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The last lifer, besides me, is Annette. She’s with Anton. Gabe had some fixation with a girl named Julie, but decided to leave her alone, so now he’s just moping around the house like a sad country song.
I sigh and finally drag myself out of bed. I can complain about the lack of windows down here all day long, but it’s like a cozy cave, and Brian is the master of comfortable bedding. You wouldn’t think a man—much less a man like Brian—would be concerned about that, or even know the first thing about it, but when you have trouble sleeping like he does, I guess every bit of comfort counts for something.
It took until I got back to the house to really start to appreciate Brian’s understanding of thread count. He’s a complex guy.
I take a quick shower, put my long chocolate brown hair up in a messy up-do and throw on some leggings, casual boots, and a sweater that hangs half off one shoulder. The leggings-aren’t-pants crowd can kiss my ass.
When I get up to the cafeteria, lunch is being served. Phyllis excels at lunch. There’s a bizarre way in which Phyllis is sort of living out her dream life. She hated real estate. She was more-or-less self-employed but was trying to ease out of it. All she really wanted was to start a catering company. This woman loves to cook and bake like nobody I’ve ever seen.
Maybe she isn’t building an empire but she also doesn’t have the stress of business failure. It’s a trade-off. The guys at the house give her a huge allowance for anything she needs for the kitchen as well as a personal allowance and she just gets to cook and bake anything she wants. Sometimes she enlists help from others here when she’s planning something really labor intensive.
There’s a wide variety of sub sandwiches today, and I momentarily wonder if it might be some kind of inside joke or attempted pun. There’s also a few plugged in panini sandwich machines which have become quite popular with an array of things to choose to put on them.
My favorite lately is turkey with a spinach artichoke spread she makes melted together with provolone cheese. If it weren’t for the gym here, I wouldn’t be flaunting the leggings aren’t pants code.
The girls give me a lot of space, and it hurts my feelings a little. Even Annette is cautious around me now. I’ve been back at the house for a while but I can’t hide the darkness that has become suddenly very loud. I’m sure people can feel the energy of it. Where before I was a scared and traumatized woman—a small girl in a grown-up body in many ways—now there is an anger, a hardness, a power waiting to unfurl.
It scares me sometimes, so I don’t blame the others for their reactions to me. I feel as though I really could snap at any moment and do something crazy. Even the trainers are cautious in my space. The only person who isn’t on some level afraid of me now is Brian. But maybe it’s pity they all feel, not fear. After all they must have some idea of what Matsumoto did to me.
And I have thrown my weight around with the girls a bit. I’ve smacked a couple and yelled at a couple more since I’ve been back, but it’s only because they had comments to make about my mostly Queen of the Damned clothes, and how they don’t like that I call everybody but Brian by their first names around here. I saw the look Brian got in his eyes. While I may stay out of his way, it still bothers me that he’d hurt one of the girls over something minor having to do with me. So when these moments come, I take them into my own hands, to protect them. From him. But I’m sure they don’t see it that way. The girls who’ve been here longer understand the Brian threat, but the new ones often don’t. And I just can’t let another Shannon happen on my watch. Not because of me.
I make my favorite panini and sit at a table away from the others. Annette makes eye contact as she fixes her plate. I want her to come sit with me, but I can’t bring myself to call her over. We’d been starting to form a friendship before everything happened. Since then she’s been polite but wary. Lindsay approaches my table, and I flinch. He’s probably the only person at the house I still have a visceral unpleasant reaction to. There are things neither I nor Brian will ever forgive him for.
“Mina, do you know where Brian is? I need him.”
If anyone needs Brian it’s because they want him to do something unsavory and evil which they can’t bring themselves to sully their own souls or hands with. Punish a girl. Kill someone on the outside who has become a threat to the house. Something like that.
“He’s on personal business,” I say. “And he’s been gone longer than he should be. I’m worried.”
Lindsay rolls his eyes at this, like I’m expressing concern over a rabid dog. Nobody cares about how Brian feels. He’s a monster, so he has no feelings. It doesn’t occur to anybody that Brian might need anything from someone else. Lindsay was supposed to be his therapist—though that’s over. Lindsay was also once my therapist, and really this guy should lose his license.
“I mean it! I’m worried something’s gone wrong. He’s been gone a week longer than he said he would.”
Normally if he’s a day or two late, it’s fine. It happens. But this long? I’m afraid something happened. I’m afraid he might be hurt. Or dead. He doesn’t communicate with the house when he’s out on a job for security reasons, but, it’s been too long. Deep down I know this.
“Maybe he’s just got a lover on the side,” Lindsay says.
He thinks this kind of barb will affect me. It won’t. Brian and I don’t have intercourse. I know that’s weird but I don’t like doing it. Besides my traumatic experiences in the kink world even before all this, I’ve never really been able to get off on that particular activity. And for Brian, fucking isn’t a compliment, so no, Brian doesn’t have a lover. He and I definitely bring each other pleasure—yes the sexual kind—but he can’t fuck without it being an act of aggression and I can’t be fucked for similar and also different reasons.
The kind of intimacy we share requires a vulnerability Brian won’t and can’t show with anyone else. So nice try, psycho-shrink. Brian does occasionally fuck the women he punishes, but I don’t consider that cheating. My position with him and what we share is much different. I wouldn’t prefer to be in their place. Most women wouldn’t understand this, but if you’d met Brian, you’d know there’s nothing to be jealous about.
Lindsay hates that I’m not required to show any deference or respect to anyone at the house but Brian, and so he intentionally tries to get under my skin with petty bullshit like this. Annette calls all the other trainers Sir, and acts like the good proper submissive pretty much all the time, but Brian is the only person I answer to in any way. He made that very clear. And Lindsay can’t stand that I speak to him as though we’re equals. We aren’t equals. I’m about a thousand times better than the house shrink. And we both know it.
“Well, Lindsay, if you aren’t going to care about Brian and where he might be and if he might need some sort of help, I’m not sure how he can help you.”
He rolls his eyes, turns on his heel, and leaves the cafeteria. Seriously, fuck that guy.
“You’ve got a letter.”
I turn to find Gabe, holding out a piece of mail to me.
“Thank you.” I take the letter from him discreetly and place it under my plate while I eat lunch.
He gives me a strange look but shrugs and walks away. I’m grateful it’s Gabe who gets the mail, and not one of the other owners. Lindsay would have opened it himself and possibly withheld it from me entirely.
I don’t get letters. Who would send me mail here? Who knows I’m here to send me mail in the first place? My heart flutters in my chest. Is it from Brian? It has to be. He’s the only person who has my mailing address. But why the hell would he send me a letter to the house? Is he in some kind of trouble? But again, why a letter? Letters are too slow for trouble. If he needed something couldn’t he just break his calling rule once? Why not just use a burner phone, make the call quick, and then dispose of it?
My fingers itch to rip into the envelope, but I can’t do it at the table with so many eyes on me. So I act like it’s nothing. I eat the Turkey and spinach panini, barely tasting it, take my plate back, and rush downstairs so I can open it in private.
