Open Doors (Suncoast Society #27)(43)

“I don’t want to cheat on him or anything,” Mel said. “I mean, if I decide this is something I want, I’m going to have to file for divorce.”

“That’s good, because I wouldn’t be able to support you if you went behind his back.”

“This isn’t going behind his back?”

“You’re going to a class. There won’t be any play. Later tonight, after dinner, we’ll come back and all you’ll be doing is watching.”

“No one’s going to make me play with them because I don’t have a collar, will they? I read this one book where—”

“Stop,” Marcia said, channeling her own dominant side. “This is real-life, not a book. You’ll be shocked how normal some of it is. What we do is run a kinky community center.”

“People won’t be having sex and stuff?”

“Not here they won’t. It’s against the rules and keeps us from running afoul of the law. We’re a private membership club. No alcohol, no drugs, no sex. Those three things right there weed out ninety-nine percent of all potential troublemakers. They want a sex club, they can find somewhere else to go. A lot of people just come here to sit and talk with their friends. We have a large community of crossdressers and trans folk who come out because other than going up to Tampa or St. Pete, it’s the only place locally, except for the occasional drag queen bingo night at a bar, where they can just be themselves.”

“Oh.” She went silent for a moment. “Do I know anyone else who’s kinky?”

“Probably. But it’s not something we brag about to our vanilla friends.”

“I just…I feel like a horrible wife.”

“Why?”

“Because I said for better or for worse, but it’s like he doesn’t care that it’s getting progressively worse. He’s happy with the status quo.”

“I wish I could say your problem is unique, but it’s not.”

They were the first into the parking lot. Marcia had arrived earlier than normal. She wanted to get Mel settled and show her around so once the class started she could focus on teaching.

As Mel followed her inside the office, her eyes went wide. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “I never thought I’d see stuff like this in real life.”

Marcia walked around the counter to put her purse away and to get the computer booted up. “These are just a small selections of the basics.” Blindfolds, some paddles, collars and cuffs, and some other implements. “Just try to take stuff in and don’t get overwhelmed.”

“I’m already overwhelmed,” she said, turning to Marcia. “Because I see how happy you and Derrick are and I envy that. I can see it. I thought I was that happy once, but maybe not since our second year married, if that. I refuse to live this one life I have being miserable. If this is all there is? This sucks.”

“I know, sweetie. That’s why you’re here.”

“I want my happily ever after,” Mel said. “I feel like I got cheated out of it. Like someone swapped my prince for the frog at the altar.”

“I thought his parents were happy.”

“I wouldn’t say happy. They were dedicated. But they were both miserable, I think. His mom would always bitch about his dad, up until he died. I don’t think they were ‘happy.’ I think they were doing what they thought they were supposed to do.”

“Life is too short to be miserable.”

“Amen to that.”

Once Marcia had the computer booted up she led Mel through the door inside to the main space. Mel stopped by the door and stared around as Marcia walked back to the breaker panel and got the lights and AC turned on.

“Well?” Marcia asked, having seen a nearly identical look on the faces of other newbies before. “What do you think?”

“It’s…” She seemed at a loss for words.

“Not like the books, right?”

“Yeah.” She slowly walked over to Marcia. “I thought…”

“Richly appointed and luxurious, right?”

“Well…yeah.”

“A play space stuck in a warehouse in an industrial complex isn’t very sexy and probably wouldn’t sell many books.”

“Oh. True.”

“Not saying there might not be places like that out there, but the ones I know of are basically variations of this same theme.”

“How many people will be here for your class?”

“Hard to say. Nearly twenty RSVPd on FetLife, but—”

“On what?”

Crap. “FetLife. It’s like a kinky Facebook.”

Mel pulled out her phone and immediately started looking for it. “Wow. I…I never even thought…”

“Just take things slow, okay?” Marcia didn’t want to feel responsible if her friend, in a fit of subfrenzy, nuked her marriage and jumped head-first into the deep end of the kink pool just to get her heart broken.

“I will. I just want to learn. I feel like I’m in a different country. Or maybe the right country, finally.”

“What?”

Mel looked up from her phone, her cheeks beet red. “I’ve always had fantasies,” she softly confided. “About being tied up. Stuff like that. I never said anything to him though. I thought there was something wrong with me. Then I read some of the books the book club was talking about they’d read before I joined and…it was me. It was like someone opened up my head and took a look at my damn brains. Bestselling books, not just little one-off books that only five people ever read.”