I just feel…held and ready and… excited? How do I feel excited?
His hand rests on my back and he doesn't rush it.
"Why are we here?" he asks almost conversationally.
"Because I didn't read the sign," I say. "Because I made an assumption instead of checking and handed you something you didn't want. Because I didn’t drink the water before having more alcohol. I kept testing you."
"And before that?"
"The bear enclosure. Moving toward the calf too fast." I pause. "The pattern I have of acting before thinking and being impulsive."
"Yes." His hand moves to the small of my back. "Do you understand what is going to happen?"
"Yes," I say. "I understand."
"Good girl."
His hand lifts and comes down, it’s not soft, but measured. A single sharp crack that startles a sound out of me that I wasn't prepared for, and then his hand is resting on me again, warm and steady, and I'm breathing. It lands several more times.
"Still with me?"
"Yes."
He goes slowly. Each swat is preceded by a breath of stillness that means I'm never braced for it and never surprised by it either. He's not trying to break me down. He's trying to hold me together, somehow, which sounds like a contradiction.
It is the strangest thing being completely present in something, incapable of being anywhere else, all the noise and motion and forward momentum of my usual brain just stopped. There's only the warmth and the sting and his hand and the sound of my own breathing.
I've never been this still in my own head.
I didn't know this was something I needed until it happened.
He continues this pace until the warmth has turned into a burn and I’m really feeling it. I start to squirm and cry out. Where did the pain come from? It’s not unbearable. It’s almost welcoming. I feel the emotions bubbling to the surface and silenttears fall. I collapse over his knee and just allow myself to be fully present in the experience. Like the characters in my books, I’m finding a release I didn’t know was possible.
"Last three," he says, low and even. "Count them."
I don't trust my voice, but I use it anyway.
"One." The swat is low, landing on the top of my right upper thigh and I cry out. He means business with these three.
"Two." This one alternates to my left thigh. Then the last and hardest swat lands.
"Three."
His hand comes to rest on the small of my back where he rubs slow circles and I breathe out and my whole body does something I can only describe as releasing a tension I've been carrying since Tuesday morning, since the email, since the cider, since the particular accumulated weight of being someone who runs a little fast and a little ragged and doesn't always notice until she stops.
I notice now.
"Up," he says, gently.
He brings me up and settles me sideways across his lap in one easy motion, and his arms are around me and my face is against his neck and for a moment I don't say anything because I'm too busy being held.
His hand moves in slow, steady strokes up and down my back.
"How are you doing, baby girl?" he asks.
I have to think about how to answer that. "Quiet," I say, finally. "I'm very quiet."
"Good," he says. "Stay there a minute."
