Page 18 of Our Sadie
“Right now, then,” he says, like he thought of this himself, and holds his arm out to me, elbow bent.
What does he think we’re attending? A cotillion?
I point none too subtly at that arm. “What’s this all about?”
“This is about showing a lady respect.”
Good answer.
He escorts me to our gaming room with its pool table, dartboard, and air hockey machine. It’s right next to the arcade which has eighties-style gaming cabinets. My parents were Gen-Xers, after all.
“What’s your poison?” he asks me, his stance more of a saunter now.
Oh, I get it. Homeboy here thinks he can beat me at all these activities as if I didn’t grow up perfecting those skills so my parents might legitimately pay attention to me.
He’s in for a rude awakening.
“Oh, whichever. I like them all.” Also, I’m about to beat your ass.
Dom aims straight for the pool and racks up all the balls. “You wanna break?”
“You can.”
After chalking the end, he does so with the ease of someone more than familiar with a cue, the hard round surfaces clacking together and rolling in various directions. Yet breaking is less about strength, which I’m guessing from those muscles bulging all over him that he has plenty of, and more about wrist control. My mother taught me that. She and Dad would come in here and become the fiercest competitors I’ve ever witnessed.
I can still remember Mom cackling as she yelled, “In yo face,” at him.
Sportsmanship is something I had to be away from home to appreciate.
Dom lines up his first shot, and while it’s nothing tricky or particularly flashy, he has no trouble sinking it in the corner pocket. The same proves true for his next one, and on his third shot, he succeeds in sinking two of his solids in the same hole.
If Zach or maybe even Jerome were here, I wonder if they’d make a joke about that. Dom doesn’t. Instead, he shoots again and sinks a striped ball, launching the game over to me.
“Nice start,” I tell him, secretly ready to whoop the man like he’s never been whooped. Or with what he told me about his past with BDSM roleplay, maybe he has.
“I do any and all positions, oral, anal, giving and taking. BDSM, if you prefer it. Though if you’re treating me as a sub, I’d prefer no permanent marks, if possible.”
“Wait, wait, wait. You’d agree to be the sub in a BDSM scenario?” Is he serious?
“Yes.”
That conversation from over a month ago still floors me.
But now it’s time to show him what I’m made of. It’s as I’m squaring up to the table that I register there might be a problem. Yet since I don’t want there to be a problem, I ignore it, pretending that I’m as much of a deft hand at this as I used to be.
Leaning my cue against the green felt edge, I chalk the tip. Positioning myself, I eye the orange three ball—not the most difficult shot but not the easiest, either—and aim for the side pocket. Yet since my executing this with one arm isn’t like performing it with two, my shot goes awry. Worse, not only do I miss, the white ball goes in, too. It’s a fucking scratch, which decimates my turn.
“Dammit.” Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.
How could I have forgotten that my body isn’t my own anymore?
The same motions I’ve made a million times with my left hand not only don’t work the same on my right side, they don’t work at all. Every act is off to the point of feeling wrong and understanding the mechanics of why doesn’t make one bit of difference. Neither does pretending that my right side is as agile and capable as my left side once was.
It takes every ounce of my control to not fling my pool cue across the room, even if I’ve never been prone to tantrums. I don’t behave like that. But it’s just so...
No. It’s fine. You’re fine. Everything is fine.
I force myself to exhale even if that breath leaves me in staccato-like little bursts that sound anything but natural.