AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She doesn’t even give me a hint. I try to guess along the way. We pass the theater, so I know it’s not a movie. We’ve already had dinner. When she turns into a parking lot, I sit staring at our destination.
“Whole Foods?” I look at her.
“Yeah. We’re going to stock that fridge and those cabinets with groceries.”
“Tandy, you don’t have to…”
“I don’t do anything because I have to. I do things because I want to.” She pauses. “It’ll make me happy to know your fridge and cabinets are full.”
Outside the store she takes my hand. For someone used to getting her food at the Dollar Store, this place is like a foodie Nirvana. Aisles and aisles of choices. Vegan? Organic? Gluten Free? Free range? Grain Fed? Fair Trade? This place has you covered.
It’s hard to accept generosity when you’ve been raised to think you don’t deserve it. I can’t bring myself to ask for anything, but Tandy finds a work-around. She watches me and if I so much as look at something like I want it, into the cart it goes.
“This is fun,” she says. “Now when I come over you can spoil me with a homecooked meal.”
I love the idea of cooking for her. I also know she’s saying this because she wants me to enjoy the shopping experience without feeling self-conscious; I love that, too. But as the cart fills to the brim and beyond, I start to fret.
“Tandy, this is going to cost a fortune,” I saw when we get to the checkout. The cart is full of organic produce, grass-fed beef, baking ingredients, free-range eggs, as well as cookies, cakes, and bread from the bakery. Tandy even insisted on getting cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and even organic cotton tampons she says are much healthier than the kind sold in other stores. Unloading everything is like playing Jenga. The cart is so full that each time we pull something off the pile, it nearly triggers an avalanche.
The bill is nearly six hundred dollars. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. Back home she helps me take everything in and put it away. I’ve never seen my kitchen so well-stocked, and afterwards I make coffee and take it to the living room with the cookies I bought earlier.
“No one’s ever been this nice to me,” I say.
“Really? I thought you were engaged?”
“I was. He’d do anything I asked but it felt…what was that word you used? When you were talking about being a domme?”
“Performative?”
“Yeah. He would do things, but it was like he did them because he thought I expected it.” I pause. “You know, being around you has made me realize that I was doing the same with him.” I sigh and shake my head. “The good girl thing. The role.”
I look up from my cup to see Tandy watching me. She doesn’t say anything. She just leans forward, the elbows of her toned arms on the knees of her black jeans. She’s looking at me, giving me space to keep talking. So I do.
“I told you my father was a traveling preacher, right?”
“Yeah. In a bus.”
I draw a deep breath. I’ve never really talked to anyone about my childhood. Her closeness makes me feel safer.
“I didn’t tell you everything that happened after we left the road, after we stopped traveling. I never told anyone, not even Jack.”
“Why?”
“Oh…” My voice quavers as I try to find the words. “I was trying to be somebody with Jack, somebody it turns out I wasn’t. It feels different with you…”
“Thank you, Bliss.”
She says this softly and I feel relaxed as I begin to tell my story. It’s hard at first. I watch her face as I begin, looking for judgement. I tell her about my father’s mental illness, the little rundown house, and Selma. I have to stop when I get to the part about my fourteenth summer and that fateful day, the almost-kiss, the guilt I had—the guilt I still have—for what happened to her.
“Jesus, Bliss…” Tandy opens her arms to me, and I move into her embrace. She rubs my hair and tells me what happened wasn’t my fault, that I was just a little girl.
“That’s the problem,” I say, pulling back. “I still feel like a little girl. Like I’m stuck in that place of wanting… wanting the love and acceptance I never got at home. My life is a hot mess, Tandy. You just don’t know. You’re so successful, so… together. I work for shit wages in a flower shop and come home to dress Barbie dolls.”
“Are you trying to scare me away?” She moves closer to me on the sofa, puts a finger under my chin and tips it up so that I’m forced to look at her. “Because I don’t scare easily. And for the record, I went through a hot mess phase myself and believe me, I had far less of an excuse.”
“And it’s okay to feel like a little girl. You were robbed of the love and discipline you needed.” She takes her face in my hands. “How would you feel about me giving you what you missed?”
“What do you mean?”
