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“Yeah, we’ll be done by then.” The Whippoorwill School, where she was a kindergarten teacher to eighteen adorable children, ended the school year on June third, leaving her no reason not to be at her cousin Dunia’s wedding.
“I’ll tell Alma to put you in a room with Daisy.”
“Oh, that’ll be fun,” she replied. Her cousin was going through a divorce. An absolute bummer, but they could bond in their single lady-ness together, with absolutely no hope of getting lucky at the reception. Dunia’s fiancé was nice enough, but Meegan had met all of his potential groomsmen over the years. Taken or duds. All of them.
“Unless you think you’ll bring a date?” her mom said with all the subtlety of a baby elephant. It was a family trait, so Meegan couldn’t be too annoyed with her mom’s suggestion. Meegan had spent a good chunk of her life putting her own foot in her mouth. She was working on it though, trying to think a little more before she spoke as time went on. She kept her snarky response to herself.
“Nah. I’ll hang with Daisy and just catch up with everyone. It’ll be fun.”
“Okay. Well, you know the offer still stands. If you want me or your aunts to set you up?—”
“I know, Mom. And I appreciate it,” Meegan replied.
“Okay,” her mom said again, cheerfully. Another family trait. False cheerfulness in the face of defeat.
“Mom, the girls are waiting. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Oh, is it aBachelornight?”
“No.Match Made in Paradise Australia. You can watch it on your Hulu account.”
“I’ll give it a look. Well, have fun with your friends. Tell Xeni I say hello.” That made Meegan laugh. Parents always seem to have a favorite friend and for years, her mom’s had been Xeni.
“I will.” They said their goodbyes and Meegan ended the call. A deep sigh forced its way out of her chest.
Meegan was good at hiding it, but she was pretty depressed. She loved her job, she had amazing friends and she and her mom were on good terms again after a few bumpy years. Still, she felt like everyone else around her was moving on in some way. New jobs, new relationships, new loves. Even her mom and her boyfriend, Don, had finally moved in together.
Things in Meegan’s life were good in theory, but for the better part of eight years, Meegan had been nursing a bruised and broken heart. A lot of people have experienced that kind of hurt in one form or another, but how do you explain to anyone that you’re still coping with the residual pangs of getting ditched by not one, but four different people? Or worse, that your feelings had never been reciprocated to begin with.
Meegan only had herself to blame. She’d spent her twenties and the first bit of her thirties working hard and playing even harder, embedded deep in Los Angeles’s BDSM scene. She’d been fucked from here to Santa Barbara to Tijuana and back again. But while she was getting in her licks and kicks, somewhere along the way everyone she’d clicked with, everyone she’d dared to love, had made other plans, growing up and pairing off. Meegan had missed a few memos, and in some cases was left out intentionally, and now things were just different.
First had been her Mistress, the woman who had truly owned her, Evelyn. Mistress Evelyn and her husband, Master Philip, had owned and operated an exclusive, private BDSM establishment referred to simply as The Club. Through her Mistress, three others had entered her life—another submissive named Marcos, a switch called Daniel and another Dom, Shep. Under their roof, Meegan grew as a young woman and learned what mattered to her most sexually. She’d made so many amazing friends and yeah, foolishly, she’d fallen in love with all four of them. She knew the terms and conditions, she knew the rules, but it had been hard to guard her heart when she was being fucked so well by such wonderful, funny, kind and intense people.
One by one, they’d all walked out of her life and their departures made complete sense. Mistress Evelyn and Master Philip decided to retire and move down to San Diego to be closer to Philip’s family. Marcos—who had grown from bisexual fuckbuddy to truly become her bestie—and his boyfriend, TK decided to get married. So did Daniel and his new girlfriend, Keira, and Shep and his new girlfriend, Claudia. All within two years. Meegan couldn’t ignore the clear evidence of their happiness the same way she couldn’t ignore the changes in their respective dynamics that seemingly happened overnight.
Evelyn was gone, literally. Losing her hurt a lot, even though Evelyn had given her plenty of warning. Going from being a treasured, collared submissive to nothing overnight had been hard. Marcos was… part of anus, awesuddenly. And Daniel was a new man. They’d been through a lot together and she’d never seen him so committed to someone in or outside of The Club, not even Evelyn, whose collar he used to wear. When they first got together, Claudia had no interest in sharing Shep, so his annual trips to The Club just stopped. It would be three years before Meegan saw him again and everyone kept their clothes on.
Over time, she’d started pulling back from The Club. At first, she’d dropped back to twice a month instead of every weekend and then fell back to once a month. When the pandemic hit, The Club was closed for over twenty months. It was back in full swing now, with testing protocols in place, but she hadn’t been back in two years since the grand re-opening and her friendship with Marcos had suffered, even if she was in a bit of denial about that. They still texted, but she’d been putting off seeing him for ages, for petty yet painful reasons.
There were plenty of people who wanted to play with her. Plenty of tops and fellow bottoms who still welcomed her into their beds and under their paddles, switches even like Daniel and Keira, tonight’s hosts. They were happy to fuck Meegan whenever and however she liked. TK had also offered the bed he shared with Marcos if she was ever in the mood. Two lovely open invitations, but she had no one to go home to at night. And it felt like when she realized that a life partner in and outside of the scene was what she wanted, it was too late. No one had picked her.
She’d spent more time her “secular” friends outside of the lifestyle and, beyond a few very pitiful sobfests with them over a few bottles of wine, where she placed the blame for all of her tender feelings on Shep’s newly married shoulders, she did her best to put on a brave face. A big part of her life, a life she had loved, was over and she still had no idea how to move on. Of course that small, shitty voice in the back of her mind decided to chime in.Settle, it whispered.Just give up and settle. She stared at the S on the Passat a little harder, tears burning the backs of her eyes and stinging her throat.
Meegan shook her head and pulled down her visor mirror. Her cheeks were red, but those stupid tears stayed firmly in their ducts. She’d spent too many nights crying over the lost loves who didn’t love her back, over the way she was actively sabotaging her friendship with Marcos. No more tears. She had to pull it together. She would go to Dunia’s wedding without a date. She’d survive. She fluffed her dark brown hair and applied more lip gloss, then climbed out of her car.
“Hey, White Girl.”
Meegan spun around and spotted her bestie Xeni walking up the street. Meegan instantly felt better. She didn’t care how sappy it sounded, her life had improved greatly the year she started working at Whippoorwill. Not because the job paid out the ass, but because that was where she had met Xeni and where their current friend group started to come together. She didn’t know what she would do without them.
“Hey girl, hey! I got your text. You wanna talk now or after?” Xeni’s message had come through earlier that day just as the kids had come in from recess. Meegan hadn’t gotten a chance to properly respond, between the kids and her after school meetings. Before Xeni turned in her teaching hat, Meegan usually spent at least thirty minutes talking with Xeni and their other friend Sarah Kato in the parking lot after they wrapped things up for the day. Meegan understood why Xeni quit. If she’d become a millionaire overnight, she would have peaced out too. Still, she missed seeing her friend every day. She missed their gab sessions. Another person who had grown up and moved on.
“Let’s talk now,” Xeni said.
“Is everything okay? I’m a little worried you’re gonna break up with me.”
Xeni sucked her teeth. “Girl, no. I would never. I didn’t want anything to get lost in text translation and I couldn’t talk last night. I was too busy fucking my husband.”
“Understandable,” Meegan laughed. “What’s going on?”
