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Chapter 39
BRIDGET
Past
It breaks my heart to see Amy so despondent, especially when things are going so well between myself and Darren.
The rainy winter has given way to sunny spring. Though it’s nice to have the sun, there’s always the flipside of not having rain in California: drought. But the shooting, now over a month ago, has made me grateful for more things in life. I’m especially thankful that Darren is making a full recovery. Except for some continued stiffness in his shoulder, he’s back to normal. And I’m glad that he can now wield two floggers at a time.
We spend more time at the BDSM side of his club than the regular side these days. He was excited to be able to try out suspension bondage on me. But I also suspect he doesn’t want me to cross paths with JD that often, though I told him, “We’re adults, right? I get that relationships don’t always work out. I just wish he’d come out and say it, give Amy closure, rather than stringing her along.”
Darren doesn’t like to talk about JD and Amy. I asked him to urge his cousin to be upfront with Amy, even though she’d once expressed, “If he breaks it off with me, I’m just going to die.”
Darren said he tried and that there’s only so much he can do. I’ve seen JD at the club with his arm around other women, usually cute and petite like Amy. Though he did hit on Kimberly, who seems to have an increasingly renewed interest in Darren. The other night, she showed up at the club in a dress that I had to look at several times to see if it was see-through or not. It molded her body like a second skin, and I thought I could make out a shadow on the dress where her pubic hair would be. No one could take their eyes off her, Darren included.
For a while, I held out hope that maybe JD was just going through a phase. Maybe the shooting left him feeling vulnerable or made him feel he had to live it up while he was young. I would ask Darren if he knew whether or not JD was sleeping with the women he flirted with, but I stopped asking when he groaned with exasperation at me with “How the hell should I know?”
“I thought, since you guys are super close, that maybe he talks about it,” I replied in defense.
Darren apologized later—through sex. He didn’t make me go through a whipping or anything like that before giving me three awesome orgasms. He was attentive and romantic.
I never thought I would end up with a guy like Darren, but now I can’t imagine being with anyone else. Sometimes his bossiness irks me, and I push back while at other times I just play along. I don’t mind the Dominant stuff if it stays in the bedroom, though Darren has blurred the lines a few times, and I need to be attentive to that so I don’t end up on a slippery slope.
“How was Hawaii?” I ask when Amy lugs her suitcase into our room.
After it was obvious that Darren didn’t need me around, I had moved out of his place. Commuting to class from the city wasn’t fun, and I didn’t want to leave Amy alone. She hasn’t been able to focus on her classes, and with only about a month left in the semester, I worry about how her grades will turn out. She’s set on medical school, which is super hard to get into.
“Okay, I guess,” Amy replies, setting her suitcase on the bed and unzipping it.
“Just ‘okay?’” I ask. “Were there no cute surfer guys on the beach?”
“Not really.” She unpacks her carbon monoxide detector and plugs it into the wall.
“Your mom still a stickler for those?” I ask.
“Yeah, when she was over here last time, she thought our heating unit looked old. What did you and Darren do for spring break?”
“Spent some time with his mom when she came through San Francisco on her way back from Toronto.”
I enjoyed spending time with Darren’s mom. Sharon had seemed much more interested in me than before, especially my background. She asked about my parents and my grandmother. She thanked me for assisting Darren after the shooting and asked if I was afraid that it might happen again. I relayed what Sergeant Trawley had told us about the shooter. Seeing that she didn’t seem comforted, I asked if she was worried.
“A mother always worries,” had been her response.
“You didn’t go anywhere with Darren?” Amy asks me. “I thought maybe you guys would jet off to some fancy resort in Cabo or something.”
I shake my head. “We hung out in Sacramento for a day.”
“Why Sacramento?”
“You remember that fellowship I applied for a few months back? I got it!”
“Congrats! That’s so awesome. I’ll be spending my summer studying for the MCAT. I had thought I’d be spending it with JD.” She sits down on the bed with a sigh. “Have you seen him lately?”
I draw in a breath. “Spotted him once at the club a few days ago. He doesn’t usually talk to me.”
“Was he with anyone?”
“Hard to tell.” I pause before saying what I know Amy doesn’t want to hear. “But I think he’s moved on.”
