn’t have to know? What was I, a casual friend? I looked around for Kleenex but settled on a dinner napkin.
“I was so worried,” I said again, wiping my eyes.
“No need. I’m fine.”
I sat back down, hard, at the table. The playing cards were still out from the heated game of Crazy 8s the night before. I picked them up and shuffled them, on auto-pilot.
“I’m glad you’re better,” I texted a moment later.
Daniel didn’t reply. Not that day, or the next, but three days later, he texted while I was walking Penny toward Lily’s house, just in case she was outside. It was still chilly, so I’d put a little sweater on Pen that said “When all else fails, hug your dog.”
“How’s it going, doll?
Pen sniffed around then lifted her leg to pee. I swear, sometimes she thought she was a boy dog.
I took the high road. “I’m really good. You?”
There was no sign of Lily, so we turned back home.
“Busy, busy. But hey, I’m getting that thing set up for you.”
“What thing?”
“The threesome. I have an old friend who said she might be willing.”
An old friend? What the hell did that mean? A former girlfriend? Lover?
An image came to my mind of Daniel stroking the other woman to orgasm, while I sat at the foot of the bed watching. All I could picture was a younger, more fit woman with perkier tits than mine stripping for Daniel as he got the world’s biggest hard-on. Or both of us sucking him. Was he setting this up for me? Or for himself?
“You still have those clothespins?”
Thoughts of a threesome left my mind immediately.
“Yes.”
“I want to show you something. Hold on.”
My breathing sped up, and a few seconds later, an image came across my phone.
It was a woman bound to a bench, hands over her head and legs splayed apart. Surrounding each nipple was a circle of clothespins pinching the skin; there was a trail of them leading down her stomach, then a row clamped inside her thighs. In the corner, sitting in a leather desk chair, was a man in a dark business suit drinking a martini. Just watching her.
There were dozens of clothespins on the woman.
It was an assault on my senses. I closed my eyes.
“So, what’s your sched like next week?” he texted a moment later, and I could almost hear the impatience behind his words.
“What? For what?”
“For some play time with another woman.”
“I’ll have to get back to you,” I texted. It was the first time I’d stopped messaging him first.
The image of the clothespinned woman and the man casually watching her stayed with me all night. She was no more than sexual entertainment for him, an object that wasn’t beautiful or artistic or daring. It was more of a mockery, knowing he was enjoying watching what he had done to her with the tight clamps along the length of her skin.
I tried to keep my mind occupied the next day, and then the day after that. By the third day, Daniel and I hadn’t texted a single time, which wasn’t rare, but the thing was—I realized I had nothing to say.
* * *
“Hey,” he texted after four days.
“Hey back,” I answered after several minutes. I had to tell him how I felt about the clothespins.
“How’ve you been?”
“Good. Busy.”
I cleared my throat. I had the texting equivalent of speechlessness.
“Listen,” Daniel texted. “If it’s the threesome thing, we can back off for now. I have other things to work on with you.”
“Like the clothespins?”
“Hahaha,” he texted with the devil’s face emoji. “So, you did like that.”
“No, actually, I didn’t.”
There was a long pause.
“She wasn’t being hurt,” he texted.
“Looked to me like she was.” I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hands.
“You tried the clothespins. You liked it.”
“I tried two.”
“And?”
“There’s a difference. She was clearly in pain, and he enjoyed it. The clothespins on me didn’t hurt.”
“She was putting on a show. That’s all.”
“He was making a show of her. She was helpless.”
“Listen, maybe we should talk later.”
Maybe. Maybe not, I thought.
I opened a kitchen cabinet to get out a mug for tea, then put my phone inside the cupboard and shut it. I sat down and pulled my knees up to my chest as if folding myself up to stay safe.
I’d loved the thrill of secrecy, but the stakes got higher with every request he made. The clothespinned woman had been visually shocking, far beyond my sense of eroticism. He had shown his true self, and I didn’t like what I saw.
What would be next?
I realized I’d given up a very big part of myself in my time with Daniel. I’d let go of my inherent sense of boundaries and handed over my hard-earned independence. And I had worked too hard over the last ten months to feel whole again.
A week later, a text came through from Daniel.
“Hey babe. What’s new and exciting?”
I debated answering, deleted his message, and threw my cell on my bed.
But it had to be done. I couldn’t have him texting me at all hours of the day and night with his sexual suggestions, some of which might still captivate me. He could reach me at a vulnerable time and I’d give in to his wishes. Then I thought about the clothespinned woman and I felt resolute again.
I wasn’t ashamed about what I’d done with Daniel. We were two consenting adults. I wasn’t
